scholar describes as “spouting opinion.” It is also frequently con-
trasted with the haphazard collection of evidence and with super-
ficial “trendiness.” A sociologist compares losers and winners this
way:
This one proposal on eighteenth-century Romanian national his-
tory was highly scholarly, absolutely in [the] forefront of debates
on nationalism. It was empirically sound in particular research
lights. And it seemed very detailed and he got the money because
the Good Lord lives in details...Someofthetrendyones[that
were not funded] were so much concerned with concepts...
They were more about how we address certain things rather than
actually the things themselves.A political scientist concurs, describing scholarship she likes as
work that “brings a lot of evidence to their arguments...Ilike
Adam Przeworski’s work, although it, like mine, takes a different
form. I like projects where the author has really gone to a lot of trou-
ble to legitimate what they said. And they can do that with case stud-
ies or through large and quantitative studies.” In teaching her gradu-
ate students how to produce high-quality research, she directs them
“to look at their variables very critically,” “to look carefully at feasi-
bility,” to marshal “lots of evidence,” and to bring many “different
kinds of lenses” to their research problem.
Originality, Significance, Methods, and Feasibility
In discussing what defines the substantive quality of a project, re-
spondents from all three disciplinary clusters seem to draw on shared
“scripts” of excellence—sets of definitions and decision pathways in
which originality and significance play a central role, with methods
and feasibility also in crucial, but less widely agreed-on, positions.
No clear patterns differentiate humanists, social scientists, and histo-
170 / Recognizing Various Kinds of Excellence