My friend Jonathan Mayhew takes issue with an author’s defense of lowered expectations in scholarship. I agree with Jonathan Mayhew on this. Short-cuts corrode the mind.

I do, in fact, master my field. That’s the point of being a scholar. I would suggest that this person, so much in awe of [Slavoj] Zizek [who recently admitted to using someone else’s work without attribution], does not even know enough to know whether Zizek is full of shit or not. … I guess the argument that all scholars are incompetent is convenient if you yourself don’t really know enough not to fake it yourself.