Word: popkin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Popkin for this Yuletide dream...
Samuel L. Popkin, lecturer on Government, said yesterday that the decision will have "absolutely no impact." He said, "The decision may protect some other countries, but it definitely will not affect Indochina...
...POPKIN'S DEFENSE presupposed that a clear distinction can be drawn between those who are scholars and those who are mere citizens. His argument is based on a corporatist vision of society, where different people play different roles, and have a correspondingly different legal status. The claims of reporters to a journalists' privilege are analogous in their assumption of a social division of labor which concentrates the investigative function in a distinct class. Popkin and other academics could be the brains of society, and reporters would be the eyes--leaving the rest of us to fight for the positions below...
...scary thing about the arguments of Popkin and the press is the way their assumption of the continued existence of a definable investigative elite undermines our ideals of an open, democratic society. In an ideal democratic situation, the continuation of a free and open exchange of ideas would be insured by the activities of each citizen as a "searcher" for the truth. To some extent, every citizen would be part scholar and part journalist. When Popkin and the press claim that as investigators they are an "exceptional" occupational group, they threaten to make our failure to achieve these valid democratic...
White's basic arguments apply with double force to Popkin's notion of a scholar's privilege. Even today it is difficult to distinguish a scholar from a non-scholar--after all, most of us have written term papers in our time. And who is to say that any man on the street will not write a book before Popkin, at the customary leisurely scholarly pace, gets around to publishing his findings. In a country of well-educated and supposedly inquiring citizens, Popkin's claim to be an "exception" by virtue of his occupation borders on the offensive...