I think that intellectual pissing contests are disgusting. In upper middle-class institutions such as Berkley people seem to revel in it. Everybody embraces the imaginary hierarchy so completely that watching them do it makes me gag. I think that this phenomenon has been intensified by the relative disappearance of the middle class. People no longer aspire to academic excellence because of their passion or enjoyment for the subject they study. Instead they believe that they need to be among the elite in order to have a happy and satisfying life.