November 14, 2003

Casaubon vs. Casaubon: Scholarship on Scholarship

By JULIA M. KLEIN

Two years ago, using a mix of Web research and economic jargon, Richard Posner bemoaned what he called the decline of the public intellectual. But his indictment, however flawed, may have been too narrow. The flood tide of adjunct professors, harried worker bees mostly too busy teaching to pursue research, has eroded the idea of the academic as scholar. Meanwhile, the push toward unionization of graduate students -- a natural reaction to deteriorating conditions -- has displaced