Academic politics are vicious because the stakes are so low?
January 12, 2008 12:50 AM Subscribe
Does anyone have a decent citation for the idea that academic politics are so cruel/brutal/intense/vicious because the stakes are so low?
I've seen various attributions to Wallace Sayre, Henry Kissinger, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry Truman, but I'd like a source that isn't a weak tie via Google, something like a reputable book of quotations or an edition of letters, if possible.
I've seen various attributions to Wallace Sayre, Henry Kissinger, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry Truman, but I'd like a source that isn't a weak tie via Google, something like a reputable book of quotations or an edition of letters, if possible.
Best answer: This is via Google, of course, but it's an extensive quotation from a book which sets itself up as the go-to source for such things: the quote verifier.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:07 AM on January 12, 2008 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure what discipline you're in (and so what counts as a 'decent' cite) but Stanley Fish wrote a funny piece way back called "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos" which discussed how academics were, at heart, pretty miserable resentful people. Quotes include "Academics like to eat shit, and in a pinch, they don't care whose shit they eat."
Fish, S. The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos." There's No Such Thing as Free Speech. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. 273-79.
It's discussed here:
http://www.theminnesotareview.org/journal/ns52/fish.htm
and you can google for more.
posted by carter at 6:39 AM on January 12, 2008
Fish, S. The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos." There's No Such Thing as Free Speech. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. 273-79.
It's discussed here:
http://www.theminnesotareview.org/journal/ns52/fish.htm
and you can google for more.
posted by carter at 6:39 AM on January 12, 2008
Response by poster: Weird, ikkyu2. The "feud" business wasn't part of my mental toolkit while trying to think about this question; like languagehat in that thread says, academia seems to be central to the quotation, although as the answers there show, the idea works for other domains too. In any case, thanks for the confirmation that it's an indefinite attribution, folks. (Oh, and I'm not really in a discipline, carter; just curious and inclined to trust books more than web site cites.)
posted by cgc373 at 10:53 PM on January 12, 2008
posted by cgc373 at 10:53 PM on January 12, 2008
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