Michael Clune (Case Western) replies at 3AM to Alex Rosenberg's criticisms.
Professor Clune's piece raises an interesting point: namely, what's going on in English Departments today may not be what people like Alex and myself remember from the "bad old days," like the 1980s, when English Departments were (as Princeton's A. Walton Litz put it--I am paraphrasing from memory) "the repository for all the world's bad philosophy, bad social science, and bad history." (Litz left the English Department at Princeton and moved to Creative Writing because, as he put it, he wanted to be around people "who liked reading literature.")
So readers, especially those of you in English Departments, what's the story? Is Prof. Clune right or Prof. Rosenberg? Or is the reality somewhere inbetween?
Signed comments--full name and valid e-mail address--will be strongly preferred. (One reason for valid e-mail addresses is that sometimes I need to ask the commenter a question about what appears to be an error or typo. I do not disclose the e-mail addresses to anyone else.)
