Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>
> --- David Hobby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > You are probably right, if International Relations
> > qualifies as an academic field. Technically it
> > does, since
> > it is studied at colleges. But it seems too
> > politicized for me
> > to grant it much respect.
>
> As someone who just finished applying for PhD programs
> in the field, I suppose I should take offense at this.
> But of course it is politicized. It is the study of
> _politics_. God forbid that we should try to explore
> the most important questions facing the human race for
> fear of violating someone's idea of pure academia.
O.K., let's try a different tack. How do people in
your field decide who is "right"? How do they test theories?
What are their standards of evidence?
Feel free to disabuse me of this, but my opinion is
that it is mostly a matter of how articulately one argues, and
what the existing big names in the field think. Can you point
me to papers with clearly testable theories, subjected to
objective methods of verification?
> > Also note that being Dean is NOT an academic
> > position,
> > it is administrative. The same goes for Ms. Rice's
> > work as
> > Provost:
>
> Not at Nitze. The _current_ Dean of Nitze is Eliot
> Cohen, one of the best political scientists in the
> world. Being Dean of Nitze is a very big deal - in
> the same league of prestige as being head of the
But this is my point! It is prestigious to be an
administrator, rather than a scholar. This implies to me that
the whole field is shallow, so that the only way to "recognize"
quality research is by popular acclaim.
In REAL fields of academia, most of the smart people
shun administrative work, doing it when necessary as an onerous
chore.
Here's a test: Can someone who is an outsider to the field
have their contributions recognized? I'm thinking of someone like
Ramanujan, brilliant but not an academic. (See this link for details:
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Ramanujan.html) Or
Einstein. If he had worked in International Relations, would he
have gotten a job better than the patent office?
> > In my experience, real scholars avoid administrative
> > work like
> > the plague! (I should know, it's my turn to be
> > Chair...)
>
> Of?
Mathematics, SUNY at New Paltz
It's O.K. for awhile, but nothing I'd like for too long.
And prestige? What good is that?
---David Hobby
Ph.D., UC Berkeley, 1983
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