After speaking in a virtual seminar, one of the listeners wrote to me asking if he could write his master's thesis about my linguistic efforts !!! I apologized to him, refusing, but at the same time I was amazed at the request and what it means. This question came to mind. What will be written about me? I, like other academics, write books and articles in their field. Is this enough subject for a scientific research thesis? Then I soon discovered that addresses like this have become traditional in their wide spread and that there are many theses that have been approved have been written about the efforts of this or that academic. What does it include? A chapter on his life, study, and work, then summaries and simplified presentations that do not exceed paragraphs or pages of what was written, researched, investigated and translated. There are theses about so-and-so's linguistic efforts and others on so-and-so's historical, geographic, or social efforts, and who knows, maybe this extended to their efforts in the natural sciences ..
These topics have met with acceptance and satisfaction - and I do not say enthusiastic - even from those I write and write about. They see it as an occasion to acknowledge their efforts, so that's okay. It is interesting, but as a matter of principles !!, that the written about him/her is invited to the thesis discussion session. This is a great opportunity to tickle his/her ego, and his/her ego bulge is strange. Let us imagine that you spend two hours in a room during which there is no conversation except on you, and praise is given to you from all sides of people wearing decorated robes sitting on high platforms. In it, listeners look at you with passionate love and arrogance, and you range from smiling at them modestly once, or raising your gaze to a glorified up again, or lowering it sometimes ashamed !!!!. Rather, in our days, a chanter may have participated in that session that inflames the enthusiasm of those sitting with his chants praising you and those who wrote about you. Is there in your Lord more beautiful than that feeling!!!.
This phenomenon - I do not see it as a matter of academic marketing, for this has become its outlets that meet everything the academic aspires to - if he wants - of self-marketing. Social media pages are filled with publications about participating in scientific discussions, accepting research in scientific journals - what is known and unknown - and certificates sealed with golden seals attesting to participation in a seminar or conference, or even an extensive discussion of personal achievements, and much more.
The spread of this type of master's thesis, and perhaps a doctorate, comes - I think - either from a lack of knowledge in the field of specialization of scientific departments that reduces the area of research and study in it so that it does not exceed a narrow perspective of topics and issues that deserve research and consideration. Or, and this is more likely, it betrays the submission of these departments to the limited scientific competence of their students so that their 'research' capacity does not exceed the limit of reviewing the scientific output of an academic professor. Perhaps this student was not even familiar with or familiarity with him/her before he started writing about.
However, these two reasons do not justify under any circumstances that a scientific department or academics in it permit the acceptance, supervision or approval of such scientific theses. Such theses have nothing to do with scientific research. It does not exceed a review of a scientific product carried out by an academic. Is this review a research effort by the writer of the thesis? The answer is: No. In most cases. Then, let us ask, what does the academic have, besides teaching, other than research, writing, investigation and translation? Does the product - not sometimes exceeding the number of fingers and not exceeding the requirements of scientific promotion - deserve to write scientific theses about it?
This product, by the way, represents the student's first attempt at writing and his first steps on the runways of scientific research. If we want to build scientific researchers, we must not begin with such wrong beginnings.
Yes, such letters can be written about an avant-garde academic product characterized by a new look at a phenomenon, or a new research approach that differs from other curricula or a new scientific school in his studies, or that establishes a research field that was not of interest before him. Such a product can be a subject of scientific research to discuss what was built on it and to explore its differences from others, its foundations and arguments, as well as the amount of validity of the new presented by the entirety of that product and its scientific importance. In this case, the title and topic of the thesis will differ in order to relate to issues concerning the new hypotheses presented in that academic product.
Some academics may apologize that directing students to write about the efforts of other academics comes as a result of loyalty to their professors who taught them, and perhaps put them on the first thresholds of study and research. But I do not think that this is a fulfillment of them. Our Western academic counterparts teach us that, in their celebration of the distinguished among them with a broad scientific record, the students and colleagues of that person write and present studies and research - each in his field of specialization - that are gathered in a book dedicated to the celebrated - which is what some of the Iraqi academics thankfully do. In my opinion, in that they have walked a good path for others to follow.
