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Chatting with Stewart Manley

11.10.2024

Welcome to the latest interview of the Völkerrechtsblog’s symposium ‘The Person behind the Academic’! With us we have Dr. Stewart Manley, and through the following questions, we will try to get a glimpse of his interests, sources of inspiration and habits.

Welcome Dr. Manley and thank you very much for participating in our symposium!

May I first ask what it was that brought you to academia and what made you stay?

Thank you for inviting me to participate! I am delighted and flattered. Please just call me Stewart if that is okay.

Before becoming an academic, I was a teacher, lawyer and human rights advocate. Many of my colleagues from the Burma Lawyers’ Council in Thailand, where I was working in 2012, were returning to Myanmar due to the (at that time) improved political climate. I needed a new job. I pursued academia over other options partly because I was turned down from some of the other options and partly because I thought the combination of teaching and research would suit me well. As a university student, I never imagined I could be in academia. I wasn’t smart enough and I didn’t feel intellectual at all. Other people always had the sophisticated-sounding questions and answers. In class, I was mute and my mind often felt blank and anxious. I gained more confidence as I got older. Academia is not for everyone but for me, the good outweighs the not so good. Hearing my students ask critical questions is good. Defending my lack of grants at contract renewal is not so good. Whenever I feel like complaining though, I think about some of the brutal jobs that others in this world have. I feel lucky.

If you were not an academic, what would you be?

I will answer this question as if it were asking me what I would like to be if I couldn’t be an academic. I would be a park ranger or jungle guide so that I could spend more time outside. My parents raised me and my siblings deep in the Hawaiian forest. We had no electricity, running water or telephone connection. We used natural gas to power the refrigerator and kerosene for lighting lamps at night. Our water came from a big open tank filled with rainwater. Shade cloth filtered out the leaves and insects. I remember sucking on a hose to get the flow started into the house. We did not own a TV and there was no internet at that time. So we spent a lot of time among the trees, finding trails, fruits and bugs. It was peaceful. Time moved more slowly.

Would you say that your upbringing has had an impact on your research interests?

I think my upbringing has had more of an impact on my ability to conduct research than on my research interests. My parents were farmers. The long hours of monotonous weeding, cutting flowers, pruning ginger root, hauling cinder and clearing brush were perfect preparation for sifting through hundreds of dry journal articles, revising the same paragraph over and over and over, and formatting citations so that every comma, semi-colon, italicization and abbreviation is right. Perseverance, endurance and an eye for detail were real gifts from my parents.

What is your favourite place to read and write? What is always near you when you read and write?

I love reading everywhere equally. One of the best things my mother taught me was that waiting is never a chore if you have a book with you. Now that I have audio books on my phone, driving is no longer a chore either. I enjoy writing at night at my desk at home. If I could always have peanut M&Ms next to me I would, but my loved ones scold me for that.

What is an energy and inspiration booster, at times when you have none?

Singing and dancing to Cocomelon songs with my three-year-old son. Some favourites: Wheels on the Bus, Animal Dance, ABC Song, If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands and Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. Hiking with my family and looking up at a starry night always put things into perspective. The nighttime photo you use for this Symposium is perfect.

Thank you! Have you ever drawn influence from any form of art in your work? Is there anything artistic about writing academic texts?

A colleague once compared editing a manuscript to polishing a sculpture. I liked that idea. I have included my poems in some of my academic publications. Some of my work is accompanied by my mother’s charcoal drawings of plants. I try at times to maintain a narrative thread through my academic pieces. I encourage all academics to spend time with other people’s art and experiment with their own art. It can inspire in unexpected ways. Art comes from the heart. Don’t worry so much about how it looks or sounds. It’s yours and that’s good enough.

Which of your publications is your favourite one? And which of them is your least favourite?

My favourite is a short personal essay I published about my parents and mortality called ‘One Day the Emails Will End’. My least favourite is a poem called ‘Alexander’. It sounds clunky to me when I read it in my head. I feel like I forced the language to fit the idea rather than letting it grow out of the idea. 

If you could, which unspoken rule of academia would you instantly erase?

I would erase the practice that we celebrate achievements and success but hide failures, rejections and setbacks. My CV is so deceptive. If you only knew how many jobs I never got, how many times my articles were rejected and how many times I did a less than perfect job at work. I suspect that some of our insecurities, jealousies and competitiveness with colleagues and other academics with whom we interact would disappear or at least not be so intense, if we were more open about how rocky our journeys are. Perhaps we can have more conversations about how difficult is to feel like we’re truly succeeding in academia. Maybe we can do a better job of normalizing rejection. I have seen some websites and LinkedIn posts, and heard some podcasts, with these types of conversations. This Symposium is a wonderful example. One of the great things about being in academia is that knowledge is unlimited and the search for truth will never end. For me, this means that we can all succeed, and fail, together.

What advice would you give to editors or reviewers of academic journals and blogs reading this interview?

Maybe I can mention a few things that I have seen that I thought were great. I think it’s great when journal and blog editors are transparent, reflective and reflexive about their data – acceptance rates, desk rejection rates, review times, early career versus later career authorship, gender and geographic origin of authors, board members and submitters, etc. I think sharing this data shows that the editors are aware of and thinking about their role and impact in the larger, global academic system. I also find it very helpful (especially for researchers not schooled in Global North academic customs, practices and norms) when journal or blog editors publish editorials on, for instance, common shortcomings in submissions or advice on how to get a manuscript up to the level of quality that they expect. I am thinking of the editorials of the European Journal of International Law and the videos on the website of the Modern Law Review as exemplars. There are others. For reviewers, I would suggest that when you are about to give a negative review, maybe take a breath, get your favourite drink and snack, and then remember that there are many ways to express criticism. Thinking back to reviewer reports, I am sad to say that I most remember the really harsh ones. One was a dismissive single-sentence rejection that said there was nothing novel or workable. The other said that clearly I was not familiar with the practice of international criminal law. There was truth in both, I must admit, but they could have been expressed much differently. Maybe as reviewers we can consider how to provide a path for improvement within the scope of what the author has already written, no matter how flawed we think the piece is. I don’t buy the reply of, ‘Oh, don’t be so sensitive’. Our written work means a lot to us, and it is unnecessary to be so harsh to get your point across.

Have you experienced or witnessed discrimination in academic circles? What do you think would help lessen discriminatory instances in academic circles?

When I was a boy working on the farm, usually with older men, the discrimination was unmasked. In academia, in my experience, it is much more subtle. As a boy, I imagined that discrimination would not happen in a place like academia, where everyone is so highly educated and informed. I thought education was the solution to discrimination. Education helps, I think now, but it alone is not enough. I think that speaking out against discrimination right when it happens, especially if you are a bystander instead of the target, can be powerful. I have seen less powerful people influence the more powerful through their spontaneous courage. Momentum can shift quickly and not as you might have expected. Someone told me once that it helps to plan ahead in your head how you might respond to these kinds of situations, and that one is more likely to stay silent if they have to decide in the moment. I have regrets about times when I stayed silent in the face of harassment of others.

Ideally, whom would you want to find waiting for a meeting with you outside your office next Monday?

Any one of my research assistants. It’s such a pleasure to do research with people who are motivated by the desire to do research without the pressures of ‘publish or perish’.

What are you working on currently? What may we anticipate in the near future?

I am researching gender discrimination in the Malaysian context – the prohibition on wearing a hijab at some workplaces, bail being granted to women but not men, and why citizenship of a child sometimes follows the father’s or mother’s citizenship. I am also focusing on the barriers to the contributions of Global South scholars to the development of international law. And hopefully I will write a personal, reflective piece on lawsuits against herbicide companies – this goes back to my upbringing when I used to spray Roundup and Paraquat on weeds. I’ll never forget the warning on the bottle: ‘One swallow can kill!’ As for what you can anticipate – oh no! My blood pressure is going up. Nothing has been accepted for publishing yet. Let’s just say, hopefully some things co-authored by me and my research assistants will follow soon.

Thank you very much Stewart for participating in our symposium and for having taken the time to respond to our questions!

Thank you so much for giving me this chance to share. I have eagerly read every interview in this Symposium. I think it’s a wonderful idea.

Thank you for your kind words. This means a lot to me.

Authors
Stewart Manley

Stewart Manley is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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Spyridoula (Sissy) Katsoni
Spyridoula (Sissy) Katsoni is a Ph.D. Candidate and Research Associate at the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (IFHV), Ruhr-University Bochum. She is a Co-Editor-in-Chief at Völkerrechtsblog.
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