Academic

PETER BERKOWITZ: Climategate Was an Academic Disaster Waiting to Happen. What does this scandal ?

By Glenn Reynolds

PETER BERKOWITZ: Climategate Was an Academic Disaster Waiting to Happen.

What does this scandal say generally about the intellectual habits and norms at our universities?

This is a legitimate question, because our universities, which above all should be cultivating intellectual virtue, are in their day-to-day operations fostering the opposite. Fashionable ideas, the convenience of professors, and the bureaucratic structures of academic life combine to encourage students and faculty alike to defend arguments for which they lack vital information. They pretend to knowledge they don’t possess and invoke the authority of rank and status instead of reasoned debate.

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Full post as published by Instapundit.com on March 13, 2010 (boomark / email).