“Many academics frown on public pontificating as a frivolous distraction from real research [...] This attitude affects tenure decisions. If the sine qua non for academic success is peer-reviewed publications, then academics who ‘waste their time’ writing for the masses will be penalized.” [...] As experiments, scholars have periodically submitted meaningless gibberish to scholarly journals — only to have the nonsense respectfully published. My onetime love, political science, is a particular offender and seems to be trying, in terms of practical impact, to commit suicide. “Political science Ph.D.’s often aren’t prepared to do real-world analysis.” [...] In the late 1930s and early 1940s, one-fifth of articles in The American Political Science Review focused on policy prescriptions; at last count, the share was down to 0.3 percent. Universities have retreated from area studies, so we have specialists in international theory who know little that is practical about the world. After the Arab Spring, a study by the Stimson Center looked back at whether various sectors had foreseen the possibility of upheavals. It found that scholars were among the most oblivious — partly because they relied upon quantitative models or theoretical constructs that had been useless in predicting unrest. Many academic disciplines also reduce their influence by neglecting political diversity. Sociology, for example, should be central to so many national issues, but it is so dominated by the left that it is instinctively dismissed by the right. mobile.nytimes/2014/02/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-professors-we-need-you.html?referrer=
Posted on: Sun, 16 Feb 2014 13:48:14 +0000
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