On Dec 6, 2011, at 9:55 AM, Alan Rudy wrote:
> Yes, shockingly, there are a range of people doing a range of things at
> Universities... as with every other institution. Could you please name an
> institution that is not engaged in capitalist gatekeeping? Real estate?
> Family? Religion? Local, state and federal government - legislative and
> bureaucratic? Work? Print, broadcast or internet media? High-Pop-Folk
> culture? The law? Social Services? It seems to me that if there's no
> purity one ends up with either the kind of utopian BS you proposed - if it
> (somehow, someway) became more Edenic again, I support it to the hilt - or
> a kind of total revolution - everything's shit and everything must be
> completely and utterly revolutionized immediately. Both are trite and
> idealist - at best.
One of the reasons the right hates higher ed is that, for all the 'plaints of someone like Michael Smith, academia is one of the few places in the USA where people can think critically and get paid for it. Thus the canon wars and all that. But also: make it more expensive and foreground the economic payoff lest people take all those impractical courses where they "interrogate" stuff.
Doug