Tenured professors face their own subtle corruption via grant and fellowship politics
Evidence
Kornhauser’s insights now need updating to encompass our more advanced stage of a globally atomized planet over which a predatory capitalism wishes to preside. Moreover, we cannot share his rather too sanguine optimism about the tenured professoriate’s innate resistance to the danger of incorporation into the class of rootless or what he calls “unattached” intellectuals. Though both he and Geiger are correct in their observation that scholars who have not succeeded in establishing reputable academic credentials are much more likely to become mercenary intellectuals at the whim of the politics and commerce of the free-market economy, he disregards a danger of a different sort that threatens the tenured professoriate. This latter category is obviously more susceptible to the internal politics of universities, not to mention the external politics of grants and fellowships from both private and governmental sources. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 323
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: Updates Kornhauser’s dichotomy: both freelance and tenured intellectuals have distinct corruption vectors, neither immune — a more honest structural map.
- XREF: connects to: Founded-board dynamics and suspicion stalked the émigré Institute’s grant applications — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1150; Industry groups rent university prestige to launder paid advocacy as academic scholarship — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 573; Philanthropic funders controlled the political composition of academic advisory committees — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 756