I tend to feel that the absolutely most prestigious positions (not the routine full professor, but the endowed chair at the world-famous institution) should be reserved for those who have “done it all.” Not least because those positions should come with an obligation to be an ambassador for your discipline to the wider world.

I might highlight the importance of the personal in your described “gold standard….”how could *I* teach it? how does it help *me* to think about what *I* already know and teach *me* things that *I* did not know?” Not saying that we shouldn’t think this way; in fact, a lot of the time I think that’s what we’re already doing and calling it something else.

But it calls for respect for many different responses, including the one that goes “Actually, this particular work is basically useless to me.”

Your argument across several posts seems to be in favor of “good books, well written.” But those are terribly slippery concepts, as all your readers here are likely to know. I’m not inside the academy, so I don’t know whether the rubrics used to evaluate scholars’ works are less slippery. If they’re easier to define more clearly across sub-fields, maybe that’s one reason for their persistence?