The time between Bachelor's degree and a PhD, the median time is over 11 years. So then you're still only on a tenure ladder, you're not tenured. So it generally takes 6 to 8 years after that to get tenure. So that's a very long period of what's essentially apprenticeship, of insecurity.

Cognitive science is a rapidly developing area, so it could be that there are some surprises around the corner. That does seem to be kind of where the trend line is leading.

One of the functions of literary criticism, or reviewing, generally - and I, most of my reviews actually are not about literature - but one of the functions of that is basically the sort of Consumer Reports function of letting readers know whether this is something they want to read.

It's difficult to get a job and people stay in school longer because they're employed as teaching assistants or instructors by their schools, by their schools where they're graduate students, and that does become exploitative eventually because they're very cheap labor and there's a way in which in it's not in the institution's interest to give them a degree if they can continue to employ them, I don't think anybody thinks that way, but effectively that's the way the system is starting to work.

Public circulation is what renders something a quotation. It's quotable because it's been quoted, and its having been quoted gives it authority.

Obviously input is helpful to faculty in trying to come up with a curriculum, but ultimately it's the faculty's job to know what students need to know. Make a decision about it and present it.

Harvard has something that manages, I think, to provide a lot of options for students, but still fairly prescriptive about the kinds of subjects that the courses ought to cover.