In the Penthouse of the Ivory Tower | The Believer - July 2004

In the Penthouse of the Ivory Tower - Gideon Lewis-Kraus

I've been to plenty of conventions in my days, but I have never been to one for academia.  Most of mine are trade-related, sales, user groups, and the occasional nerdy comic book or gaming convention.

It turns out, they're all about the same, only the names of the presentations differ.  Every convention is about seeking the interesting talks, finding the open bars, and getting invited to the party suite after hours.

I'm not going to knock the Modern Language Association or the current state of the humanities in the United States.  I really could care less whether these people have political affiliations and beliefs or whether they hammer those views into their students.  Personally, I would hope that students at the university are at least capable of thinking for themselves and that professors would be incapable of "indoctrinating" them into whatever political beliefs they might have.  If there is a crime committed when this situation occurs, it is, as Mr. Lewis-Kraus explains that they aren't teaching students to challenge dogma and to think critically.

This is a long essay, but it is wonderful and worth reading.  It helps if you have ever experienced the convention atmosphere.  It takes all types and they are well represented here.  Who in the heck has a convention the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, anyway?  The next MLA convention is the first week of January 2011.

Mr. Lewis-Kraus' host and chauffeur and roommate for the duration was Professor Charles Bertsch, Charlie, lately of Arizona State University, but an assistant professor at Arizona at the time.  The author treats him almost like the sole human link between the ivory tower professors of English and a real honest to god person.  Refreshingly enough, he is the latter, like, I would guess, most of the attendees.

There is a whole bunch of hullabaloo about writers going to MLA conventions and making fun of how insular and disconnected the attendees are with the world the rest of us occupy.  This is so much nonsense.  One need only attend another convention on another topic to understand this.  All conventions are loaded with ridiculous seminars and round-tables filled with esoteric topics and incomprehensible to the outsider jargon.

I'm attending one in Las Vegas in a couple of months.  I'll be listening to presentations on cloud computing and technology governance, project management and environmental performance, all of them filled with people dressed in slightly ill-fitting clothing, discussing ideas that will likely never see the light of day in their respective organizations.  Conventions are intended for the like-minded to get together and immerse themselves in their like-mindedness.  Thus, they're pretty easy to mock.

At least Gideon Lewis-Kraus treats them with some fairness.  Read it and see if you agree with his conclusions.  And try to see how many of his discussion topics you can locate in the text.