（未完待续...）

  Few species have as many natural enemies as the celebrity professor. Other academics envy their money and fame; journalists dislike their cleverer-than-thou airs, and everybody hates their determination to have it all——the security of academic tenure and the glitz of media stardom. So these are happy days for the rest of us. Plagiarism, lying, waffle-mongering: hardly a week goes by without some academic celebrity or other biting the dust, his reputation in tatters. 

很少有物种像名人教授那样树敌众多。其他的学者嫉妒他们的金钱和名气，记者们不喜欢他们高高在上（盛气凌人）的气场，其他人则讨厌他们的势在必得，无论是稳固的学术地位还是在媒体上的频频曝光。所以现在我们外人有热闹可看了，剽窃，说谎，招摇撞骗，几乎每周都能看到这个或那个名家身败名裂，名誉扫地。

cleverer-than-thou  thou有you的意思       tenure n. 任期  v. 授予...终身职位     glitz  v.使光彩夺目  n. 浮华   waffle-mongering 招摇撞骗      biting the dust 一败涂地      in tatters（破碎的）  彻底粉碎

  Stephen Ambrose was arguably America's favorite historian, a man who wrote bestsellers faster than most people read them. An inspirer of Hollywood blockbusters, he can also claim credit for two of the best presidential biographies around, on Eisenhower and Nixon. But it now turns out that five of his books contain extensive "borrowings" from other historians. ("I'm not writing a PhD", he has offered as an explanation- an unsurprising claim, as he would not get one for somebody else's work.) 

斯蒂芬.安布罗斯可能是美国最受欢迎的历史学家，他写畅销书的速度甚至比许多人读这些畅销书的速度还快。他是好莱坞大作的灵感来源，他因为两部最好的总统传记而名誉傍身，一个是艾森豪威尔另一个是尼克松。但是结果他的五部作品中有大量内容是“借鉴”的其他历史学家。（“我并非是在写一篇博士毕业论文”，他用这样的解释来为自己开脱，这也并不让人感到惊讶，因为他不可能通过别人的作品来获得一个博士学位。）

  Mr. Ambrose must be grateful that attention has shifted to another cutter and paster, Doris Kearns Goodwin. She was a fixture on American television, always ready with a telling anecdote on，say, Lyndon Johnson (whom she knew) or Abraham Lincoln (the subject of her next blockbuster). Her handling of the plagiarism charges against her has arguably been worse than the charges themselves. In the last 1980s, she quietly mollified one of her chief victims, paying her some money. Now she explains her behavior by the fact that she relied on handwritten notes——something other historians have managed to do without such dire consequences. Amazingly, Ms. Goodwin remains on Harvard's board of overseers，despite the fact that she committed sins that might get an undergraduate expelled. 

安布罗斯先生一定很感谢公众的注意力转移到了另一个抄袭者多丽丝.卡恩斯.古德温身上。她是美国电视节目的常客，对诸如林顿.约翰逊或是亚伯拉罕.林肯的奇闻轶事总是能侃侃而谈。其中前者与她熟识，而后者是她下一部巨作的主角。她对于针对她的剽窃指控的处理甚至可能比指控本身更加糟糕。在上世纪80年代，她悄悄地安抚了她的受害者之一，为那个人支付了大量的金钱。如今她解释她的抄袭行为是因为她依赖于手抄笔记——而一些其他的历史学家亦是如此，只是没有引起轩然大波而已。令人不解的是，尽管她所承认犯的错足以让一个本科生被开除，古德温女士仍然是哈佛的董事会监督员之一。

mollified  v. 安抚，使平静        dire adj. 可怕的，极端的   board of overseers  校董会监督

  The hunt is now on for the next serial plagiarist. Meanwhile, other charges are also being hurled at celebrity professors. Take compulsive lying. Joseph Elis, the author of a first-rate study of the Founding Fathers, told the students that he had fought in Vietnam when the closest he came to combat was sitting in a university library. Or take hypocrisy. Paul Krugman, a professor of economics at Princeton University，used his column in the New York Times to Savage the Bush administration for its links to Enron, when the fearless professor had himself received $ 37,500 from the energy firm. Or take general flatulence. A squabble between Larry Summers, Harvard's combative new president, and Cornel West, a professor of black studies，alerted the world to the latter's recent work, which turns out to be a mixture of post-structuralist mumbo jumbo, religious rhetoric, and rap music. More should be expected from one of only 17 people to hold the exalted title of university professor at Harvard. 

现在矛头指向了另类的剽窃者，同时名人教授也遭受了一些其他的指控。比如说谎成性，约瑟夫.艾利斯，创作的有关美国开国元勋的著作堪称一流，他告诉他的学生他曾在越南参战，实际上他离战争最近的时候是他坐在大学图书馆的时刻。又比如虚伪，保罗.克鲁格曼是普林斯顿大学的经济学教授，利用他在纽约时报上的专栏指控布什团队与安然公司有所勾结，这位无畏的教授同时收取了能源公司37500元的贿赂。还有欺世盗名。最近在哈佛的咄咄逼人的新校长劳伦斯.萨默和黑人问题研究教授康奈尔.韦斯特之间展开了一场争论，这场争论提醒了大众，康奈尔.韦斯特的最新作品其实只是关于后现代结构主义晦涩难懂的语言，宗教言论以及黑人音乐的大杂烩。作为被冠以哈佛顶级教授的十七位之一，康奈尔.韦斯特带给我们的应不仅于此。

  Is this a case of a few bad apples? In public intellectual (Harvard University Press) Richard Posner, a federal judge, argues that it is the whole barrel. Although the book looks at all sorts of thinkers(not just whorish academics), Mr. Posner suggests that celebrity professors owe their influence to a fraud. They build their reputations tilling some minuscule academic field and then pontificate on Charlie Rose about everything under the sun. 

这仅只是几个害群之马吗？联邦作家理查德.波斯纳在《公共知识分子》（哈佛大学出版）中说这是整个学术风气的败坏。尽管这本书探讨了各种各样的思想家（不单是无良知识分子），波斯纳先生表示名人作家的影响力来源于对公众的欺骗。他们在某些狭隘的专业领域打拼，一旦功成名就便开始在查利.罗斯访谈秀里开始夸夸其谈。

  All true. Yet the judge, himself a leading intellectual for hire, is a little too harsh. Each celebrity professor may be a nauseous beast. Yet there are two big arguments in favor of what they do. Most obviously, they help to circulate ideas. They give educated laypeople a chance to get their information from real authorities rather than mere journalists. They give universities a chance to pay back some of their debt to the societies that nurture them. The fact that America's bestseller lists feature works written by academic authorities amongst the ghost-written memoirs and celebrity suck-up jobs should be cause for rejoicing.

话虽如此，然而法官本人就是受雇的主要知识分子，有一点过于严厉了。可能每个名人作家都是一个令人作呕的野兽，但是至少还有两点是得益于这些名人作家的存在的。首先很明显的是他们帮助了思想的传播。他们给了行业外的人一个机会去从真正的权威获取信息而不是仅仅从杂志上获取。同时他们也给了大学一个机会为养育它们的社会偿还债务。相比枪手代写的自传以及名家阿谀奉承的作品，美国畅销书排行榜更加亲睐学术权威的著作这是一件令人感到高兴的事情。

  The second point is that they help to keep talented people in academia. Some noble souls will always be willing to put up with low salaries in exchange for a chance to pursue the truth，it is hard to imagine John Rawls hustling for a bit of extra cash. But others are inevitably attracted to money and bright lights. A bit of moonlighting is a relatively easy way for universities to keep some of their smarter faculty happy. 

另一点就是他们帮助学术圈保留人才，一些高尚的灵魂总是愿意忍受低廉的工资以换取一个追逐真理的机会。很难想象约翰.罗尔斯会为五斗米折腰。但是大多数人都不可避免地被金钱以及名利所吸引。一些兼职的机会对大学来说是一个相对有效的方式来使得他们聪明的员工驻留在学校。

  What about the costs of this moonlighting? Don't academic superstars short-change their universities? Well, a bit. Yet the ostentatiously ludicrous Mr. West has undoubtedly helped to attract bright students to Harvard in the same way that those rather more serious once did. Surveys suggest that academics who engage in outside activities are actually more likely to do their share of teaching than those who don't. Besides, the link between popular success and lower academic standards is not sharp. Mr. Ambrose and Ms. Goodwin both started "borrowing" other people's work before they hit the big time. 

那这些兼职的代价又是什么呢？这些学术巨星不会有负于校方吗？然而招摇滑稽的韦斯特先生相较那些更严肃的教授，毫无疑问地帮助吸引了聪明学生来就读于哈弗大学。研究表明那些喜欢参加校外活动地学者比那些不喜欢参加的学者更加乐于分享他们的教学。除此之外，在受欢迎的程度与低级的学术水平之间的联系并不紧密。安布罗斯先生和古德温女士都是在他们出名之前就开始借鉴别人的成果。

  Fundamentally, the besetting sin of American academia is not celebrity professors but hyper-specialization. Academics have a bit of crawling along the frontier of knowledge with a magnifying glass, blind to the wide vistas opening up before them, and often reducing the most engaging subjects to tedious debates about methodology. By looking at the big picture, populists restore the excitement of intellectual life. Who has done more for literary studies in the United States: Harold Bloom or the thousands of post-structuralists and their insufferable conferences? Who has more to advance the understanding of  American business: Peter Drucker, who has never been employed by an Ivy League university, or the entire list of contributors to the Journal of Supply Chain Management? 

从根本上来说，美国学术圈的症结并不在于名人教授而是在于过度的专业化。学者们总是手持放大镜在学术前沿匍步爬行而对眼前广阔的天地熟视无睹。并且经常将最有价值的课题演变为关于研究方法的乏味的讨论。从大局来看，平民知识分子则能恢复学术生活的活力。相比之下在美国是谁为文学做得更多呢哈德罗.布鲁姆还是成千上万的后结构主义家以及他们令人难以忍受的会议。谁能够更新美国的商业理念呢是从未被任何常春藤名校所录用的皮特.杜拉克还是《批量供应连锁店管理杂志》的无数投稿人？

  And the market does work. The same media machine that turned Mr. Ambrose and Ms. Goodwin into superstars is now trashing their reputations. The honest majority of celebrity professors improve the world by spreading the fruits of academic research. The dishonest minority pay for their sins with the loss of their cherished reputations.

市场是一双无形的手。媒体曾将安布罗森和古德温推向事业巅峰，现在也正是媒体让他们名声扫地。真正的名家积极地传播学术研究成果来推动社会的发展，而那些欺世盗名之辈最终会丧失他们所重视的名誉，为自己的错误买单。