It was natural for him to be curious about, and experiment with, tobacco. His taste runs to cigars, not cigarettes, and being a part of the college scene only enhances his pleasure. Even though there's only one other regular cigar smoker among the 22 professors in the anthropology department, Pollock realizes that cigar smoking requires the more leisured study that academics can give to anything. The image of smoking a cigar conjures up associations of mahogany-paneled smoking parlors or attending the faculty club at an Ivy League school. The cigar feeds into that sense of self-certainty for an anthropologist.
Pollock welcomes the new wave of younger cigar smokers.
Similar to the increased access to higher education in the 1960s and '70s in the United States, cigar smoking allows people the opportunity to refine their tastes and their own sense of style. Former professor Jivan Tabibian notes the paradox between the increasing popularity of cigar smoking and our no-smoking culture. Education is not that much different. Tabibian notes that academicians often feel that culture begins and is fostered at colleges and universities, then it moves into the masses and becomes watered down. The debate about political correctness is perhaps the most recent example.