The Chroncile of Higher Education has picked up on a Moneylaw debate over the role of collegiality in faculty hiring and promotion.  Jim Chen (Dean, Louisville) blogs a wonderful comment from the Chronilce of Higher Education piece in You Like Me:

The really good scholars are self-confident, and that confidence allows them to treat everyone else with respect and kindness. They are excited about ideas, and they are willing to share. Most of all, they are willing to collaborate — they are the ones organizing symposia, inviting guest speakers, cultivating graduate students, and just generally creating the kind of atmosphere where good work flourishes and everyone benefits.

It’s amazing to me how many times I’ve seen people — “established” scholars and younger students alike — give absolutely terrible papers, and then walk around snubbing everyone around them. Insecurity leads to intellectual isolation; people become greedy, self-centered, and unwilling to share. When they do present things, they are often incoherent because they don’t care a whit about sharing their thoughts with the community; indeed sometimes it seems like they try to intentionally make their arguments confusing in order to make themselves seem smarter. It backfires — they end up sounding pompous and priggish, but they don’t end up sparking fresh ideas or adding anything new to the discourse.