Quotes About Academia

Politicians are at a great distance from the academic world. Barack Obama was my colleague at Chicago - but could i ever talk to him now? Never.

I have always felt that it's a little artificial to divide the sciences and the arts on college campuses.

To obtain high marks in school often requires a high degree of conformity to conventional ways of looking at the world and people."24

Football, fraternities, and fun have no place in the university. They were introduced only to entertain those who shouldn't be in the university.

College football: I do not see the relationship of those highly industrialized affairs on Saturday afternoons to higher learning in America.

More recently, faculty at the University of Texas condemned "Western Civilization" courses as inherently right wing, and Yale even returned a $20 million contribution rather than reinstate the course.

This partly reflects the Balkanization of history – that scholars attend only to their special time and place. But, for the most part, it reflects that far too many scholars rely on the received wisdom, even on matters central to their subject.

In fact, Professor Showalter's proposals provide a sterling illustration of the way in which feminism has provided a kind of blueprint for special interests that wish to appropriate the curriculum in order to achieve political goals.

our most famous universities as esteemed as ever.

The hardcover book was an academic monograph from a Midwestern university about the Battle of Kursk. Kursk happened in July of 1943. It was Nazi Germany's last grand offensive of World War Two and its first major defeat on an open battlefield. It turned into the greatest tank battle the world has ever seen, and ever will see, unless people like Kramer himself are eventually turned loose.

The Darkling Halls of Ivy, I

I wouldn't have to drop out of academia and take a more lucrative position waiting tables at the faculty club.

There is a real world; its properties are not merely social constructions; facts and evidence do matter. What sane person would contend otherwise? And yet, much contemporary academic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious truths.

The novel is about five students of classics who are studying with a classics professor, and they take the ideas of the things that they're learning from him a bit too seriously, with terrible consequences.

A succession of philosophers and historians spent their time studiously attempting to say nothing as successfully as possible. The less that was successfully said, the greater the relief and acclaim. No attempt to address any idea, history or fact was able to pass without first being put through the pit-stop of the modern academy. No generality could be attempted and no specific could be uttered.

For the purpose of large sections of academia had ceased to be the exploration, discovery or dissemination of truth. The purpose had instead become the creation, nurture and propagandization of a particular, and peculiar, brand of politics. The purpose was not academia, but activism.

A succession of philosophers and historians spent their time studiously attempting to say nothing as successfully as possible.

grievance studies

The ability to draw from life determines the artist's skill. This is why live drawing classes have always been at the top of the curriculum for properly structured academic workshops.

The past is interesting to me because it's been dumbed down or flattened out, or academically nitpicked so you can't get any life out of it, you just get data.

Most areas of intellectual life have discovered the virtues of speculation, and have embraced them wildly. In academia, speculation is usually dignified as theory.

From your first day at school you are cut off from life to make theories.

Between 1900 and 1930, the percentage of PhDs awarded to women doubled, and then, for three decades, it fell.6 The gains made by women in the beginning of the twentieth century were lost, everywhere, as women who had fought their way into colleges and graduate programs found that they were barred from the top ranks of the academy. No structural changes had been made that would have allowed women to pursue a life of the mind while raising children: many quit; many were kicked out; most gave up.

School was very easy, it turned out, if you just disconnected your heart.