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Just feeding off of drama. Over what, exactly? This is equivalent to posting about a Wikipedia edit war.
by beoba 16y ago
Just feeding off of drama. Over what, exactly? This is equivalent to posting about a Wikipedia edit war.
- raganwald 16y agoWhy are university politics so vicious? Because the stakes are so low.
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoDon't you think that the whole "tenure track", "up or out" thing has a lot to do with it as well? The academic job search is quite brutal. (Even further off-topic: my old university has decided that each group can have at most one professor, and that this job will be re-awarded every five years. It's too early to see the effects, but...)
- Stormbringer 16y agoI think the original version of the quote was referring to student politics.
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoI don't think so - it's attributed to various academics, most famously Henry Kissinger; why would they talk about student politics? (That said, I didn't manage to find an authoritative source for the quote.)
- alatkins 16y agoNope it was about academic politics: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayres_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayres_Law
- enjo 16y agoI think that you might be on to something. There are some disciplines that are much less competitive for jobs/tenure (like accounting). From the outside at least, it sure seems like there is a lot less internal politicking going on.