> Noam Chomsky may be more controversial than Milton Friedman in the broader world, but in academia almost no one needs to look over their shoulder before praising Chomsky.
Interestingly, this is plainly not true in his original sphere, linguistics.
Do you think that there are too many research universities in the US? I ask because one reason I recall for tenure is to provide professors the freedom to explore ideas/projects outside of teaching. But I always ask about the role of research in the humanities like literature— is it not more important for the literature professor to teach Shakespeare well than to give them the freedom to research topics about Shakespeare that ends up being garbage? There’s only so much deconstructed post modern theory you can do before it’s no good.
Before the left utterly corrupted and politicized scholarship and most all of academia over the course of the last 50 years, my answer would be that, at least for private universities, there is indeed value in research scholarship in the humanities.
I agree with you that public universities should not offer tenure, and especially when taxpayers are subsidizing the bill, certainly should not be doing so in the humanities. and social so-called sciences (I say "so-called" because other than in parts of economics, very little of it is science today, rather it is not-so-thinly-veiled political ideologizing).
Does Roland Fryer have tenure? He still lost a great deal after publishing results that ran against the narrative.
> Noam Chomsky may be more controversial than Milton Friedman in the broader world, but in academia almost no one needs to look over their shoulder before praising Chomsky.
Interestingly, this is plainly not true in his original sphere, linguistics.
Do you think that there are too many research universities in the US? I ask because one reason I recall for tenure is to provide professors the freedom to explore ideas/projects outside of teaching. But I always ask about the role of research in the humanities like literature— is it not more important for the literature professor to teach Shakespeare well than to give them the freedom to research topics about Shakespeare that ends up being garbage? There’s only so much deconstructed post modern theory you can do before it’s no good.
Before the left utterly corrupted and politicized scholarship and most all of academia over the course of the last 50 years, my answer would be that, at least for private universities, there is indeed value in research scholarship in the humanities.
I agree with you that public universities should not offer tenure, and especially when taxpayers are subsidizing the bill, certainly should not be doing so in the humanities. and social so-called sciences (I say "so-called" because other than in parts of economics, very little of it is science today, rather it is not-so-thinly-veiled political ideologizing).