The marketplace of ideas

What Hacker News says

1. jseligerNov 2014
   It was rediscovered after WW1, becoming a great classic of American literature.

   There's also an open question about the book's intrinsic merit versus the need at the time to "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...

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2. jseligerMay 2013
   Consider that the modern university is based on ideas developed in the late Middle Ages, throw in a healthy dash of politics (both formal and informal), and the gatekeeper factor, why would any university feel the need to change?

   To be fair, the idea of the university got started in the Middle Ages but they have changed quite a bit since; if you're interested in 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.)

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3. jseligerMay 2012
   I suspect people downvoted you because of the tone and your use of a rhetorical question—if you'd just said, "I don't pity highly educated people who don't understand supply and demand in their chosen job 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... .

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4. jseligerJun 2010
   2. The problem of academia's imploding pyramid scheme is not at all limited to science. It's worse in the soft sciences and humanities -- picture the same situation of tenured professors overseeing teams of cringing graduate students, but without the NSF/NIH/DOD grant money 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... .

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5. jseligerFeb 2010
   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.
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6. jseligerApr 2015
   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 large number of students majored in English in particular, as well as other humanities disciplines. During that 30-year period, universities expanded and especially grad programs expanded—by 900%.

   Most of those grad programs are still pumping out PhDs, even though the market for PhDs is weak. ABDs are a huge economic win for universities. So we have a situation in which supply has far outpaced demand for decades.

   At the same time, I'd argue that there's a huge amount of bogosity in humanities departments, and that bogosity has mostly gone unaddressed (http://jakeseliger.com/2012/09/22/the-stupidity-of-what-im-d...).

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