Megan McArdle: The Interview that Exposes Academia's Cluelessness (A Must-Read!)

No time to discuss this right now, but I say: read it and follow the links.

   I'm not sure that Anth is actually the worst offender...that I don't care much about. The real problem is that the problem of lightweight Lysenkoism is such a massive problem in academia. And the interview with the President of the American Anthropological Association is, indeed, both representative and embarrassing. Professor Rouse comes across as a clueless, sophistical Lysenkoist...which I guess is better than a clever sophistical Lysenkoist, really...

   Stupid ideas in the service of bad politics has taken over the academy. This is a crisis. There was more caterwauling in the media over the relatively minor threat of teaching creationism in biology courses back in the '90s. That would have been stupid, and I spoke out against it publicly...but it was nothing like what we've seen in the academy since the '80s... It was bad then, and it's catastrophic now.

   The comments on the McArdle story are instructive--they are so idiotic and clueless that I couldn't read more than a few...but it tells you where the mind of the average progressive's at...

Here's a link to the Boghossian et al. report