From the First Things website:
. . . An anonymous columnist, an assistant professor of English at a Midwestern college who calls himself “Thomas H. Benton,” has penned an unusually thoughtful essay for the December 9th issue, entitled “Reference Works and Academic Celebrity.” It is well worth the attention of FIRST THINGS readers who have access to that publication. (Link for subscribers is here.)
Benton is hardly the first person to lament the fact that contemporary academic culture has been impoverished by its capitulation to the cult of academic celebrity. But he goes further than that, taking aim at the fallacy undergirding the cult: our obsession with “individual genius.” The very idea that the Ph.D. dissertation ought to be an “original contribution to knowledge,” a precept that was already well entrenched when William James wrote against it a century ago, has helped to feed this romantic fallacy. But, as Benton shows, the fallacy has metastasized into something downright ludicrous. In a job interview for an entry-level position at a second-tier state university, Benton was asked how his scholarly work might “redraw the boundaries of the profession.” To his credit, he was unable to manufacture a glib and confident answer to such a breathtakingly stupid question, and was too modest to put himself forward as the next Derrida. And instantly, he says, “I could feel the temperature of the room drop as if I had just stepped into a meat locker.” The interview was over.
"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
. . . An anonymous columnist, an assistant professor of English at a Midwestern college who calls himself “Thomas H. Benton,” has penned an unusually thoughtful essay for the December 9th issue, entitled “Reference Works and Academic Celebrity.” It is well worth the attention of FIRST THINGS readers who have access to that publication. (Link for subscribers is here.)
Benton is hardly the first person to lament the fact that contemporary academic culture has been impoverished by its capitulation to the cult of academic celebrity. But he goes further than that, taking aim at the fallacy undergirding the cult: our obsession with “individual genius.” The very idea that the Ph.D. dissertation ought to be an “original contribution to knowledge,” a precept that was already well entrenched when William James wrote against it a century ago, has helped to feed this romantic fallacy. But, as Benton shows, the fallacy has metastasized into something downright ludicrous. In a job interview for an entry-level position at a second-tier state university, Benton was asked how his scholarly work might “redraw the boundaries of the profession.” To his credit, he was unable to manufacture a glib and confident answer to such a breathtakingly stupid question, and was too modest to put himself forward as the next Derrida. And instantly, he says, “I could feel the temperature of the room drop as if I had just stepped into a meat locker.” The interview was over.
"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."