Anton Alterman said:
"So there is a proposl, or part of one, as you requested. But that, as I said, is the easy part. Scholasticism is reflected in the peer review process, but it is not limited to it. It is also reflected in the hiring process, the tenure process, the politics around conferences, the rating of departments, the mentor system, and basically the whole range of philosophical activity. What it is rooted in is an interesting question; all I can say, as a sort of placeholder, is that every major trend in philosophy tends to have a period of flourishing and a period of decline, and during the decline a narrow and rigid system of beliefs and practices becomes entrenched, substituting for lively and even (dare I say, in my aforementioned childish enthusiasm) revolutionary thought. That is what is usually called scholasticism, and the signs of it are everywhere in analytic philosophy."

Total agreement. Philosophy (academic at least) seems to me to be in a state of decline, which is well described by "narrow and rigid system of beliefs and practices becomes entrenched, substituting for lively and revolutionary thought". However, I cannot see that "the hiring process, the ten-year process, the politics around conferences, etc" necessarily of themselves signify this move toward rigidity, for the rigidity is not simply within the social system which constitutes academic philosophy, but in what academic philosophy actually concerns itself with, and that is surely increasingly inward looking and of little relevance to anybody outside the academy. Aside from the odd exception like myself who has found himself, accidentally as it were, excluded from academic debate, who in the non-academic world would care whether they can access academic philosophy journals? I know several non-academic people of a very philosophical turn of mind, indeed people who would think of themselves "philosophers", and deservedly, and they have flirted with some of the papers in current academic journals and very rapidly given up in disgust.  Who exactly does academic philosophy think its philosophy is for, or pertinent to?