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http://www.counterpunch.org/rimbert05112011.html
May 11, 2011
Action or Academe?
Can France's Left Thinkers Escape the Ivory Tower?
By PIERRE RIMBERT
A doctoral degree ensures a solid analytical method, a corpus of
knowledge and even, sometimes, critical sense. But it also teaches
propriety and precedence, encourages a willingness to surrender strong
opinions, highly values give and take, and (because of
over-specialization within disciplines) promotes the view that things
are “always more complicated” than they may actually be. It authorizes
criticism but rejects politics, and blurs the line between seriousness
and pomposity. Homo academicus, when asked to decide the editorial fate
of an article that challenges the established order, is not neutral; he
uses both the knowledge and bias that go with his position.
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