It is interesting that both Roy and Bruce mention anti-semitism. One  
theory has always been that "outsider status" is somehow necessary for  
these communities to flourish. In 18th century Europe, the systematic  
exclusion of women from the academy encouraged the female-led salons  
to flourish. Many of the bloomsberries had hoped for fellowships that  
didn't, in the event, appear.

Two questions:

1. Are creative communities that develop outside universities  
qualitatively different from those inside? Put differently, does an  
academic appointment not encourage the kind of risk-taking and big  
intellectual leaps that outsider communities seem to support?

2. Does it matter if outsider status is a matter of "exclusion" or  
"choice"? If you think of RAND, for example, its participants worked  
largely outside the academy, but they were hardly excluded.

Evelyn Forget