5/Recognizing Various

Kinds of Excellence

I

nThe University in Ruins,the literary scholar Bill Readings re-
marks that “the idea of excellence” is ubiquitously evoked in aca-
demic contexts, yet little consensus exists concerning its meaning.
As a term, it “has the singular advantage of being entirely meaning-
less, or to put it more precisely, non-referential.”^1 As panelists are
very much aware, excellence is a quintessential polymorphic term. A
sociologist notes, “There are different standards of excellence, differ-
ent kinds of excellence,” yet is nevertheless “pretty confident that I’d
know it when I see it.” This chapter spells out what this “it” is that
panelists easily recognize but cannot always clearly articulate. As we
will see, understanding the various meanings that reviewers attach to
the evaluative criteria they use is at least as important as identifying
the criteria themselves. In addition, the weight given to criteria—fa-
voring intellectual significance over social significance, for instance—
imponderably affects the outcome of deliberations and may have to
do with differences in “intellectual habitus” across disciplinary clus-
ters.^2
In their classic workThe Academic Revolution,Christopher Jencks

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