Back-Slappin’ Academics

Competition for the Trudeau Scholarships, $50,000 per annum boons for graduate students committed to making the world more likely to conform to the late Mr. Trudeau’s visions, is heating up. So are the requirements, as is evidenced by one bureaucrat’s sniff that only “TRULY exceptional” students need apply:

“Plainly put, Trudeau Scholars are expected to become leading national and international figures in their fields and in Canada.”

In describing a past TRULY exceptional winner of the award, the same bureaucrat noted that, “Bob [not real name] is a brilliant student…”

Immodesty is seemingly a limited commodity in academia nowadays. Judging from this observation, banality apparently is not.