> I have been called anti-intellectual for saying that dockworkers should
make more than English lit profs,
Bet they do. When I left academia in 1994 I was making $35K. The ILWU isn't doing right by its members if it can't do a whole lot better than that. My autoworker friends were bringing in $70K--$100K with overtime. Course now I am a hotshot lawyer and making a ridiculous salary, but most lawyers don't.
> and that colleges shouldn't have the
right to force a liberal arts curriculum on people who want an engineering
degree.
The right! You'd create a cause of action for people who wanted to challenge college distributional requirements? Or you just think that distributionals are dumb? For what it's worth, they're the bread and butter of academics. Humanities departments would wither and die without 'em.
> Is that anti-intellectual? How would you define
anti-intellectualism? To avoid the anti-intellectual label, do I have to
eagerly defend every privilege and perogative that self-identifying
intellectuals claim they deserve?
Hofstadter has a classic study of anti-intellectualism in American life. As a rough approximation, I'd describe it, in this country, as a resentful contempt, tinged with homophobia, for any sort on intellectual or academic interest or attainment that is not more or less immediately translatable into a substantial remuneration. It's hard to believe that anyone on this list who grew up in America hasn't experienced it. Obviously there is also a sort of obverse intellectual's arrogance that is also to be condemned, but the "I don't know much about history" (in the words of a popular song) mentality isn't to be celebrated either.
jks
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