Back in 2013, Lawrence Martin accused Canadian political scientists of fiddling while Stephen Harper burned down our democracy. He lamented that we were busy writing about narrow academic subjects instead of warning about the impending doom that threatened our institutions under the Conservatives.

I thought that was a ridiculous argument for two reasons. First, academic research is rightly concerned with specific questions that build on past scholarly contributions. That’s the nature of the enterprise, not fighting partisan battles of the day. Second, when academics do venture into public commentary and analysis, we should (ideally) apply our research to current events, not advance a partisan or ideological position.

I found his column so annoying that I wrote this reply in the Ottawa Citizen.  

Ten years on, the critique is coming from the other side of the aisle. The past couple of weeks have seen renewed debate about who gets to govern after an election. As per usual, my take on these questions is academic. I’ve offered my analysis of how the constitution operates. I’ve offered my assessment of how constitutional conventions differ from other types of unwritten rules, such as customs and practices. Most importantly, I’ve tried to stick to my lane, explaining the how the constitutional side of this equation might interact with the political one.

Right-leaning commentators have responded that academics are a bunch of pendants and left-wing shills who are trying to prevent the Conservatives from forming government.

Are the comments me and other profs make about constitutional rules pedantic? Well, yeah. That’s our job. I wear the pedantic label proudly.

Are we left-wing shills plotting to keep the Conservatives out of power? I can’t speak for my colleagues, but I find that charge both amusing and disconcerting.

It’s amusing because, in the Harper years, I was accused of being a Conservative hack for defending the government on various issues. The truth is that I tend to be sympathetic to the executive and constitutional formalism, in general, regardless of party.

But what makes this line of critique disconcerting is that it’s making it harder to have good faith discussions with partisans. I don’t claim to be a political strategist or partisan advisor. I don’t bring any political experience to these discussions, nor do I claim to. I gladly defer to those with that expertise and knowledge when it comes the political side of these types of questions. All I bring is my academic ‘fiddling’ these debates. And I fully understand why an academic perspective might be dismissed as irrelevant or out of touch, as a result. Is it really necessary, though, to cast academic analyses as ideological disagreements, or to think there’s a scholarly plot afoot, if our views don’t align with partisan objectives? Is it not possible to simply conclude that we’re looking at things differently based on different perspectives?

Maybe that’s too much to ask. Still, it’s pretty sad if it is.