Heal where?

I posted earlier a response to some things culture critic Camille Paglia had said on NPR about the problems with the humanities, but she expanded her comments in a column called "Academic, Heal Thyself," so I'll reciprocate.

Paglia (is an amazingly muddled writer and) can't explain the problem clearly, though what she did say led to this (hopefully) clearer explanation of the situation in the arts & sciences.

Essentially, professors are being held accountable at three different levels when no one has ever really formally decided how many and which among them are truly necessary and/or appropriate. There is activity on all three levels, some of it formalized, but much of it not. These are the three levels:

• personal accountability—holding a professor accountable for what she chooses to do
  
• professional accountability—holding a professor accountable for what she does
  
• provincial accountability—holding a professor accountable for what she is (provincial in the sense of academe being like a province of society; I'm just trying to continue the alliteration)

Peer reviewed articles, tenure, fellowships, endowed chairs—these are all ways, more or less, of holding profs accountable. But the questions about these measures are not asked often enough or well enough (and Paglia doesn't really help).

What are we holding profs accountable for? Whom does x standard of accountability unjustly privilege? Whom does it screw over? Who is best at judging accountability? Is there a more coherent system that might work better? What would "working better" look like? In other words, if it is healing academia needs, where should it be applied, and by whom?

No one, it seems, really asks these questions well. And if that is not true, please point me in the right direction.