From the Galbraith article I linked to below, which tries to puzzle through why there are no Buckleys, Schlesingers, or Galbraiths today:
Universities, meanwhile, are less likely to be home to such dazzling writers, the kind who march forth with ideas and arguments touching broadly on issues of the day. In recent decades, ever more narrow specialization has been the path to tenure and academic respect in most disciplines. Campuses are no longer cultivating intellectuals "with capacious minds -- the big thinkers -- like Ken and Arthur," Parker says. "It's a triumph of the smaller man, and woman."
That's true. Academic writing is a wasteland. Dense, jargon-packed prose that robs even the most vital subjects of their life and energy. Of the academic writers who do explode onto the popular scene, their colleagues, eventually, meet them with varying levels of mistrust and scorn (see Diamond, Jared).
I grew up, to be clear, in faculty housing at the University of California, Irvine. My father is a mathematician. Before I went to college, I vaguely assumed I'd drift towards academia, and mentioned the proposed path to some family friends. I was told, nearly unanimously, that I wouldn't like it -- I didn't seem to have a knack nor interest for intense specialization. And they were right, academia isn't for me, or people like me. But I'm not certain that's a good thing.
