Politics in the Academy: The Same Old Song I try not to write the same column twice, at least not knowingly. But I have just come back from still another conference on originalism held, as it was last year, at the University of San Diego law school, and I was struck once again by the academic purity of the occasion. Originalism is the view that interpretation is a historical activity in which one attempts to identify the meaning a text had at the moment of its production, either by looking into the intention of an author (what did he have in mind?) or by determining what the words an author used would have meant to the literate and rational reader at the time. The latter is called public meaning originalism. Thirty years ago, originalism was dismissed as an outmoded interpretive methodology and stigmatized as a conservative strategy for binding us to the dead hand of the past. Now originalism is on its way to becoming an orthodoxy as more and more scholars once skeptical of the faith declare themselves to be believers. As the number of adherents grows, so do disagreement about just what originalism is and how to apply it. Hence the annual conference, which has funding for at least the next five years. I have been arguing for years that academic activity is distinctive and that it is wrong, both descriptively and normatively, to mix it up with other kinds of activity, especially with politics. In response, I am often asked how a discussion, either in a class or at a conference like this one, could be kept purely academic if the subject matter on the table is itself inherently political. The answer is really quite simple: Political subject matter could be the starting point of an intellectual inquiry in the course of which the political urgency originally attached to it is replaced by the academic urgency of getting something right, where "right" means accurately described or analyzed or rendered more problematic. In the academic world not reaching a resolution is a good thing. That is what happened at the conference. A number of papers were framed by issues currently being contested in Congress and the courts, notably the issues of whether the individual mandate at the heart of the Obama health care plan is constitutional, and whether the children of undocumented aliens are citizens. It would be an understatement to say that these questions provoke heated discussion in the world at large, but at the conference they were not themselves debated; no one stood up to say that he was for or against the individual mandate, or that citizenship standards should be relaxed or tightened. Instead participants argued (vigorously, but politely and with unfailing generosity) about where and with what methods inquiry into the questions should begin. Actually asking and answering them was left to other arenas (the arenas of the legislature, the courts and the ballot box) where their direct, as opposed to academic, consideration would be appropriate. The urgency presiding over the occasion was not the urgency of doing something, but of understanding something, and everyone agreed that the project of understanding was an endless one and that the best we could do in two days would be to expose areas of concern that had not yet been recognized or adequately formulated. The comment heard most often at the end of a session was, " You've given me a lot to think about." Music to the academic's ears. The spirit of the meeting was nicely captured by a reported telephone conversation between one of the panelists and his young daughter. She asked, "What have you been doing all day?" The professor of law replied, "Talking about the Constitution." But, she persisted, "What have you been doing ?" She couldn't quite get her mind around the idea that just talking all day could be doing something, and many members of the public, not to mention a boatload of legislators, are with her. But that's what we do when we're doing the job properly - talking (or writing about) issues without ever coming up with a policy proposal or with an argument for supporting a party or a candidate. Indeed, doing more than talking would be a betrayal of the enterprise, which might move one to ask why an enterprise so unproductive of measurable, practical results should be supported. Why should funds be authorized to bring 29 scholars to San Diego so that they can sit around all day gabbing and eating unhealthful pastry? There is no good answer to that question, nor should there be.