Thread by @clim8resistance

It is literally a reserve army of liberal opinion.

I've held this view for a long time. What triggered it was noticing that there were research 'schools' which were closed to anyone of a 'wrong' persuasion.

https://twitter.com/clim8resistance/status/1225854505461460992

Whether deliberately or not, this massive flabby rump of "higher education" has been created and services a particular agenda, both directly and indirectly.

Directly: notice the existence of research organisations set up on university campuses (often billionaires' vanity projects) to 'research' sustainability/environment/climate change.

You cannot get in if you are not ideologically aligned to the school.

(This happens in other areas of study too, and the observation arose during a conversation with an Irish academic about a right-on school. But I'm more interested in the green stuff than gender/race/etc.)

This extend up the HE food chain. Funding bodies are aligned to the 'sustainability' agenda. Go and check out the ESRC's website, for instance. It's all green Utopian waffle.

And indirectly: the ideological alignment of funding and research agendas creates a particular *culture*. They rub shoulders, they hob nob and they quaff. And it all rubs off.

"Very interesting research" just turns out to reflect the values of this class.

This is not a unique observation.

@Martin_Durkin has observed the dynamics of the New Class.

And Nassim Nicholas Taleb has identified the Intellectual Yet Idiot. But he's a massive jerk.

@Martin_Durkin There's also @HdxAcademy, which has observed that "In many fields, scholars’ backgrounds and commitments are insufficiently diverse."

heterodoxacademy.org

@Martin_Durkin @HdxAcademy A true story. You really do not need to be very clever to be an academic in today's world. You can develop the competence to do academic work while being completely average. If you conform, you're unlikely to be challenged.

@Martin_Durkin @HdxAcademy Many people are drawn to academia because they believe it is how they can "make the world a better place". As noble as that sounds, they tend not to be curious about whether the institutions they become part of are really capable of delivering such a transformation.

@Martin_Durkin @HdxAcademy And academics are very sensitive to having their motivations and perspectives challenged. Because they just want to make the world a better place... How *dare* you suggest otherwise?!

The notion that academia is where such ideas should be challenged/contested has evaporated.

@Martin_Durkin @HdxAcademy Academics are set on a path towards "making the world a better place", the direction of which has been set by institutions, and broader political agendas.

If you have a different idea, never mind a different motivation, you face obstacles from the outset, not least socially.

@Martin_Durkin @HdxAcademy These are the dynamics and anatomy of one limb -- a major limb -- of the blob.

Lastly, an anecdote...

@Martin_Durkin @HdxAcademy In my first week of Uni, I went to a 'study skills' workshop for mature students. It was being run by a PhD candidate.

"Don't revise in the pub", she said. "Don't eat lots of chips the day before an exam".

My heart sank.

@Martin_Durkin @HdxAcademy "If you're ambidextrous, like I am", she boasted, "you can make your fellow students jealous by writing your exam answer plan with your left hand, while writing your answer with your right hand".

She was a f***ing idiot. Lots of academics are.

@Martin_Durkin @HdxAcademy There is, in my view, only one way to explain it: exactly a reserve army of opinion. A glorified think tank. A massive pool of self-justifying, special-pleading bullshit, which can at the same time claim to have championed truth as claim there is no such thing.

@Martin_Durkin @HdxAcademy Postscript...

NOT ALL ACADEMICS!

There are many brilliant academics.

The point is, I think we need to start discriminating.