mortiz055

Must innovation disrupt everything so that society might have new and better things? Widespread fatigue with this idea inspired a number of headlines last week.   "The Emperor of "Disruption Theory" is Wearing No Clothes,"  exclaimed one response.  Paul Krugman described a "careful takedown," suggesting that the whole era of innovation might collapse from its own overhype (" Creative Destruction Yada Yada." )  Jonathan Rees referenced an "absolutely devastating takedown ."  All three were talking about Jill Lepore's much-discussed  New Yorker  critique  of prominent business consultant Clayton Christensen's theory of "disruptive innovation." Prof. Rees concluded, "Like MacArthur at Inchon , [Prof. Lepore] has landed behind enemy lines and will hopefully force the enemy to pull back and defend ideological territory that they thought they had already conquered."  Obviously something is up when one historian ...

In two recent posts ( here and here ) Chris made an educational and ethical case for the public research university shifting its attention to increasing educational intensity and to committing itself to a vision of universal capacity rather than its present practice of intensifying pre-existing social inequalities.  There have been, as far as I can tell, two primary responses to his arguments: 1) an enthusiastic agreement with the basic principle and suggestions for ways it could be extended and 2) a resigned gloom rooted in the widespread sense that our institutions are simply not receptive to the notion. I want to suggest here that both of these responses are apt but that they should lead us not to resignation but to a recognition that thinking outside the normal structures of our institutions is both desirable and necessary in this instance. The reasons are several: First  is the serious probability that t he public university  as we know it is dead .   That is...