“In the summer camp mentality of American universities, the ferocity of genuine intellectual debate would just seem like spoiling everyone’s fun. Ambitious humanities professors go about the business behind a brick wall of “theory,” which they imagine is the dernier cri, but which has long been out of fashion, even in Paris. Drab, uncultivated philistines, without broad knowledge of the arts, have seized the top jobs in the Ivy League, simply because they have the right opinions and know the right people. In the past twenty years, conferences became the infernal engine driving the academic profession. The conference crowd, an international party circuit of literary luminaries ever on the move, was put together by the new humanities centers. These programs had the initially laudable aim of fostering interdisciplinary exchanges outside the repressive framework of the conservative, static and over-tenured university departments. But the epidemic of French theory was abroad in the world. The humanities centers quickly became careerist stockyards, where greedy speculation and insider trading were as much the rules of the game as on Wall Street.”

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), p. 101

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In the summer camp mentality of American universities, the ferocity of genuine intellectual debate would just seem like…" by Camille Paglia?
Camille Paglia photo
Camille Paglia 326
American writer 1947

Related quotes

Carlos Zambrano photo

“I feel good. Everything is working. I'm more comfortable, more experienced, I know the league better. I just go out there and have fun.”

Carlos Zambrano (1981) Venezuelan baseball pitcher

Harris, Beth, Chi Cubs 7, LA Dodgers 3 http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/recap?gid=240513119, Yahoo! Sports, Retrieved on June 14, 2007
2004

Jason Aldean photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Siegbert Tarrasch photo
Ray Comfort photo
Jack Welch photo

“Business has to be fun. For too many people, it's "just a job."”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 24.

“Fortunately, there seem to be few of his kind, and my subsequent friendships with university professors have proved exciting, stimulating and fun.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 11
Context: Once, when hitchhiking, I was picked up by a professor from some small college. He noticed a book in my coat pocket, and was curious. It was a Modern Library edition, in the limp bindings they used to have, which sold at the time for 95 cents. This one contained Nietzsche‎‎'s Ecce Homo, and The Birth of Tragedy.
The professor was a pedantic man of limited imagination and seemed almost offended that I was reading such a book. Obviously I did not fit some category in which he decided I belonged, and when he dropped me off in town, I suspect he was relived to be rid of me.
He kept asking me why I wanted to read such a book. At first, he doubted I was reading it. Where had I heard of Nietzsche‎‎?
When I told him I thought it was in the preface to a book on Schopenhauer, he was even more disturbed and probably believed I was lying. Fortunately, there seem to be few of his kind, and my subsequent friendships with university professors have proved exciting, stimulating and fun.

Ted Cruz photo
Arlo Guthrie photo
Akio Morita photo

Related topics