There is an idea abroad now that some of our institutions need to be very selective, to have rigorous standards. The fight is about which ones. In particular, in Minnesota, the fight is about whether the U of M should raise the bar. But nobody disputes that the Nobel Committee should keep the bar high, or the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, where Einstein used to work.
But I want to sound a cautionary note about selectivity in general. The most elite group ever assembled was likely the Los Alamos gang that built the first atom bomb. As I heard the story, they were still debating at the time of the first explosion whether that explosion would produce a chain reaction in the atmosphere, burning up the earth. Now I can imagine some people who aren't real good at physics, who might not even be admissable to the new U, saying to them guys: "Are you out of your f***ing minds? You are blowing this thing up before you have figured out whether it is going to fry the planet?"
I think that, to every elite group, however constituted, there has to be a back door, through which people enter who have enough distance from the enterprise to say, "Are you out of your f***ing minds?"
Posted by shea0017 at April 17, 2005 2:14 PM