Posted by Ilya Somin:
A New Academic Stereotype?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_07_08-2007_07_14.shtml#1184184401
In [1]this essay in the American Scholar (hat tip [2]Daniel Drezner),
Yale Professor William Deresiewicz claims that there is a new negative
stereotype of academics in films and other pop culture media:
The alcoholic, embittered, writer-manqué English professor who
neglects his family and seduces his students is a figure of
creative sterility, and he is creatively sterile because he loves
only himself. Hence his vanity, pomposity, and selfishness; his
self-pity, passivity, and resentment. Hence his ambition and
failure. And thence his lechery, for sleeping with his students is
a sign not of virility but of impotence: he can only hit the easy
targets; he feeds on his students� vitality; he can�t succeed in
growing up.
Deresiewecz considers a number of movies and novels about academics
that he claims support his thesis. Strangely, however, he ignores what
is by far the most popular modern movie series with an academic as the
central character, one who teaches at the ultra-scholarly University
of Chicago, no less. I refer, of course, to [3]the Indiana Jones
series, which has a new installment in the works. Now THAT'S a
stereotype that might yet improve the image of our profession.
References
1. http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su07/love-deresiewicz.html
2. http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/003383.html
3. http://www.indianajones.com/
_______________________________________________
Volokh mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
