Whackademia Quote: The Student-ATHLETE at Duke University

For years, professors had been sending distress signals to the Duke University administration involving the increasing surliness of many of their student-athletes. These were young people forced to miss multiple classes because of game schedules, to travel with their teams even when they were injured, to understand that their sports came before their studies, and who had thus become dismissive of the academic enterprise. One shocking report by a deeply concerned history professor characterized some of the athletes as "openly hostile" to intellectual endeavor. [So are their coaches and all of the school's rabid sports fans. Most fans would prefer that schools pay these kids and forget the pretense of giving them an education.]

Caitlin Flanagan, "Nothing to Cheer About," The New York Times Book Review, April 27, 2014 (a review of The Price of Silence by William D. Cohan)