And another version: Martha Nussbaum in The New republic remembering a
great classics scholar:
In Britain today there is a new government program called the Research
Excellence Framework (REF). Under the REF, scholars in all fields will
be rated, and fully twenty-five percent of each person’s rating will
be assigned for the “impact” of their work—not including its impact on
other scholars or on people who like to think, but only including the
crasser forms such “impact” might take. (Paradigmatic examples are
“improved health outcomes or growth in business revenue.”) “Impact”
must be immediate and short-term, and it must be brought about by the
scholar’s own efforts, not by the way in which another generation
might find their world enlivened by a book the scholar has produced.
Britain’s assault on the love of truth for its own sake is
particularly explicit, but such pernicious trends can be found in
every country.
Wow.
I can see Robin suffering under this, too..., were he still in the
throes....
Getting gladder to be retired from all that....
Doug
On 1-Apr-10, at 11:47 AM, Stephen Vincent wrote:
> The complicated truth,
Douglas Barbour
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