January 05, 2003

Town vs. Gown

Professor Michael Drout has a very good post on the state of academics, how the public perceives them, and especially the humanities. It's a good thing to keep in mind that despite appearances, not all the lunatics are running the asylum yet. Unfortunately the media likes "controversy," noise, radical "out there" spoutings (or statements that can be twisted that way); most scholarship is quiet, tedious, obscure, and not conducive to instant gratification. True, many academics are communist loons who combine ivory tower unworldliness with the arrogant self-regard of the truly stupid. But not all of them are that way. Some of them even have blogs...

Posted by Andrea Harris at January 5, 2003 01:34 AM
Comments

Heh... nice to know you make exceptions for members of the profession I'll probably be going into...

Posted by: glovefox at January 5, 2003 at 05:57 AM

Shouldn't that be "Not all the asylums are run by lunatics."? Or "Not all those running asylums are lunatics, despite appearances."?

I dunno, just feeling pedantic this morning...more coffee dammit!!!

Posted by: Misanthropyst at January 5, 2003 at 10:08 AM

Don't forget the future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (http://volokh.blogspot.com/)

Posted by: Ken Summers at January 5, 2003 at 11:48 AM

Ken,

You want pedantic? That's Chief Justice OF THE UNITED STATES. The CJ doesn't just preside over the Supreme Court, but is the head of the entire federal judiciary (via the Judicial Conference and the Administrative Office of the Courts). Given that, Volokh would probably be happier as just an Associate Justice: pure legal work, no administrative stuff. Rehnquist likes the CJ's extrajudicial hats, but that makes him a historical exception.

Posted by: David Jaroslav at January 5, 2003 at 12:33 PM

David, that's why I'm not a lawyer! ;-)

But point taken. If Eugene Volokh were chief, he might no longer have time to blog - not that Sasha and crew aren't great, but I would miss Eugene.

Posted by: Ken Summers at January 5, 2003 at 01:02 PM

Actually, the inmates are running the asylum. But there are a few of us here and there who put up what resistance we can, and when we get tenure (on Jan 21 if all goes well), we will stack the skulls of our enemies like pyramids and rampage through the universities howling and rending flash... (oops, did that slip out).
Actually I'll probably finally fix the roof so that I can take the bucket out of my wall.

Posted by: Mike Drout at January 6, 2003 at 10:30 PM