Craftsmanship is admired by a sociologist who, when asked if he
believes in academic excellence, answers, “If what we mean by excel-
lence is honest work, well-crafted work, pretty much scholarship as
craft, I believe in it.” Elaborating, he stresses “work that’s true to the
data.” He associates excellence “with [producing] work that is based
upon good quality scholarship.. .It is ethics, plus the craft[my em-
phasis].” Similarly, a political scientist who “cares very much about
the finished product” cautions that “to be a craftsman without in-
sight or creativity, you know, that wouldn’t work to create good ob-
jects. You have to be creative as well.” Depth, another aspect of qual-
ity, is the dimension that humanists tend to stress most. A historian
of China’s description of a high-quality proposal reflects this con-
cern: “There was a lot of historical work going into this one...but
also depth. The statement had nuance in it. It was authoritatively
written. You felt that this guy was full of respect and engagement and
at the same time, had a certain kind of distance that would allow him
to do really high-quality studies.” Prevailing definitions of quality
also frequently include praise for attention to detail. Thus a sociolo-
gist emphasizes thoroughness and describes his own work as being
particularly strong on “rigorous historical analysis, which means not
just sticking to the secondary sources, but also going to the primary
sources.” A historian emphasizes the applicant’s thorough delibera-
tion of research choices.
Finally, in defining quality, many respondents emphasize scholarly
and empirical soundness. For the humanists, scholarly soundness is
measured by the details and accuracy of the proposal. Thus, propos-
als that include factual errors are eliminated promptly. A historian
recalled a losing proposal that was “riddled with historical anachro-
nisms, historical assumptions that were just wrong, and yet [the
applicant] used buzz words that were sort of trendy and would at-
tract interest. It was kind of disingenuous.” Empirical soundness
is defined in opposition to the use of anecdotes and to what a music
Recognizing Various Kinds of Excellence / 169