The conflict among those personal and professional roles is part of the cost of caring about academic excellence. The concern is that their caring not become pathological. When the environment changes, it's no longer adaptive. And that may be the case with the pressure to publish so extensively in a narrow field that interdisciplinary research sometimes becomes a hindrance to achieving tenure. The tendency to count the numbers of publications rather than evaluate their quality compounds the problem.
Faculty often doubt their ability to fully understand work outside of their own field of research.
Some faculty have questioned its applicability. Agnew and others admit that reconciliation is not possible or desirable in all cases, pointing to Dorot Professor of Jewish Studies Deborah Lipstadt's legal battle with a Holocaust denier. Ultimately, the meaning of this mercurial term may differ with each would-be reconciler. The most compelling definition of reconciliation within a university, however, is likely to emphasize process over product.