Hm… so to clarify your position, would you call, say, Saul Alinsky a destructive rent-seeker in some sense? Hayden? Chomsky? All high-status among the U.S. “New Left” (which you presumably—ahem—don’t have much patience for) - yet after reading quite a bit on all three, they strike me as reasonable people, responsible about what they preached.
(Yes, yes, of course I get that the main thurst of your argument is about tenured academics. But what you make of these cases—activists who think they’re doing some rigorous social thinking on the side—is quite interesting to me.)
Hm… so to clarify your position, would you call, say, Saul Alinsky a destructive rent-seeker in some sense? Hayden? Chomsky? All high-status among the U.S. “New Left” (which you presumably—ahem—don’t have much patience for) - yet after reading quite a bit on all three, they strike me as reasonable people, responsible about what they preached.
(Yes, yes, of course I get that the main thurst of your argument is about tenured academics. But what you make of these cases—activists who think they’re doing some rigorous social thinking on the side—is quite interesting to me.)