Without Authority

"Academic politics is so bitter because the stakes are so low." This is perhaps the most celebrated bon mot about higher education, often attributed to Henry Kissinger. But the earliest references point to a Columbia University political-science professor, Wallace S. Sayre, who coined a somewhat more elaborate version: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." The oldest evidence I've found is in The Wall Street Journal of December 20, 1973, which attributed the line to Sayre. Herbert Kaufman, a colleague of Sayre's, told me that the way Sayre usually put it was "The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low," and that Sayre originated the quip by the early 1950s.