My responsibilities

I see as my primary responsibility at VCU to help students make the difficult transition to independence and productivity in their lives. I see as my secondary responsibility at VCU to help students internalize the tools of sceintific thought. Fortunately, these two responsibilities are completely compatible. But they are very, very difficult. I believe that few biology majors graduate VCU having met either goal.

When goals are evidently so difficult to achieve, it is insanity to place needless institutional barriers in the path to success. The selective use of titles does this.

Titles and their uses

Titles by their nature separate people. This isn't necessarily bad. When you go to a hospital, doctors and nurses are set apart from patients because they are able by their training to administer care. You may not feel comfortable if in the back of your mind you wondered whether the person administering care to you was a random patient like yourself. Occupational titles used to be more common than today, and served to identify the profession of a person ("Farmer John, how's the barley crop this year?"). Now, occupational titles are seldom used, except in medicine.

To H.L. Mencken in The American Language (1921), the term "doctor" simply referred to a medical practitioner, as it does to many of us today. However, in recent times the term has gained currency in the U.S. with its original meaning of "learned person". As such, it is not a professional title but rather an honorific, indicating a level of education or honor regardless of field.

Honorific titles also separate, but not based on a property external to the person, e.g. his/her profession, but rather on an internal property, one that we are asked to accord respect. By implication, those without such titles should not be accorded such respect.

Titles and science

This may or may not be the best way to organize a society -- yours to decide -- but it is not the way to run effective science. François Jacob described in The Statue Within his first interaction, fresh from graduate school, with lab head Jacques Monod.

"On my arrival, I was prompted by my medical training to call my superiors Monsieur...

"Please don't call me Monsieur," Monod said brusquely. "I am not a medical supervisor."

Nonplussed, I stopped calling him anything. Which irritated him. "Call me what you like, Monod or Jacques or old fart. But call me something!" I chose Jacques."

That collaboration led to groundbreaking work on how genes are regulated, made possible by the ability of both collaborators to freely probe the ideas of the other without the hindrance of title or position. My observation is that in general, science at the highest level is typified by an obliviousness to rank and a passionate focus on central scientific questions.

Titles and my responsibilities

I would therefore be doing students a disservice if I accepted the use of titles, thereby promoting distinction based on person rather than ideas, which is antithetical to science at its best. And I would certainly be doing a disservice by emphasizing authority when students need all the help they can get to break the chains of a lifetime of authority-based education.

The use of honorific titles impedes the practice of science and progress towards intellectual independence. My primary responsibilities at VCU are undercut by the use of such titles. Therefore I cannot accept them.

But . . .

But our culture dictates use of the title "doctor"...

150 years ago our culture dictated the use, by some, of the title "Massah" and all that implied. If you were magically transported to the past would you willingly accept that title?

So what should I call you?

Do you ask that question whenever you meet a new person? You must be quite a drag in cocktail parties! Don't you just muddle through to a solution without thinking about it too much?

But that's different. Those are just people. A professor has power over students.

I do not accept your offer of power! That is precisely the mentality that titles perpetuate. It must be broken if a person can be said to have gained a liberal arts education.

But I've been taught to show respect to people. "Doctor" is a term of respect.

I've no objection to showing respect, so long as it is shown to all. If we all agree to go by the title "doctor" or any other title, that's fine with me. But if not, then how is it respectful to separate a person who does not wish to be separated and whose job is made more difficult by that separation? Isn't respect ultimately the process of looking outwards towards the person you're addressing rather than inward towards your own comfort?