[csaa-forum] bolt, sticks and stones, and a proposal: how pathetic

[Tony Mitchell]

If you want to see a sensible and reasoned response to the Bolt attack 
check today's Australian HES which has printed Graeme Turner's piece.

On 15/12/2004, at 8:52 AM, Gilbert B. Rodman wrote:

>
>> ...with little of substance to disagree with you threaten each other 
>> with
>> legal action. I'd like to hear what the substantive political 
>> objections
>> are to Andrew Bolt's ideas, if that's not to much bother. Or maybe we
>> should all chortle at how right-wing he is. Ho Ho Ho.
>
> weighing in from *way* offshore -- so maybe there's simply some nuance 
> of the australian academy that i'm not privy to in the states -- but 
> i'd say that one of the obvious "substantive political objections" to 
> be made to bolt's rants and raves is that he's not actually following 
> through on his own agenda very well.
>
> put simply, if the idea is to ferret out "exorbitant" expenditures of 
> tax dollars on "pointless" academic work that's presented in "arcane" 
> and "indecipherable" jargon, then he's pretty damned short-sighted to 
> be taking aim at the humanities.  presumably, after all, the hard 
> sciences rake in way more grant $$ than the humanities ever do (could 
> the average physics lab, for instance, stay in operation for more than 
> a month on the combined sum that bolt lists for all of elspeth 
> probyn's grants?).  the hard sciences are just as likely (if not more 
> so) to be engaged in research that seems trivial and/or unintelligible 
> to the average layperson.  and the average write-up of said research 
> is certainly not going to be easier to read (or even translate) to the 
> average layperson than a bit of deleuzean theory.
>
> lest there be any confusion, i'm *not* suggesting that the nice folks 
> who run physics labs and engineering schools (and so on) deserve to be 
> subject to bolt's abuse either.  far from it.  the fact that he 
> doesn't seem concerned with their "wasteful expenditures," "trivial 
> pursuits," and "difficult prose," however, suggests that he's not 
> really interested in trimming the major "waste" out of academic 
> research: he's engaged in a political witch hunt.
>
> fwiw, i suspect that sorta response is gonna play a lot better in the 
> papers than "we're admittedly elitists and the rest of you should be 
> happy with that."
>
>
> cheers
> gil
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