February 8, 2002

Academe Subverts Young Scholars' Civic Orientation

By PAUL SABIN

As a recent Ph.D. in American environmental and political history, I often liken becoming an academic to entering a monastery. There are periods of enforced silence, norms that require isolation from society, and vows of political chastity.

Even the exceptions -- established, successful academics who engage with real-world issues -- prove the rule. At a recent environmental-history conference that I attended, the historian Patricia Nelson Limerick described with enthusiasm her efforts