When she was an expert about something, she was completely con-
vincing about it. I remember being perhaps even more impressed
with the American historian’s range of knowledge...[He]kepttalk-
ing about varying courses that he taught in which he had become ex-
pert on x, y, and z, and it seemed an enormously broad range. He’s
one of these people who read very widely and retained everything
that he read and I was tremendously delighted by that; he was very
helpful.”
Be succinct. Panelists’ work is conducted at a fast pace, because they
generally have to accomplish a great deal in a very limited amount of
time. It is crucial that members not waste everyone’s time by talking
too much or too slowly, making unnecessary remarks, or providing
too much detailed information. A humanist remembers being put
off by a panel member who “would kind of go off on tangents that
were irrelevant and tell sort of anecdotes, and we had an agenda [a
pile of proposals to go through].” A historian picks as the worst pan-
elist an anthropologist who “talked way too much about proposals
that he hadn’t read, [and] had to make his views known about every-
thing.” A political scientist offers a similar indictment of this same
panelist: “This guy was just so full of himself. For me, I sort of lost
my tolerance when at the end [the chair] keeps saying ‘let’s move
along,’ and he keeps on name dropping on these proposals.” Panel-
ists who are not succinct lose credibility; “being smart” also means
knowing how to use one’s time effectively in a group.
Speak across disciplinary boundaries. Being able to articulate one’s
point of view to others outside one’s field is essential. An English
professor equates this with “smarts.” She feels that her co-panelists
all exhibited this trait. “Each of the people in the panel made re-
marks at different points that taught me something that was new
and that was not just a person’s opinion about a proposal. I felt like I
114 / Pragmatic Fairness