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Ollivier Dyens is Deputy Provost and French professor at McGill University in Montreal,
Canada. To read his full biography Click Here

This interview was conducted by Emily O'Dell and Jeanne Jgousso at Louisiana State
University in Baton Rouge, LA where Professor Dyens gave lectures on "University 2050"
and "The Future of Humanities", as well as a graduate student seminar on "Humanities in
the Digital Age". All events were organized by the LSU Center for French and Francophone
Studies. Video recordings of the lectures can be found here.


GSC: Can you summarize your areas of research?

OD: I'll make a long story short. I was doing my MA in film studies we had a visitor come
into our class--that was the early 1990s--she started talking about virtual reality. She said,
"you know with virtual reality the whole theory of cinema will have to change because
suddenly you're going to be filming in 360 degrees, the question of reception of the
audience, the image..." So they say you have to rethink the whole structure and theory of
cinema, because at that point they thought cinema was going to die because of videotapes
and it wasn't a very interesting art at that point--it was in a lull. I remember that day and I
thought, "Oh my God, this is so exciting. This is a brand new world that opens up because of
technology, which opens up everything... So I started doing my masters thesis on digital
images, it was really the beginning. I then moved to what was called "cyberspace" for my
PhD, which became the Internet and the impact of the Internet on society and of technology
on society, which was actually what I presented today at LSU. I did Comparative Literature
at the University of Montreal because it was the only department who thought that my idea
wasn't crazy.

So, it's always been this discovery of a new world, which is the world that technology
brings by questioning what is the foundation of who we are? What is it saying about the
world, about humanity, about consciousness? It keeps changing every year because there
are new things coming along so it's different. And, just to reassure you, I got positions in
my life even though I didn't do a lot of literature, I got positions in French departments
because in the late '90s, early 2000s doing technology was very sexy and all departments
were trying to get a bit sexier saying, "We need a technology guy or girl" and I was that
guy.... That wasn't a five year plan, you move forward and sometimes it's difficult and
sometimes it's easier. Sometimes things go your way... it's always about ideas. If you bring
something original to the table people will listen to you.

If I can give you advice, I've done a lot of hiring while I was a Chair and [I found that] there
are tons of excellent CVs. There are a lot of super competent people, so what makes a chair
say "Oh! Let's look at this more": something original. Something that [makes you say],
"wow this is different". So, yes you've got to play the game and do the articles and
publications and conferences, you've got to do all these things, but you've also got to keep
the spark because, if not, you're just drowned in this sea of 200,000 people.

GSC: That leads us nicely into our second question, which was what are your views about the
future of the university, which you talked about on Monday. So if you can give us a brief
summary, especially in terms of graduate studies since our Chronicle is targeted more toward
people in the fields of language and literature. And can you give some advice for them and
what is the future for them?

OD: In a nutshell, with the university as a whole, I don't think that what we stand for will
change: thinking about society, having a sheltered place for people to do fundamental
work. Education and knowledge on literature, on physics, on chemistry, on medicine; I
think that it will not disappear because it's too important for society and I think society has
recognized that this is important for more than a thousand years now. It's been recognized
all across the world...the institution itself, the structure that we have is probably in need of
an overhaul. How many typical jobs, such as the one that I have will be there in the future? I
don't know. Will society be able to give you the type of working condition that we were
lucky enough to have? I'm not sure. But there will still be moments and places for people to
think and research. They will exist. And they will exist outside of the bottom line because
that's also what society needs...The form it will take and whether it's tenure track...I don't
know.

So, my advice would be, do not just focus on the tenure track thing. Focus on what you like,
which is ideas...ideas for ideas, in the sense that it is not always about the bottom line. And
there will be room for that in society. There will be more and more because of the things
I've shown you. And there's always, also, working in the private sector. Companies are
becoming more intelligent. They're becoming more complex. They need more intelligent,
knowledgeable workers more and more. And I can tell you; I don't think having a PhD is an
embarrassment today. Nor is it something that's going to pull you back. It's actually going
to be very useful in most things. From government to industry to education to the arts,
having a PhD is really important.

At McGill, for example, I have people with PhDs on my staff that are not faculty. They are
better. They're more efficient. If I have a choice I'm going to go with a PhD even if it has
nothing to do with teaching in the classroom because they think differently, they achieve
things, because they know what it is, they know what research is. Don't focus just on I want
my tenure track position. We all do that and that is what is in the process of changing
because tenure track positions are very expensive...I may be completely wrong and we may
see the renewal of tenure track faculty members five years from now. In the 1990s when I
was doing my PhD people were saying, "That's it, no more tenure track. There's no more
money". Then suddenly in 2000 the Internet was there...but I wouldn't be worried about it.
Just make sure that you also are able to expand your skills.

As I told you, reading and writing are skills that will be in demand everywhere--critical
reading and critical writing will be in demand all the time because we are a language
animal, that's not going to go away. But make sure you also add things to your portfolio. So
having a certificate in this and a course in that...Go outside your department.... take a course
in management, take a course in engineering. You don't know where you'll end up and it's
not that having the certificate is important, but [people in] management, engineering, and

literature...we all think differently. You can expand your horizon because suddenly you're
thinking like people in management, in literature, and people in engineering and this will
be very valuable for anyone. You'll end up in your career having to think differently
sometimes. Now, as an administrator, I have to think about money, of budget, it's not my
training. So if you do a little bit of that while you're doing your PhD, while you're in this
great environment, it will be very useful for you.

GSC: Thank you, that's really good advice. Our next question is regarding the connection
between the professional and the personal. In this hyper technological, super connected world,
how do you think the work-life and mental development of scholars will be affected?

OD: So the big thing now is not work-life balance anymore because that battle has been
lost. The term now is work-life integration because people have realized now that it's not a
balance; it's a question of you feeling in balance with yourself. It's not how many hours you
spend with your family, boyfriend, mother, or kids... It's what you think is important in the
way that you do it and what gives you balance.

Suddenly I think we're much more flexible in the way that we do these things. Some people
spend a lot of time at work because it nourishes them. Some people it's less, it's more at
home, all of these things are possible. The problem with faculty, and we're all a part of this,
there's a bit of a macho attitude in our culture that says, "I can work harder than anyone
else. I can study more. I can publish more". And if you look at the surveys that are being
done, you can see that across the western world. So the UK, Canada, the US, faculty are
complaining about their quality of life while they're probably the people in the
industrialized world with the most freedom to choose whatever they want to do. Nobody
has as much freedom as people like us to do whatever they want to do...and we are the ones
that complain the most. They complain which means that they can't understand where to
do that integration. If you're happy working 90 hours a week, go ahead. If you need 30-40
hours a week to spend with your family then you have to build your schedule around it.

I think it goes back to what we were saying in that room, at that point I think we also need
to change a bit the way that we assess to be less about quantity and more about quality...I
would say, I strongly think more and more we will go with quality. Qualitative assessment
more than quantitative because people have produced so many things that it's hard to
distinguish people on just one idea.... The ideas, the balance, bringing something original to
the table [is what's most important]. It's not easy and the younger generation, the students
I see at McGill. They're hardworking, they're dedicated, they're ethical, they have all these
qualities but they break easily, they have issues with resilience. We don't know why so
that's another issue we're looking into.

My last advice is to explore. I think it's dangerous if you never explore as a faculty or as a
graduate student. If you constantly do this then there are more threats to your balance,
mental balance, and equilibrium of life. You should do it constantly for yourself. If you're a
faculty member you should meet people outside of your domain and that will just make
your life better.

GSC: And does that apply to having jobs outside of your home country?

OD: It's always interesting. You're young and you're trying. When you get to a certain age it
gets to be more---it's not impossible---it's more difficult, you're less likely to want to
change for different reasons...When you're young it's actually always interesting... There's
issues about being a foreigner, immigrant. There's also advantages because people give you
a bit more leeway sometimes...more freedom. It's the same thing when you work...I would
say by all means see the world. Go to Australia, they have a great education system there.

GSC: Basically, to summarize, what you've been telling us in your three lectures at LSU
this past week, it all comes down to finding balance and finding the middle ground
between refusing all technology and just accepting it all without thinking about it.

OD: I think it's accepting the change then leading that change with things that we think are
the core values. It's the same, I think, for you as graduate students. The industry is
changing. Theres no point in dwelling on how it used to be. Accept it and lead it, putting
into it what you want to put into it instead of being led by it. So that's what I'm trying to say
and I'm not sure a lot of people in our area in the humanities at McGill, here at LSU, across
the North America, are embracing it. I'm seeing a lot of pushback and pushback worries me
because it's a very defensive and reactionary position.

Things are already happening, it's done. As you say in English, the ship has sailed. Not only
has the ship sailed, it has sailed and came back and sailed again. There's a commercial route
now. It's done, there's no turning back, but the question of ethics is not done. That means,
to go back, could we work more with computer scientists? Many people in the humanities
push back against the sciences. We need to work with scientists. They want to have our
advice [so] we need to know how they are working.

I'll give you an example that is interesting. I'm working with the medical simulation lab at
McGill. Most of it is physical in the sense that they have mannequins, they do simulations.
They have someone play a patient and tell them, "here's what you have, here's the disease,
etc.", so the medical students can practice diagnosing disease. So we're working together
on the medical simulation because the chief surgeon and I are good friends. While I watch
the students talking to the actors through a one-way mirror I turn to him and I say, "The
first thing I would tell you is these medical students need theater courses". They don't
articulate. They're not showing empathy...humanists can see that because we're trained in
that, [which is] probably not the case with scientists.

There was an interesting conference with engineering and humanities. The Dean of
engineering afterward came to see me and said, "My faculty that were there, they all
realized that when they're talking to humanists they can't use their usual jargon". That's
not dumbing down; it's just a different way. The dean of engineering said "All my staff, all
my faculty did that but the humanists, they wouldn't do this. They kept their very high
imperial, liberty theory jargon so my faculty was confused" The engineers try to reach out
to the humanists but the humanists refused. So our job is also to do that. Not to say, "you

don't know anything, you should be doing this". We all have a field and we need to reach
out to the other fields.

GSC: If we want to be understood by more people we will have to find more simple ways
to communicate.

OD: More efficiently. It can still be complex. You know the difference between complex and
complicated? Complicated is complex negatively. So it has to be complex but not
complicated. That's the key of writing. And for this, sometimes you do need the expert
wording and nomenclature but you can explain it and you can be open about it.

GSC: The last point we were wondering about was the teaching aspect because we
talked about the structure and the research aspect, but how do you see teaching
evolving? In general or in literature and language. You told us in your lecture
"University 2050" that languages, essentially that basic level language classes, would
be taught by robots or software.

OD: So what I hope and what I think is a bit mixed. So it's more what I hope than what I
think. What I hope is that there will be more supervision-like teaching and less teaching
undergraduate classes for the sake of teaching an undergraduate class. The undergraduate
level is the issue. I strongly believe that a lot of the hard work that faculty does with first
and second year undergraduate students, the basic Biology 101 class, most of this could be
done by advanced A.I. [Artificial Intelligence]. It would free up time for faculty, it would
make the institution much more flexible for students because then you would have to say
"whatever the time it takes you, these are the five modules you'll have to know by the end
and we'll test you on this. You can go home, take the iPad..." I think that's going to free up
the institution a lot. Maybe allow us to have less traffic, less blocked institutions.

Currently our institutions are blocked because we have to teach this many class, take that
many students, we have to occupy the students...it takes 90% of our energy just to keep this
up. If we use this for a lot of undergraduate students then maybe we'll free up for a lot of
other types of teaching. This would be my hope and I would also hope that the more
environments itself will become environments for learning. We could pull up a screen here
and look at things together while sitting at this table. We don't do enough of that. So I don't
think teaching the basic language-thing I don't think 20 years from now we will be doing
that. Computers will do that. They'll be more patient too.

Even assessment, when you're teaching basic courses. How much of that needs to be done
by a human being? Not much.

We know that giving more freedom to students is very useful for very autonomous
students. It's very negative for students that need more structure. So we'll have to build
something about this. It's not a silver bullet. It's going to create other issues but hopefully I
think it's going to free up a lot of time. There's no point in transmitting information today.
You have it on the Internet. There's no point in me saying in a class, "Here's A, B, C, and D."

It's there, it exists. It's going to get better and better, more and more friendly, more and
more comprehensible.

But, to go back to my presentation, wisdom, ambiguity, creativity aspects of our human
relationships--that is what professors will be able to do and will still be invaluable in doing.
The coaching aspect, the management side of it. This is where you'll be valued as a faculty
member if you're able to provide that. There will still be sage on the stage because you
need that and there will still be lecturers for advanced, honors, whatever. Institutions are
big and caught in the structures.

GSC: Thank you very much for your time.