‘Those Who Can’t’ vs. Those Who Kahn

Alice Kahn’s snide ignorance is an example of what has dropped our nation so far down the ladder of scientific, industrial and social achievement. Everyone I know in American academic life--in fields ranging from sociology to molecular biology--feels embittered and disheartened by the spreading hostility toward intellectual achievement. Ignorance never sleeps.

By contrast, my son, who recently got his PhD in geophysics, spent a year in Japan where he wrote that “the Japanese government generously funds basic research in science, as opposed to us who fund nothing.” Much of the future of the two countries is contained right there, which is as Kahn would have it.

I switched careers several years back when I discovered a field that could pay me as much in one year as I earned in 10 underpaid years of university teaching. Now I write television for people on the intellectual level of Alice Kahn.

CHARLES LEINENWEBER

Los Angeles