Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Who are the terrorists?

No one who has read The Possessed by Dostoyevsky or The Secret Agent by Conrad will be suprised by Economics professor Alan Krueger's explanation that it's intellectuals and politicians trying to attract attention to their cause who are the most likely to become terrorists. Witness, for example, the recent arrests in the plots in Great Britain in which all of the suspects so far appear to be doctors.

So, if the more educated one becomes, the more likely one is to become a terrorist, what does that say about our work in higher education?