by Phil Butler, New Eastern Outlook:

What is the price of a Yale professor? If you wanted to buy one lock, stock, and barrel, depending on what you want to use one (or two) for, the cost could be pretty steep. More often than not, today’s Ivy League know-it-all types seem like soap salespeople. Whoever supplies the grant money gets the squeaky brain grease.

Take the current superheated Russophobia as an example. Many of the western world’s most successful and respected professors publish “research” that looks more like tabloid journalism. It’s the trend. Or, I should say, outlandish analysis is now acceptable in any form as long as the desired “truth” is presented. A recent study at Foreign Policy entitled “The World Economy No Longer Needs Russia,” is just dumb from the title to the summary. Yes, I just said Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenfel, and Steven Tian are both obtuse with reality. Or else they feel confident that we are. Let’s take their high-profile genius analysis from the start, just to show you what I mean.