Nicholas Kristof has written an op-ed “Professors we need you,” in the New York Times. His point is that that professors like me need to write and express ourselves more clearly so all our presumed smartness is accessible to people like Kristof. Partly I agree. But partly I don’t. I also think that people like Kristof and the policy-makers he advocates for need to read more carefully.
This is a sore point with me, especially since I was lectured a couple of times by policy-making types about writing in op-ed length of about 750 words chunks—that is the sort of thing that Kristof is really good at writing.…