“Such are the rules of the professorial game—they think and write from each other and for each other and at each other exclusively.”
William James, A Pluralistic Universe (1909)
“Now, the method of growing wise, learned, and sublime, having become so regular an affair, and so established in all its forms; the number of writers must needs have increased accordingly, and to a pitch that has made it of absolute necessity for them to interfere continually with each other.”
Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub (1704)
I am a nobody in the professorial game. I once scratched out some highbrow humbug and thereby secured lifetime employment in a dark satanic mill of higher learning, but the professors I wrote from were not improved, the professors I wrote for were not impressed, and the professors I wrote against were not induced to repent their wicked ways. I was and remain a pipsqueak in the roaring marketplace of ideas, my voice not loud enough to rise above the din, my wares not good enough to draw a lively trade.
I try to be mindful of the fox who scorned the grapes, but I do not altogether regret being a wash-out in the professorial game. I still enjoy doing what I can for the young nincompoops who appear for my classes, but it has been some time since I wrote from, or for, or against another professor. The professorial game goes on without me. I go on without the game.
* * * * *
As James and Swift tell us, professors combine in closed circles of individuals who are intensely interested in each other, but who have little interest in anything outside their own circle. This arrangement is not bad so long as there is a real object of study at the center of the circle, but it is very bad when the object of study is mostly or entirely the circle itself. If one looks past the stilted diction and steepled fingers, these groundless “debates” are very similar to a breathless confab of teenage girls who are airing their views on what Claudia said to Mia about what Greta said to Beth about Mary Anne.
James explains the consequences of this collective narcissism:
“With this exclusion of the open air all true perspective gets lost, extremes and oddities count as much as sanities, and command the same attention; and if by chance any one writes popularly and about results only, with his mind directly focused on the subject, it is reckoned oberflächliches zeug and ganz unwissenschaftlich.”
If a lone professor writes clearly about something that is real and of general interest, and he does not clutter his prose with gratuitous and back-scratching references to a hundred other professors, his writing will be reckoned “superficial stuff” and “entirely unscientific.” Extremes and oddities may have counted for as much as sanities when James wrote this line one hundred years ago, but nowadays they count for much more. Professorial extremes and oddities are not bold or original, though, since they all emerge from a cauldron deep groupthink.
Swift lays his finger on the reason. The dark satanic mills of higher learning have made the method that produces professors a regular affair, like the method that produces shoes, or hamburgers, or television programs. The output of the academic assembly line is therefore uniform, and it also exceeds all conceivable demand. Competition in the professorial game is therefore keen, and success is the fruit of collusion.
* * * * *
My idea of a scholar is very far from this methodical manufacturing of machinating myrmidons. My idea is an individual who combines native intelligence, idiosyncratic reading, an apt but not pedantic memory, a fondness for wandering out of the common way, and the wit to speak and write in interesting ways. My idea of the scholar is a writer who seems like a “loose cannon” until you notice the uncanny accuracy with which he hits his mark.
You should not take my idea of a scholar for a self-portrait since I am at best a crude and bungling approximation of this idea. If the professors at our universities met my idea, I would be even more of a nobody than I am right now. But that would be O.K because that would be a good thing.
The Orthosphere 
Have you read Alasdair MacIntyre’s Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry? 1990 – Gifford lectures.
It addresses just the issue you describe, but concludes that universities are only coherent when they are (in effect) “methodical manufacturing of machinating myrmidons” – but, crucially, integrated with Christian primacy in all major social institutions.
MacI’s prime example is the early universities of Medieval Europe – culminating with Aquinas as the jewel in the crown.
A later and lesser example is the universities of Scotland in the 18th and early 19th centuries – and it was their example (*Not* Oxford and Cambridge) that was influential in the universities of North America, among other places. This type of university would (rightly!) exclude even a genius like philosopher David Hume from the professoriate, when he was regarded as morally unsound in his teachings – because the Scots professors then had a national, and Christian, role.
A fascinating thesis! MacIntyre’s relevance to today is his account of the ‘Nietzschean’ university, which is a kind of anti-university; concerned with subversion, promoting incoherence and destroying standards and values.
I read MacIntyre’s After Virtue Closely, but never made to to the end of Three Rival Versions. It’s still on my shelf, so perhaps I should give it another try. I see the point that you are making and agree that students cannot be educated if their professors are speaking from radically different points of view. As it now stands, students are not even told that half the lectures they hear must be wrong if the other half are right. It’s hardly surprising that they are baffled after four years force feeding on this positivist/postmodernist stew. With that said, I’m still a romanticist at heart, and I dislike the officious regimentation of scholarship and education. It sometimes seems that scholarship comes down to correct footnote formatting, and that education is nothing but operant conditioning.
“A fascinating thesis! MacIntyre’s relevance to today is his account of the ‘Nietzschean’ university, which is a kind of anti-university; concerned with subversion, promoting incoherence and destroying standards and values.”
Funny… I would have called it the Mendelssohnian Yeshivosity or the Arendtian Academy… But that’s because I’m a Fixated Crank and not a Cuck.
Gee, being a retired petty bureaucrat with a falsely respectable title in the public psychiatric biz doesn’t look half bad in comparison. We did get to focus on making patients better, at least temporarily, however much we were interrupted by cranks with theories and other public officials who wanted to make sure that we sang the praises of the correct ideas. And green. And committed to wellness. And addressing the needs of 16 separate categories of patient (there’s a checklist: veterans, trauma victims, LGBT, rural, DD, substance, etc). But these become automatic enough in their time. Because so few people wanted to hear anything about acute psychiatric emergencies we tended to get left alone.
When I read your accounts of life on the job, I’m impressed by how rational you all were. I suppose psychiatric patients are much harder to ignore than students, and much more likely to cause embarrassing havoc if they are ignored. I gather that you had your share of cranks and monomaniacs, but you were tethered to reality far more securely than we are. And you should factor congenital (and age-enhanced) grumpiness into everything I write.
“My idea is an individual who combines . . .”
J. N. Findlay comes to mind.
We’re not looking for excellence in our professors, we’re looking for conformity and mediocrity. See Yuri Bezmenov explain this dynamic as it applies to the MSM, here (beginning @16:40 in the video):