It’s 3 AM, and you’re staring at your laptop screen, the cursor blinking mockingly in an empty document titled “Faculty Bio - FINAL.”
You’ve won teaching awards, published in top-tier journals, and earned the respect of colleagues across your field. Yet somehow, when asked to describe yourself in a few paragraphs, you’re paralyzed.
Or perhaps you are just getting started. You recently earned your graduate degree, have a few solid publications to your name, and even won some awards for your research. Everyone says you have a promising career ahead, but you still lack clarity.
Who am I as a scholar?
The question feels simultaneously too big and too small. Too big because it encompasses years of research, teaching, and service. Too small because it seems to demand a neat, tidy summary of something that feels beautifully messy and evolving.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
Most early career academics and even accomplished researchers struggle to articulate their scholarly identity, not because they lack one, but because they’ve never been taught to recognize and name what they already are.
In this week’s newsletter, we’ll explore how to step back from the external metrics that dominate academic life—publication counts, citation rates, grant dollars, teaching evaluations—and rediscover the scholar you already are.
Here’s the secret that might finally set you free: you don’t need to become someone new to build a compelling academic brand.
You need to clarify who you already are.
Let’s explore how!
The Identity Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight
As academics, we’re trained to analyze, critique, and argue. For example, legal scholars can dissect a Supreme Court opinion, identify the flaws in a colleague’s methodology, or craft a compelling brief. But when scholars are asked to identify their own scholarly strengths, suddenly we’re tongue-tied.
This isn’t surprising.
Academic culture rewards us for finding problems, not celebrating solutions. We’re conditioned to see gaps in the literature, holes in arguments, and limitations in our own work. This critical lens, while essential for rigorous scholarship, can become a liability when we turn it inward.
As a result, many scholars develop a peculiar form of imposter syndrome where they genuinely struggle to articulate their unique value.
It is not uncommon to discover a professor with impeccable credentials--tenure at a top-20 school, articles in the Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal, and a forthcoming book with a prestigious university press—who still hesitates when asked about their scholarly identity:
“I work on... well, it’s complicated. I study constitutional interpretation, but also originalism, and I’ve written about judicial review. Oh, and I have this project on state constitutions that doesn’t quite fit...”
Sound familiar?
Such scholars fall into what we might call the “Everything Trap”—the belief that scholarly identity requires listing every research interest rather than identifying the golden thread that connects them all.
The Power of Recognition Over Reinvention
Here’s what I’ve learned after years of working in academia with scholars across multiple disciplines. Most scholars don’t need to reinvent themselves.
They need to recognize themselves.
Your scholarly identity isn’t something you create from scratch. It’s something you uncover, name, and claim.
Think about the moments when your research feels most alive. When you’re writing and lose track of time. When you’re explaining your work to a colleague and see their eyes light up with understanding. When you read a news headline and immediately think, “This connects to my research in fascinating ways.”
These moments reveal something important.
You already have preferences, perspectives, and passions that shape your work. Your scholarly identity exists in the intersection of what you care about, what you’re good at, and what the world needs.
The challenge isn’t becoming someone new. It’s having the courage to claim who you already are.
Why External Metrics Miss the Mark
Academic culture trains us to measure our worth through external validation. We are taught to focus on where we publish, how often we’re cited, which conferences invite us to speak. These metrics have their place, but they’re terrible guides for understanding scholarly identity.
Here’s why:
1. They’re backward-looking.
Citation counts tell you what you’ve accomplished, not who you’re becoming or where your curiosity is leading you.
2. They’re context-dependent.
A groundbreaking article in an emerging field might have fewer citations than a mediocre piece in a crowded area. Does that make the first scholar less valuable?
3. They’re externally defined.
When you let journal rankings and citation counts define your worth, you’re essentially outsourcing your identity to systems that know nothing about your unique perspective and contributions.
4. They create comparison traps.
Focusing on metrics inevitably leads to comparison with colleagues, which can either inflate your ego or crush your confidence, neither of which helps you understand your authentic scholarly identity.
Often, a breakthrough comes when scholars are able to ignore their CV entirely and instead focus on rediscovering how their research has made a difference in the real world.
It is in that moment when all of the seemingly disparate projects begin to make sense. Rather than feeling scattered, zooming out to consider the bigger picture allows scholars to identify the golden thread that connects their research to broader societal questions like social justice.
The Three-Word Exercise
One of the most powerful tools I have learned is to describe yourself as a scholar in three words.
Not three sentences. Not three paragraphs.
Three words.
This constraint forces you to cut through the academic jargon and get to the essence of who you are. It’s harder than it sounds and more revealing than you’d expect.
When I first tried this exercise myself, I spent twenty minutes crafting elaborate combinations: “Interdisciplinary private law.” “Social justice advocate.” “Critical legal scholar.”
All accurate, but none captured the essence of my work.
Finally, I landed on three simple words:
“Liberation Through Imagination.”
Those three words became my North Star. Every project, every speaking opportunity, every collaboration gets filtered through that lens.
Does this advance liberation through imagination?
If yes, it aligns with my identity.
If no, it might be interesting, but it’s not essential.
The Values Audit: Finding Your Scholarly North Star
Words alone aren’t enough.
Your scholarly identity must be grounded in your values, or the principles that guide your decisions when no one is watching, that energize your work even when it’s difficult, that connect your research to your sense of purpose.
Most academics have never done a values audit. We assume our values are obvious or universal, but they’re not. They’re deeply personal and uniquely yours.
Here’s how to uncover them:
Start with your emotional reactions.
What kind of research makes you angry? What societal problems keep you awake at night? What achievements in your field make you genuinely excited? These emotional responses often point to your core values.
Examine your choices.
Look at the last five projects you’ve chosen to pursue. What values do they reflect? Are you drawn to work that challenges conventional wisdom? That bridges theory and practice? That amplifies marginalized voices?
Consider your heroes.
Which scholars do you most admire, and why? What values do they embody in their work? How do you see those same values showing up in your own scholarship?
For me, this exercise revealed five core values:
Liberation
I am committed to scholarship that challenges oppression and structures of injustice, especially where law and policy perpetuate racial and economic hierarchies. My work aims to uncover paths toward freedom and dignity for marginalized communities.
Imagination
I value the power of speculative thinking, creativity, and the Black radical tradition to reimagine law, society, and the possibilities for justice. Imagination fuels my teaching, research, and engagement with culture.
Interdisciplinarity
I strive to bridge law with culture, history, philosophy, and social sciences, believing that complex societal problems require multiple lenses to understand and address effectively.
Equity
My scholarship and teaching are energized by the pursuit of fairness, inclusion, and amplifying voices that have historically been silenced or ignored. I center marginalized perspectives in research design and pedagogy.
Courage
I commit to pursuing work that challenges conventional wisdom, confronts difficult truths, and remains faithful to principle even when the path is uncomfortable or contested.
Every decision I make—from which articles to write to which speaking engagements to accept—gets filtered through these values.
From Scattered to Centered: The Integration Process
Once you’ve identified your three words and core values, the next step is integration, which means seeing how these elements show up across all aspects of your scholarly life.
This isn’t about forcing artificial connections. It’s about recognizing the authentic threads that already exist.
Take your recent research projects.
How do they reflect your three-word identity?
How do they embody your values?
You might be surprised to discover that work you thought was scattered actually follows a coherent pattern.
Consider your teaching.
What themes emerge across your courses?
How does your research perspective shape how you approach pedagogy?
Most scholars find that their teaching and research are more aligned than they initially realized.
Examine your service.
Which committees, initiatives, or outreach efforts energize you, and which drain you?
How does your research perspective and core values shape the service you choose to engage in?
Often, the distinction comes down to whether the service aligns with your scholarly identity and values.
The goal isn’t perfect alignment. That would be boring and limiting.
It’s about recognizing the golden thread that connects your various activities and using that recognition to make more intentional choices going forward.
The Permission You’ve Been Waiting For
Here’s something no one tells you in graduate school or in the early years on the tenure track: you have permission to be yourself.
You don’t have to be the scholar your advisor or mentor was. You don’t have to fit the mold of your department or your field. You don’t have to pursue every interesting opportunity or say yes to every request.
You have permission to claim your unique perspective, to follow your curiosity, to build a body of work that reflects your authentic interests and values.
You have permission to say no to what does not align, and yes to what does.
This permission comes with responsibility.
When you claim your scholarly identity, you’re committing to showing up authentically in your work. You’re promising to let your values guide your choices, even when those choices are difficult or unpopular.
But here’s what you get in return:
Clarity. Energy. Purpose.
A sense of coherence that makes every aspect of your academic life—research, teaching, service—feel like part of a larger, meaningful whole.
Your Scholarly Identity Exists
You started reading this newsletter because you want to build your academic brand. But here’s what I want you to walk away with:
You’re not starting from scratch.
Your scholarly identity already exists in the passion that drove you to pursue a career in academia, in the questions that keep you up at night, in the moments when your research feels most alive and important.
It exists in the values that guide your choices, in the perspective you bring to your field, in the unique combination of experiences and insights that only you possess.
Your task isn’t to create this identity.
It’s to recognize it, name it, and claim it.
The world needs your unique contribution. Your field needs your particular perspective. Your students need your authentic voice.
The scholar you already are is exactly the scholar you need to be.
The question isn’t whether you have a compelling scholarly identity. The question is whether you’re brave enough to claim it.
This Week’s Reflection
Take a few minutes to sit with these questions:
Who are you as a scholar right now?
What three words best describe your scholarly identity in this moment? Not who you think you should be. Not who your field expects you to be. Who you actually are, with all your interests, values, and experiences. Write them down. Sit with them. See how they feel.What values guide your work?
Consider your emotional reactions: what kinds of research make you angry, what societal problems keep you awake at night, and what achievements in your field genuinely excite you. Examine the last five projects you’ve chosen to pursue—what values do they reflect? Look to your heroes—scholars or thinkers you admire—and the values they embody.
Using these reflections, try to identify five core values that animate your scholarship. These are the principles that guide your decisions when no one is watching, energize your work even when it’s difficult, and connect your research to your sense of purpose.
These three words and five core values together can serve as the foundation for everything we build in the weeks ahead.
Let’s keep building!
Becoming Full,
P.S. As always, thank you for reading this week’s issue of The Tenure Track. If you found this article helpful, share it with a friend. If it moved you, consider supporting with a paid subscription or buying me a coffee. Together, let’s continue to build a supportive and creative academic community.
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