I think the American university system still seems to be the best system in the world
I now teach at American University and the University of Virginia
I think part of the success which Structuralist or post-Structuralist thought in critical theory has had in literary studies in American universities is due to a theoretical vacuum.
I loved American universities. In many ways, they are better organized - certainly than French universities.
Everybody knows that the dumbest people in any American university are in the education department, and English after that.
American university presidents are a nervous breed; I have never thought well of them as a class.
There's a lot wrong [with American universities]. I'd remove 34 of the faculty - everything but the hard sciences. But nobody's going to do that, so we'll have to live with the defects. It's amazing how wrongheaded [the teaching is]. There is fatal disconnectedness. You have these squirrelly people in each department who don't see the big picture.
Credentialing, not education, has become the primary business of North American universities.
