Dangers of the Ivory Tower

I have long thought that one of the benefits of the American university system over the English version is the interaction between professors, think tanks and public service. It is by no means unusual for an GWU social sciences professor to have served in government, often as an executive branch adviser of some sort, then to have spent time formulating and adivising on policy from the outside be it in a think tank or as a analytical journalist before starting a professorial career. This rotation, and it need not be in that order, helps keep academia in contact with the 'real' world, helps think tanks and other institutions produce innovative ideas and lends an introspective and academic air to governance that often is hidden by political agendas. Thus, this article by Joseph Nye in the WaPo presents worrying findings that fewer and fewer academics immerse themselves in public life but instead remain focused solely on their studies with little concern for their relevance to the outside world. If this trend continues the US could well end up like the UK where an Oxford don and a civil servant view dismiss each other's work as irrelevant to their own. Such a situation would damage both academic research and the public good.