Oh yeah? What’s so special about ‘academia’? What’s the word refer to at all?
Millions of people scattered over America, in front of their computers, clicking on to a distance-ed course?
That’s what academia is – or is quickly becoming – in the United States. How is that activity taintable?
Or do you have in mind the opposite of this, the high-end of academia? UD‘s friend Janine Wedel calls this group of people the shadow elite. (Laura Rozen elaborates on the idea: “[T]here are people who are transparent [about] working for paid interest and [then] there are people who have reputations as being scholars at universities. It’s not clear that they are being funded perhaps by a consulting firm that is getting paid by [for instance] the Libyan government.”)
Academia is professors like Andrei Shleifer and Benjamin Barber and oodles of others, who span the globe to enrich themselves. What’s taintable about that?
Or maybe you mean our sports programs.
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(UD thanks Dirk for the sports link.)