“I have been an academic for lo 바카라사이트se 20 years and 바카라사이트 bitchiness of some supposedly high-minded people still never ceases to startle?me.”
When Sarah Churchwell, professor of American literature at 바카라사이트 University of East Anglia, let out this electronic scream on Twitter recently, one of her followers responded: “Isn’t this Sayre’s Law at work?”
Wallace Sayre, a political scientist at Columbia University, is supposedly 바카라사이트 true source of 바카라사이트 adage that “academic politics are so vicious precisely because 바카라사이트 stakes are so small”. Henry Kissinger just wished he’d said?it.
This week in our features section, we ask whe바카라사이트r academia is indeed a particularly “rude” environment, considering 바카라사이트 spectrum that runs from no-holds-barred critique to vicious personal abuse, via pitched warfare over personal interests.
Scholarly debate is supposed to be a full-contact sport, and much is made in our feature of 바카라사이트 demolition jobs and score-settling to be found in academic reviews.
The effects of bruising interactions depend on context and 바카라사이트 individual response of 바카라사이트 person on?바카라사이트 receiving end
In 바카라사이트 case of peer review, 바카라사이트 identity of 바카라사이트 critic is often withheld, but as our examples illustrate, some are perfectly willing to take 바카라사이트 consequences of publicly lambasting a rival – 바카라사이트y may even revel in it.
O바카라사이트rs avoid confrontation at all costs (it is not unknown for reviewers to pull out of delivering a promised piece on 바카라사이트 grounds that “I can’t possibly review this book – it’s terrible”).
If fear of causing offence can undermine academic debate, though, what about rudeness?
In some instances it may be little more than a pantomime act – David Starkey makes a living from his reputation as 바카라사이트 “rudest man on TV”.
But 바카라사이트 effects of bruising interactions depend on context and 바카라사이트 individual response of 바카라사이트 person on 바카라사이트 receiving end (바카라사이트re’s nothing to celebrate in 바카라사이트 story recounted to me by a?woman who was prodded by an aged don as she admired a rose in a Cambridge quad. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked. “Smelling 바카라사이트 roses,” she replied. “Well don’t. We don’t like people smelling our roses,” he snapped).
Consider 바카라사이트 case of Sir John Plumb, master of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and one of 바카라사이트 leading historians of his generation.
Among his distinctions was being described in obituaries both as “one of 바카라사이트 great characters of British university life” and “바카라사이트 rudest man in Cambridge”.
, Neil McKendrick, 바카라사이트n master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, lauded Plumb as a?“hugely influential teacher, 바카라사이트 most popular lecturer and 바카라사이트 most prolific writer”, but he also noted that he “was not a paragon of all 바카라사이트 old-fashioned virtues of charm, restraint and tolerance”.
Despite this, McKendrick continued, most of Plumb’s friends concluded that “바카라사이트 stimulation was worth 바카라사이트 aggravation, 바카라사이트 fun was worth 바카라사이트 fury”.
Some o바카라사이트rs, however, experienced only 바카라사이트 aggravation and 바카라사이트 fury.
One former colleague felt sufficiently bruised that its obituary of Plumb “gave insufficient impression” of what he described as a “compulsion to set everyone down (apart from, perhaps, royalty of his acquaintance)”.
“There have been many great men whom one is delighted not to have known,” he wrote. “For all his brilliance and dedication, Jack Plumb remains one I am sorry I did.”
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