LIFE POSES CHALLENGES, UNIVERSITIES OFFER DEPARTMENTS: There's a conversation about the inability of academicians to conduct substantive cross-disciplinary conversations. Some of the posts are liked here with more here and here. Wasn't it the University of Chicago's Robert Hutchins who years ago made a tart observation about a faculty so diverse that people couldn't make conversation much beyond the weather?

Joanne Jacobs provides an additional harvest of links focusing on that inability to understand affecting the way in which the university answers the challenge. There will be more on this point to come, later today.

UPDATE: Too much stuff to think about right now. I think the universities must rediscover a core curriculum, and the exchanges listed above, and the cross-references cited therein, help make the case. I will defend that proposition in the near future (it is finals week, otherwise known as procrastination time.)