¡°I have been an academic for lo these 20 years and the bitchiness of some supposedly high-minded people still never ceases to startle?me.¡±

When Sarah Churchwell, professor of American literature at the University of East Anglia, let out this electronic scream on Twitter recently, one of her followers responded: ¡°Isn¡¯t this Sayre¡¯s Law at work?¡±

Wallace Sayre, a political scientist at Columbia University, is supposedly the true source of the adage that ¡°academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small¡±. Henry Kissinger just wished he¡¯d said?it.

This week in our features section, we ask whether academia is indeed a particularly ¡°rude¡± environment, considering the spectrum that runs from no-holds-barred critique to vicious personal abuse, via pitched warfare over personal interests.

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Scholarly debate is supposed to be a full-contact sport, and much is made in our feature of the demolition jobs and score-settling to be found in academic reviews.

The effects of bruising interactions depend on context and the individual response of the person on?the receiving end

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In the case of peer review, the identity of the critic is often withheld, but as our examples illustrate, some are perfectly willing to take the consequences of publicly lambasting a rival ¨C they may even revel in it.

Others avoid confrontation at all costs (it is not unknown for reviewers to pull out of delivering a promised piece on the grounds that ¡°I can¡¯t possibly review this book ¨C it¡¯s terrible¡±).

If fear of causing offence can undermine academic debate, though, what about rudeness?

In some instances it may be little more than a pantomime act ¨C David Starkey makes a living from his reputation as the ¡°rudest man on TV¡±.

But the effects of bruising interactions depend on context and the individual response of the person on the receiving end (there¡¯s nothing to celebrate in the story recounted to me by a?woman who was prodded by an aged don as she admired a rose in a Cambridge quad. ¡°What do you think you¡¯re doing?¡± he asked. ¡°Smelling the roses,¡± she replied. ¡°Well don¡¯t. We don¡¯t like people smelling our roses,¡± he snapped).

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Consider the case of Sir John Plumb, master of Christ¡¯s College, Cambridge, and one of the leading historians of his generation.

Among his distinctions was being described in obituaries both as ¡°one of the great characters of British university life¡± and ¡°the rudest man in Cambridge¡±.

, Neil McKendrick, then master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, lauded Plumb as a?¡°hugely influential teacher, the most popular lecturer and the most prolific writer¡±, but he also noted that he ¡°was not a paragon of all the old-fashioned virtues of charm, restraint and tolerance¡±.

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Despite this, McKendrick continued, most of Plumb¡¯s friends concluded that ¡°the stimulation was worth the aggravation, the fun was worth the fury¡±.

Some others, however, experienced only the aggravation and the fury.

One former colleague felt sufficiently bruised that its obituary of Plumb ¡°gave insufficient impression¡± of what he described as a ¡°compulsion to set everyone down (apart from, perhaps, royalty of his acquaintance)¡±.

¡°There have been many great men whom one is delighted not to have known,¡± he wrote. ¡°For all his brilliance and dedication, Jack Plumb remains one I am sorry I did.¡±

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john.gill@tsleducation.com