But I fear that no defense of academic practices, however nuanced and moderate, will be successful because, on the evidence of the comments, the anti-academic animus that depresses Thomas Zaslavsky is deep and pervasive. There is a general sense that academics have cushy jobs they don’t even perform, that they inhabit a wonderland of "privileged sleaze" and display an "overweening sense of entitlement" (Victor Edwards). dan1138 speaks for many when he proclaims, "We simply don’t need a cosseted privileged class able to demand lifetime job security in exchange for some hypothetical intellectual function." They just don’t believe that the yield of maintaining us in a protected enclave is worth the enormous cost.

Read full article [here].
by Stanley Fish, The New York Times.

Posted: October 19th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.