(Society Magazine-May/June 2006)
“Corruption,” a charge leveled by Professor Craig Calhoun, after Jennifer Washburn’s allegations in University, Inc., is a serious one. It is not all all clear to me that either has the goods on universities for this indictment to hold-especially when Calhoun, perhaps more politic than prosecutorial, argues toward the end of his paper that structural conditions lie at the heart of universities” unseemly behavior: The commercialized university is a sympotom of a deeper, pervasive commodification of public life, rather than an aberration.