Andy -- I am right behind you with your thoughts on seriousness and the attendant dangers of shutting down intellectual growth. I've been giving some thought to the construction of a hegemonic academic and in particular, I am wondering who upholds that image. Certainly, to the increasingly corporatist administration, I am sure the only part of that "tweed-wearing, pipe smoking, old, white man sitting at Oxford or Harvard" you mention that they would like to see is the old part -- and by "old" I mean "dead." But perhaps, like all hegemonic forces, this is how the rest of the university (indeed, perhaps the rest of society) views us. If that is the case, would not taking ourselves seriously (beyond allowing ourselves the opportunity to be wrong and leave our tender little egos at the door for a moment) be one of the most efficacious modes of political struggle (in terms of fighting for humanities learning) in which we would engage?
Re: Why Bother?
Why shouldn't researchers in medical/scientific fields justify their existence? I suspect many of them do, they just happen to have a smaller burden of proof than do we. My first reaction upon seeing the competition you mention was "stop relying on graduate students YET AGAIN and hire a gawd-damned PR firm already." If we have to justify our work to a certain audience, we are already engaged in a specific kind of discourse. Let's launch an advertising campaign already so that we can all get back to working instead of reacting.
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