Academia and the Rhetorical Situation

While reading the article about academic writing I was struck by a theme that the author repeated on several occasions:

Academic writing and research may be knotty and strange, remote and insular, technical and specialized, forbidding and clannish—but that’s because academia has become that way, too.

 In effect Mr. Rothman's point was that we should not expect academic works to appeal or address a larger base because they are intended for academia. In the rhetorical context of academia, it makes sense to write this way, but I think Mr. Rothman is overlooking the real issue at hand in his defense of academic writing. Academia has largely isolated itself from the rest of our culture has worked itself into a self-perpetuating cycle of pandering to itself. This separation of academia and mainstream society can have dire ramifications when the people shaping public opinion and policy are not the same people who have the necessary knowledge to draft such policy. We can see examples of this in places like environmental and economic policy, where the people engaging in the rhetorical situation often misrepresent academic findings for personal and political gains. Meanwhile the academics who have devoted their careers to the very same topics do little more than sit back and grumble among themselves about how their findings are being misused or ignored. Ultimately I find myself agreeing with Nicholas Kristof in many respects, although I think that the problem goes beyond simple outreach. There needs to be a cultural change within academia and a shift towards opening up its vast wealth of knowledge to the public.