It’s Sayre’s law.
Sayre’s law is named after Wallace Stanley Sayre (1905–1972), U.S. political scientist and professor at Columbia University.
On 20 December 1973, the Wall Street Journal quoted Sayre as: “Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.” Political scientist Herbert Kaufman, a colleague and coauthor of Sayre, has attested to Fred R. Shapiro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, that Sayre usually stated his claim as “The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low”, and that Sayre originated the quip by the early 1950s.
There’s also the narcissism of small differences.
The narcissism of small differences (der Narzißmus der kleinen Differenzen) is “the phenomenon that it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and ridiculing each other” – “such sensitiveness […] to just these details of differentiation”.[1]
How, exactly, do you pronounce shibboleth, again?
It’s obligatory!
I independently derived this back in University, after hearing about the way there were two Star Trek fan clubs in Toronto for a time in the 1980s due to the leaders of the two groups refusing to talk to each other. Wasn’t until many years later I found out it already had a name.
My other related ‘discovery’ back in University was, basically, ‘There are people out there whose primary purpose in life is to find a small enough pond that they can be a big fish in it.’
I figure that can be one of the causes of Sayre’s Law: once a person like this has found their small pond, they will often greet any potential challengers out of all proportion to the actual worth of the pond, because it is theirs and they don’t want to have to search for another small pond they can be in charge of.
Immortalized in the conflict between the People’s Front of Judea and the People’s Judean Front.
Splitters!
(Oh, oops. That’s what that link went to.)
Ah, I see you’ve met Steve?
I never do.
Seeing the genitive case being used in German anymore gives me the same thrill of pleasure as seeing the subjunctive mood used in English.
Jenora Feuer:
So did I. Even after I’d heard other people use it too, I didn’t realise it was a proper quote from a proper person until quite recently.
Another thing I learned in years of working in academia is that if you ask five academics a question you’ll get ten answers. Someone famous is *bound* to have said something similar.
Sibboleth.
And while I get the point, I fear that describing the stakes as low isn’t a sentiment shared by the people feeling excluded.
Sili @ 10 –
What people feeling excluded?