Up From Theory.

"The problem of theory was never the philosophy it drew on but the absence of a public forum to criticize it, expand it for intelligent adults, and correct it. The return of the linking intellectuals -- adept in philosophical thought but not beholden to the academy -- could restore a heritage of speaking to the public about the professors, and, more importantly, could get the professors speaking honestly and intelligibly to us." Mark Greif, an old college friend of mine, discusses the Death of Theory in The American Prospect. Compared to most other academic disciplines, American historians seem to have side-stepped the worst excesses of echo-chamber theorizing...but it can seem a different world not all that far away.