When I think of my time in grad school, I recall a professor from George Washington University I overheard once at a cocktail party. Walking around a conversation cluster, I heard him giving career advice. He had studied both law and philosophy for joint degrees and was telling a group of grad students with the same credentials that they could improve their chances of being hired by writing a few substandard articles for some secondor third-tier law reviews. It’s easier to get published in a law review, he explained, because they’re run by law students, not professors. I was affronted by his candor. It was dishonest to the fight, and dull to the imagination. No doubt, he had his practical problems. He talked about his wife, the kids, the mortgage, the bills, and his Zoloft prescription. But he was so professionalized, so subject to the conforming norms of bureaucratic professor-hood, that I wondered whether there was any gap between the floor of his dullness and the height of his imagination.

Michael Gibson, Paper belt on fire: how renegade investors sparked a revolt against the university, New York, 2022, p. 37