From Thomas Henry Huxley, 1883:

I have said before, and I repeat it here, that if a man cannot get a literary culture of the highest kind from his Bible, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and Hobbes, and Bishop Berkeley, to mention only a few of our illustrious writers--I say, if he cannot get it out of those writers, he cannot get it out of anything; and I would assuredly devote a very large portion of the time of every English child to the careful study of the models of English writing of such varied and wonderful kind as we possess, and, what is still more important and neglected, the habit of using language with precision, with force, and with art.

Structuralism, Marxism, post-structuralism and the like are no longer the sexy topics they were. What is sexy instead is sex. On the wilder shores of academia an interest in French philosophy has given way to a fascination with French kissing. In some circles, the politics of masturbation exert far more fascination than the politics of the Middle East.

Nothing could be more understandable. There are advantages in being able to write your PhD thesis without stirring from in front of the TV set. In the old days, rock music was a distraction from your studies; now it may well be what you are studying. Intellectual matters are no longer an ivory-tower affair, but belong to the world of media and shopping malls, bedrooms and brothels.

Thanks to Jim C. for the Huxley quote.

UPDATE: There's more at Tightly Wound.