Eric Loomis, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island had an immediate, aggressive, and hostile reaction:
Eric Loomis: Shorter Kristof: “I’m Too Lazy to Find the Hundreds of Professors Writing in Prominent Places, So Why Are Academics So Irrelevant?”: “I know Nick Kristof doesn’t put in any actual work to write his columns, but this is ridiculous. Erik Voeten with the obvious rejoinder that, in fact, academics are pretty much everywhere in public policy…”
Scott Lemieux: Corey Robin has much more. Professional disincentives notwithstanding, if you can’t find academics writing for a general audience about issues that interest you it’s almost certainly because you’re not looking.
“Huh?!” I thought. And so I began chasing links…
First, Eric Voeten, Peter F. Krogh Associate Professor of Geopolitics and Justice in World Affairs at Georgetown University:
Eric Voeten: Dear Nicholas Kristof: We are right here!: “Nicholas Kristof has a well-meaning but highly dramatic and one-sided op-ed in the New York Times, desperately shouting out: ‘Professors, We Need You!’
The piece rehashes familiar claims that seem to resonate well on the Times opinion page: academics write in obtuse prose on arcane tiny issues that are of little interest to the public. Even worse, they sometimes use math. Political science is in especially dire shape….
My onetime love, political science, is a particular offender and seems to be trying, in terms of practical impact, to commit suicide.