Thursday, October 29, 2020

Signs of academic degradation.

It's striking to me how many scholars I know or who I see talking on social media, who simply don't have that much time to do scholarship anymore.

Earlier this fall I wrote a(n Australian) scholar who I've met at conferences to ask him about something he wrote in a book of his and to check on the status of a project he'd announced several years ago, and he followed up really collegially and sent me a pdf and gave me some good leads, but he also mentioned that he was finding it hard to find time to work on any of his projects nowadays.

It's all very sad, this guy is world class and decently recognized as such, and yet he can't even find time to work on his backlog of important projects.

What sense does that make?

He's a talented specialist who does work that's important and gets read, and yet he can't even further his specialty, even though he's in a position where it looks like he could and it looks like he's "made it."

It's just sad.

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