John Harvard statue in Harvard University Perhaps I’ve been away too long. But as I tentatively grope my way back into the hallowed gloom of the Ivory Tower (pursuing a doctorate in history), I see that I have picked up a jaded impatience with the effete posturing of the professoriate. Not scholars, mind you, but rather that class which is busily employed in self-aggrandizing instead of innovative inquiry, job security instead of meaningful synthesis.
Granted, this may be unfair. Coming back to academic study after an interlude of national service and entrepreneurship—honing a capitalist worldview in the blazing light of the real world—I may have become insensitive to historical-political nuance. Perhaps further study will reveal that history as a profession is producing magnificent, valuable work that I am still too blinded to see. I doubt it, though.
It appears that history is a profession in crisis, a victim of its own brand of 1960s vintage radicalism.
