Academic Conflict Quotes

My split with the university was over the fact that I had become involved with helping Tibetans in India.

I had a stormy graduate career, where every week we would have a shouting match. I kept doing deals where I would say, 'Okay, let me do neural nets for another six months, and I will prove to you they work.' At the end of the six months, I would say, 'Yeah, but I am almost there. Give me another six months.'

My feeling about school was that it interfered with my reading.

Philosophy used to be a field that had content, but then 'natural philosophy' became physics, and physics has only continued to make inroads. Every time there's a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered away to themselves, and so then you have this natural resentment on the part of philosophers.

I studied philosophy and ended on sociology. For some reason, all the advanced courses in philosophy were offered 4:30 to 6:30, so I could never go because of football, so I had to switch.

I never graduated from college. While I was in a mass communication class at North Texas State University, I was on the air weekends in Dallas and knew more about major-market radio than the guy teaching. When I told him that, he failed me.

I hated school, but I was a good student. I made straight A's.

I mean, when I got to Brown, the place was riven, because you had older professors who were basically new critics and had been teaching a certain way for 30 years. And then you had this other gang who was down with the semiotic program. And as a student, you were, in a way, forced to choose which cohort you were going with.

All too often, academic departments defend their territory with the passion of cornered animals, though with far less justification.