The marketplace of ideas
by Louis Menand · first published 2010
17mentions
1recommended by
2HN commenters
2010–2015first – last mentioned
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…the subject, take a look at the latest edition of Clark Kerr's book The Uses of the University, which traces changes in American universities from the post-War period to the present. Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas is also very good. (Disclaimer: I'm writing my dissertation on academic novels.)
on “Students are the victims and culprits of India’s broken higher education system” ↗…"discover" American literature and find exemplary American texts of the sort that were needed to instil a sense of unity in a country of disparate immigrant groups. Menand discusses some of this in The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University, which is an interesting and wonderful book. I wrote more about the book here: http://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-lo...
on “Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards” ↗…to hire postdocs. Now, where do you go when you graduate? (Hint: you don't, unless you already have a job lined up.) Indeed. Those who want to know more about this issue should read Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas, which I think I've recommended before on HN: http://jseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-louis... .
on “The Real Science Gap” ↗…market." And you know what? You're right. I'm in English Lit grad school, and the number one thing I tell other people who are contemplating it is not to go. Then I tell them to read Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas and Thomas Benton's articles: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Big-Lie-About-the-Life-of/6... .
on “The Ph.D. Now Comes With Food Stamps” ↗If you want to know more about the problems with the structure of academia (as well as how it came to be), see Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas: http://jseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-louis... , which I write about at the link.
on “The Big Lie About the 'Life of the Mind'” ↗…disciplines take two years, although many students stretch it to three; PhDs take somewhere between five and ten. Ten is the median for English PhDs and many others these days, according to Louis Menand in The Marketplace of Ideas (http://www.amazon.com/Marketplace-Ideas-Resistance-American-...): "People who received their PhDs in English between 1982 and 1985 had a median time to degree of ten years. A third of them took more…
on “If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?” ↗…is really sure what it means to be "well read" anymore. Louis Menand talks about how the end of the consensus on the "canon" or lack thereof has played in universities (and their requirements) in The Marketplace of Ideas: where he notes that only a few schools, including Columbia, still have "great books" courses grandfathered in. (See my post here: http://jseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-louis... for more…
on “Becoming "well read"” ↗Note that this is a subject Louis Menand, the writer of this piece, has discussed extensively in his book The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in American Universities, which I wrote about in depth here: http://jseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-louis... .
on “Debating the Value of College in America” ↗…you think the purpose of college is. That's one point of Louis Menand's recent article, "Debating the Value of College": http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/06/06/110... and his book, The Marketplace of Ideas: http://jseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-louis... . Should college prepare people for work, or for general kinds of abstract thinking? At the moment, colleges do both (and neither). The…
on “College is a waste of time” ↗…train religious authorities and theologians. In the U.S., universities got going to basically create gentlemen, and later to create scholars and researchers (Menand goes over a lot of this in his book The Marketplace of Ideas: http://jseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-louis...). Today, a lot of colleges and college majors focus on creating employees, but that's a relatively recent shift that only began taking…
on “College is a waste of time” ↗especially in fields dominated by overabundant cohorts like political science and english majors Actually, according to Louis Menand's book The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in American Universities, the absolute number of English majors has declined over the last 40 or so years: "Between 1945 and 1975, the number of American undergraduates increased…
on “How to Get a Job” ↗…Few important thinkers have emerged from the humanities in the last 25 or so years. Many have in the sciences (http://edge.org/). Works not cited but from which this reply draws: Menand, Louis. The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Paglia, Camille. “Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf.” Arion Third Series 1.2 (1991/04/01):…
on “How To Deconstruct Almost Anything (1993)” ↗Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas (http://jseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-louis...) discusses time to degree extensively, and the short answer is "yes." The longer answer: I think the average (or median?) time-to-degree…
on “Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today ” ↗I wonder if this death of criticism is misty eyed nastolgia for a future that either never, or rarely existed. Not entirely. Take a look at Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University (http://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-lo...). Universities grew enormously from 1945 – 1975. During that time, too, a disproportionately…
on “The Slow Death of the University” ↗…pursue their passion for literature, a lot end up as teachers or indentured servants for the university system. Louis Menand explains the dynamics behind this latter phenomenon in his recent book The Marketplace of Ideas.
on “The Decline of the English Department” ↗