Category talk:Academics by nationality

rename category proposal

Propose renaming this category Category:Scholars and academics by nationality. If there are no substantial objections here, I'll take it to CFD in a week or two.

See Category talk:Journalism academics for background discussion that led to this proposal. The core points here are (a) "academics" and "scholars" might vary in usage in different regions; using both ensures that both are captured in the same tree which will facilitate browsing among biographical articles of people who are doing the same kinds of activities; (b) while there are technical differences between "academics" and "scholars" in most places (academics are full-time faculty who work at universities and typically have teaching as well as research responsibilities), academics are typically "notable" for their scholarship not their teaching. In other words, if people come here looking for "experts" on a subject they will look for people who are deemed expert on the basis of their scholarship. There is a Category:Teachers tree that can accommodate people who are well-known as teachers as well as scholars (e.g., Richard Feynman).

--Lquilter (talk) 18:26, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is wider than that. I reacted at names like "Category:Religious scholars and Category:Vedic scholars, which obviously(?) are ambiguous. Cf. Category talk:Religious scholars; in brief, a "religious scholar" may be either a scholar that is religious, or a scholar of (the subject) religion. Lquilter pointed out that the problem is wider, and indeed it is. Moreover, I think I can see a pattern, and that this is a kind of geographically based systematic bias. "Scholars" used to mean "Western or central European scholar, or a scholar from a country mainly populated by descendants from West and/or Central European extraction". The rest of the world was "obviously" a field of study for these scholars.

Thus, it was natural to speak about "Irish scholars" synonymous with "scholars from Ireland" or "scolars of Irish extraction", but to let "Middle East scholars" denote "scolars studying the Middle East" (i.e., essentially West Asia; "Middle East" itself is of course a geographically rather biased term, and has been criticised as such in academic circles). The same problem concerns many of the other titles in the category:Scholars by subject. E.g., there were a bunch of scholars from the medieval islamic world with a great impact on the development of mathematics; and they are sometimes called "Islamic scholars". In considering this problem, I've not addressed the scholar versus academics dispute; actually I find "academics" alone to be a rather unhappy denomination, but what I think is not that important, since a reasonable compromise recently was reached. Hence, I think a reasonable proposal is:

Merge the "academics" and the "scholars" categories to "scholars and academic" ones, except such categories (if any exist) which directly concern academic careers, like a Category:Academics by university. At the same time, replace all potentially ambiguous names by unambiguous ones. Do this from a global perspective.

Thus: "Scholars and academics of Marxism" or possibly "Marxism scholars and academics", versus "Scholars and academics with a Marxist perspective" or possibly "Marxist scholars and academics"; "Scholars and academics studiyng Islam" or possibly "Islam scholars and academics", versus "Scholars and academics with an islamic perspective", or possibly "Muslim scolars and academics"; although I dislike the shorter "adjective attribute" names. I've once seen an article by a student from Aarhus, who tried to do mathematics from a Marxist perspective; and there once was a mathematician of some standing who (earnestly) included Where do correct ideas come from? by Mao Zedong in his list of references; but in general, being an atheist, a Christian, a Muslim, a Marxist, a liberal, or a libertarian hardly influences the mathematics one produces. There are other things that may be more important for your mathematics than religious or political belies, like your attitudes to intuitionism or bayesianism.

Unhappily, less ambiguous names tend to be longer. IMHO, I'm afraid that this is a cost we'll have to pay for getting names that do not contain implicit biases or other potential trouble.--JoergenB (talk) 12:44, 28 December 2007 (UTC)