ANN ALTHOUSE: Maybe It’s Okay That Half Of Academic Papers Are Never Read.

Oh, I don’t think we really want to put academics to work building up society and addressing its problems. It might be a very good thing to contain these academic types in a place where they won’t do too much damage. It may be that we have marginalized these very intelligent people who live deeply in their own minds and conjure up new ideas because it’s best to keep them separated and deactivated.

No one forces anyone to go into academics, and the people who go there may know — on some level — that they don’t belong in the world of business and politics, that they shouldn’t have their hands directly on any levers of power. The academy is a structural safeguard. We don’t lock these people up. We give them a place they can choose to go, where they will be comfortable. Don’t worry too much about the waste in not using them more… not until you’ve calculated the waste they would cause if set free to solve our problems.

Both Obama and Hillary are former professors.