I wrote:
><< Brenner clearly went out on a limb to attack the D-of-U school. And
>Blaut attacks back, also going out on a limb. I won't say which of these
>two has higher levels of scholarship. It seems to me that both "bend the
>stick" a little too far in an effort to make it straight (i.e., the
>exaggerate their positions, the way lawyers do in court). >>
Justin writes:
>You're kidding right? There is no question who has the higher level of
>schilarship. Brenner is one of the major historians of our time. Blaut is
>just another professor. He might be right, but he can't touch Brenner for
>scholarship.
One reason I don't say who has higher levels of scholarship is because
pen-l already hashed this issue to death.
Another reason is that I really don't like academic pecking orders (unlike
my friend Paul K). In economics, as in most fields, there are "Big Names"
who run "Big Name Departments" and get published in the "Big Name Journals"
and get Big Grants. Of course, these folks (mostly male and white, BTW) are
the ones who call the ideological tune of the profession. They are the ones
who define which of the younger generation of economists become the new
"Big Names," so that there's a vicious circle. (Part of the Big Name
phenomenon is that works by previous generations are ignored, too, so that
the Big Names can reproduce some of their results without attribution. In
this perspective, Mankiw seems original.)
But the "minor" names of the minor researchers can often be much more
profound, especially once they get tenure and don't have to prove their
political correctness to the Big Name crowd. Some of the best research gets
done by the professors who are forced to teach undergraduates for a living
and thus have to make their research relevant.
Anyway, isn't _my_ research the best? No! it's all very subjective,
especially in a non-science like economics. (In a real science, the new
classical economists would have been laughed off the stage.)
Today the LA TIMES dubbed Heberto Padilla (who just died) the "leading poet
of Cuba." Aside from the political agenda of such a labelling (he was
anti-Castro), how could anyone say that anybody is the "best poet"? Since
economics is a form of poetry (relying heavily on metaphors, called
"models") and history also involves a lot of subjectivity, I sneer at this
kind of academic elitism.
>Btw, good lawyers do not exaggerate their positions.
Okay, I'll restate it. A lawyer states his or her client's case (where the
client might be the "people") as clearly as possible, leaving out or
downplaying or reinterpreting as much information or reasoning as possible
that could undermine that case. A lawyer uses rhetorical tricks, too. (In
the case where I was on the jury, the defense lawyer, slipped in the phrase
"of course" right before the sentence "the issue is whether or not the
defendant was driving the car.") If that's not exaggeration, you're using a
different dictionary.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
