The Doubter's Companion Read Free Page B

learning were intended here to mean the development of ideas that would bolster the position of the corporation. On the leading edge of this movement were the THINK TANKS which went on to produce bevies of authoritative studies and annual reports intended to legitimize higher oil prices, deregulation, lower taxes, the debt crisis or whatever was the current agenda of their private-sector funders.
    The final stage began in the 1970s when the social scientists began to notice a well-paid growth industry known as management consultancy. More and more, these academics began to think of themselves as consultants. And this was by no means limited to economists and professors of business administration.
    The corporations and their foundations were far too sophisticated to concentrate on such a narrow and direct approach. Their mandate was to redefine half a millennium of Western evolution by re-examining how citizens see themselves and their society. In order for economic revisionism to make sense, there had to be a new view of philosophy, history, sociology and culture.
    For a few years reform-minded governments competed against corporations in the race to purchase the aura of academic freedom. But most of the reform governments were gone by the early eighties and the spreading economic crisis limited the investment that public budgets could make. By then, the universities, the press and even the public seemed to have accepted without protest the new role of the professors.
    The ideal of academic freedom and independence has now been severely damaged. To undo the corrupt system in place may be as complex as the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century battle to separate church and learning. There are some relatively simple problem areas. Should business administration be part of university education? Should a professor have the right to the ethical seal of approval of a university if he or she sells that aura in a separate business?
    Universities are now desperate for money and only too eager to prostitute themselves. Presidents and their boards accuse the departments, who do not bring in their share, of fleeing reality. But do they have the right to destroy an essential creation of modern civilization? Rectors might well answer that the public purse is starving them. And yet the worst of all possible approaches would be to go on pretending that academic consultants are the descendants of Peter Abelard at the Sorbonne, in the twelfth century, or Giambattista Vico in Naples, in the early eighteenth. See: TENURE and UNIVERSITY.
    ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE    Housed in the most beautiful palace in Paris, the Academy, whose role it is to control language, has a particularly elegant cupola and internal staircase. The Perpetual Secretary occupies a wonderful apartment in the west wing, overlooking the Seine and the Louvre. The Academy also owns a large chateau and park in the Forêt de Senlis where Academicians go to relax.
    The task of the Academicians is to identify correct meaning and use, then put it in an official dictionary. This may force them to favour the truth and beauty of language over the pedestrian needs of communication. The female members of the Academy, for example, must be addressed as if they were male, because Académicien is a masculine word.
    The Academicians are self-perpetuating—that is, when one dies, they elect another—which may explain why they are called the Immortals. The chairs in the official meeting room upstairs are historic but uncomfortable. On being elected, members receive a sword after their own design. See: SCHOLASTICISM.
    ACAPULCO    There are no sharks at Acapulco. The Mexican authorities are formal on this matter. If certain foreign tourists choose not to return home after their holidays, that is entirely their affair.
    Furthermore, the sharks are not attracted to the waters around Acapulco by the raw sewage the hotels recycle into the bay. Suggestions of this sort are