New Book: 'The Marketplace of Ideas'

If most new problems were once solutions to old problems, then it would be helpful to look at the old problem and how it was solved. In The Marketplace of Ideas, Luis Menand sees what he considers academic professionalism as a problem. So he takes a look at the problem that the current Academy solved. Quite interesting. Buy the book here and SCUP gets a small percentage. You can also read this review by Gideon Lewis Kraus, in Slate.

In reviewing the book, Lewis-Kraus, notes:

Eliot's most "original and revolutionary idea" was to require a college degree to enter professional school. This established the educational model that still obtains: liberalization first, then specialization. Universities assumed the role of credentializing professionals, and the professoriate was on the way to becoming a guild.

This transformation gave the professoriate a new autonomy, but at a price: If professors wanted academic freedom, insulation from the demands of the commercial marketplace, they had to start thinking of what they did in nonvocational terms—as the pursuit of specialized knowledge for its own sake.

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• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
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