I just opened the mailbox and found 3 envelopes. 

The first says “Yale University” and asks for a charitable donation.

The second says “[My current] University” and thanks me for a charitable donation.

The third says “Homeowners’ Association”, has a sticker of a cowboy on a horse and another sticker saying “God Bless America!” and asks me for homeowner dues.

Some very kind person helped me access Terry Eagleton’s article title “The Slow Death of the University.” Thank you, kind person!

As you must have gleaned from the title, the subject Eagleton is addressing in the piece is the tragic transformation of the function that universities have had since the very dawn of their existence (thank God for blogging where I can indulge my occasional urge to use cliches):

From Cape Town to Reykjavik, Sydney to São Paulo, an event as momentous in its own way as the Cuban revolution or the invasion of Iraq is steadily under way: the slow death of the university as a center of humane critique.

I really believe that this process is a lot more momentous than the pointless and idiotic Cuban Revolution, but it’s great that Eagleton is choosing to discuss the issue.

Universities, which in Britain have an 800-year history, have traditionally been derided as ivory towers, and there was always some truth in the accusation. Yet the distance they established between themselves and society at large could prove enabling as well as disabling, allowing them to reflect on the values, goals, and interests of a social order too frenetically bound up in its own short-term practical pursuits to be capable of much self-criticism.

This is precisely what I have always valued so much about the work I do. For a few hours every week, my students and I get to remove ourselves from the cycle of selling, buying, and discarding as we gather to talk about literature. There are two pursuits that radically distance human beings from other species: the capacity to create art and the capacity to create knowledge. In my classroom, we engage in creating knowledge about art, which is the most exalted activity of the human mind that I can imagine.

Continue reading “Terry Eagleton’s “The Slow Death of the University”” →

People keep saying they don’t understand why Rolling Stone didn’t fire  the journalist who wrote the frat house gang rape story.

It’s like they live on a different planet.

This journalist is the best thing that ever happened to the magazine. People world over now know that it exists and is in the business of publishing gang rape porn. The magazine is experiencing its stellar moment. I’m reading articles about this article in several different languages published in several different countries.

And so what if the journalist in question is an unprofessional, stupid fool? Isn’t that the modern definition of a journalist?