Our Vice-Chancellor

We are still in the midst of a change that is already so familiar that it does not feel momentous—even though, in all likelihood, it is. The availability of information at hand in an instant is now a mundane fact of life. Yet it has immense significance for academics. I can remember when obtaining information necessitated multiple visits to the library, interlibrary loans, photocopying on an epic scale, card indexes, and all of the paraphernalia of search and recall that has now been replaced by a few keystrokes...

It is not exactly an original observation to write that we live in a celebrity culture. All around us are the signs of the power of celebrity and there is a seemingly endless supply of academic papers and commentaries analyzing the phenomenon. Most of these pieces don’t exactly welcome the phenomenon, it has to be said, but neither do they give much sense of how it might be dislodged.

But has celebrity culture now started to bleed into academe?