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ACADEMIC_LIGHTS

                                             December 29, 2009

 A comment by Siva Vaidhyanathan denies
 that there's a disease of the academy:
                                                   [ref]
   "The academic list of significant
   public intellectuals under 50 is
   probably a couple dozen people long        A couple of dozen doesn't strike
   by now.                                    me as a lot, actually.  But then,
                                              it could be enough, if they're
   "Academia rewards public work,             the right ones.
   relevant work, folks. It actually
   rewards good writing and broad
   thinking. That's not to say that
   one does not have to resort to
   undignified, specialized,                 The hedging there is interesting.
   jargon-filled writing along the way       Academia rewards good work, but
   to success. But please. Check out         also demands bad work?
   the book ads in the NYRB and see
   all the publicly relevant work                    My guess: good work is
   being published by academics                      not (always) punished,
   writing for Yale University Press,                but is not required.
   W.W. Norton, or Basic Books. There
   are too many to mention. How many
   academics had op-eds in the
   NYTimes, WaPo, or WSJ in 2007?
   Again, too many to count."

         And how many were worth counting?
         Do you remember any?                  Well, there's
                                               Paul Krugman,
                                               of course.


         And I like the book ads
         in the New York Review
         myself -- they're my
         favorite short-attention
         span cafe reading.

         But they don't always look
         like they're such great books.

         And while there's a fair
         number of them, many
         of them repeat week
         after week (there may be
         a hundred in an issue,          More to the point,
         but that doesn't mean           who actually *reads*
         there are a hundred out         these books?
         every week).
                                           A transmission
                                           belt may slip
                                           on either end.

                                                            LAST_INTELLECTUALS


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