ASK THE PEOPLE IN THE TRENCHES. Margaret Soltan has further impressions of the Athena Roundtable.

But, for instance, it seems to me it'd be a better use of ACTA's time to invite some truly typical faculty members at American universities to discuss -- maybe to defend -- the complex ethos by which many of them live. This is not as irresponsible, selfish, and madcap an ethos as some at ACTA believe (though there's plenty wrong with it), and it'd be helpful for the organization to gain some nuance about it.

Agreed. A tussle over who gets control of the curriculum committee at Harvard or Chicago has little or no effect on the challenges of providing higher education to most of the country's students, who are at the flagships and the mid-majors and the community colleges.

The academy's problem, however, might rest with something other than risk-averse, pusillanimous tenured cowards.

People don't start being bold non-conformists once they get tenure if being a bold non-conformist was never in the most tenuous sense an option for them.... And think about it. What sort of person is going to be attracted to one of the few jobs in America that grants you lifetime job security in the form of academic tenure? As to the risk in going up for tenure itself -- the overwhelming number of people who go up for tenure in the United States get it. At some schools, the rate is around 95%.

Doesn't that 95% refer to the less competitive private liberal arts colleges, and the less-famous departments at the flagships, and many of the mid-majors, and the regional converted teachers' colleges and the community colleges (to the extent that there are tenure lines at many of these?) One has to be a bit of a bold non-conformist to make the kind of research contribution implicit in "national" or "international" reputation.