historiblogography

those pie-in-the-sky academics

In the ongoing exchange between journalist Michelle Malkin and law professor Eric Muller over Malkin's book on the detention of Japanese-Americans during WWII, a funny theme keeps popping up: Muller is an academic, and can be trusted to have all the cultural habits of his kind.

When Muller criticized Malkin for her abbreviated research schedule, for example, both she and her supporters argued that she simply has greater work discipline; Muller, being an academic, lives in pointy-headed fantasy land, where no one notices if you're slow. As Malkin writes, "Guess what? I had my second child while I was writing this book and the columns, and celebrated my 11th wedding anniversary, and baked cookies every now and then, and managed to go fishing every once in a while. Impossible? Not when you have made a living in daily journalism the past 12 years and are used to real-world deadlines."

So take a look at Eric Muller's webpage at the University of North Carolina Law School. A few things to note about his past: he's a former federal prosecutor; a Yale law grad, and a law review editor in law school; a former clerk to a federal district court judge. He graduated law school in 1987, and published his first book in 2001. Now, as a pretty young guy -- get a load of that picture -- he holds an endowed chair.

Just a thought: think Eric Muller knows anything about meeting real-world deadlines?

posted by Chris Bray @ 12:16 PM