Language of Defenses

At a recent dissertation defense at the University of Michigan, a colleague and I were musing about the ways the word defense is a misnomer for much of what happens at these events in our Ph.D. program. I’ve been thinking back on this conversation this weekend as I fly back from Sweden, where I was honored to have the opportunity to be the faculty opponent for a thesis defense at Uppsala University.

Now if defense sounds oppositional in nature, what about opponent?

At some level the word defense usefully suggests that a Ph.D. candidate is being asked to explain and justify their work — theoretical approaches, methods, conclusions drawn from analysis, and the like. The event is designed to demonstrate a candidate’s ability to talk about their research, including responding to questions they may not have anticipated.

That said, as a dissertation committee member, I do not see my job in this venue as trying to “attack” a Ph.D. candidate’s work, such that they would need to “defend” it from my criticisms. I want to allow a candidate to be as smart and creative as possible in this setting and to stretch their thinking in new ways, with the full committee there and fully engaged in their work for two hours.  A great defense, to me, is when a candidate comes to a new understanding or insight as part of the conversation, building on what is already written down in the dissertation.

This is not to say that I will not raise concerns at a defense if I have them, but I do so in the spirit of trying to help the candidate think through the issue — perhaps in collaboration with the other members of the committee — in order to strengthen the work. I do expect the candidate to be able to talk through a problem I might raise, but not necessarily to solve it on the spot. A defense, it seems to me, should model rigorous scholarly conversation where everyone at the table is invested in making the work better, not shooting it down. A candidate who is feeling defensive will struggle more to participate fully and thoughtfully in this conversation.

Of course there is an assumption underlying my approach: that I would not allow a dissertation to reach the stage of the defense if I was concerned it couldn’t pass. I don’t think this makes the defense less rigorous — or, frankly, less scary for the candidate. It is still a public event (at least in our program, and I am a strong advocate for public defenses) where colleagues, friends, and family are going to watch a candidate respond to challenging questions from experienced faculty. For all of us who suffer from impostor syndrome (I count myself squarely in these ranks — and have throughout my career), the defense seems like yet another high-stakes moment when one could be exposed. The drive to prepare, the nerves, and the adrenaline do not, for most of us, rest on the question of whether we as a candidate are going to pass or fail the defense in the administrative sense.

I will admit I was then a little thrown off to be called a faculty opponent for the defense in Uppsala. I admire the protocol of bringing in an outside scholar who has not worked with the candidate in writing the dissertation to engage with the candidate about the work and provide the committee with an evaluation. The process, in this way, captures the spirit of peer review for academic work. It is also an impressive investment in a Ph.D. candidate’s work. But did I know what it meant to be the “opponent”? After the invitation, I asked lots of questions about the expectations. While I wanted to make sure that I would meet their standards for a defense, I also wanted the defense to feel more like a rigorous conversation than a lopsided hierarchical examination.

At the defense on Friday morning, it was just the two of us at the front of the room, with microphones, with the committee and advisers in the front row and about 30 other people looking down from the auditorium’s seats and listening in. How could any conversation for a Ph.D. candidate in this setting not be a test of their scholarly mettle, no matter the questions? I certainly did ask probing questions about methods and about the wording of specific assertions to ensure that the candidate could explain methodological decisions and aspects of the argument — or see how one might revise them. I took more seriously, though, my job of challenging the candidate’s thinking in this setting, and to do that, I don’t think it works well to think of one’s role as an opponent. (And the main adviser had confirmed that “opponent” didn’t have to be taken as oppositional.)  I tried to pose questions that asked the candidate to think through, for example, a theoretical issue with me — an issue raised by the dissertation — to see where that might get us. I wanted to make the conversation to be lively and stimulating for both of us if I possibly could.

In the end, a defense is the moment where a Ph.D. candidate is fully becoming a colleague in the academy. As colleagues in the academy, we regularly focus the spotlight on each other’s work and ask rigorous, challenging questions — be that at workshops or conference presentations or job talks. We’re trying to push our scholarship, as colleagues, and we know defensiveness can get in the way.