But I wonder how one addresses the weaponization of ambiguity that occurs when ordinary academic uses of a term are condemned on the basis of the term's non-academic meaning(s). This is the stuff the culture war is made of, it seems to me.
It's not quite the same issue, but there's also a sleight-of-hand involved in -- for example -- smuggling specific, pseudo-scientific claims about race into public discourse under the cover of broader and more innocuous terms ("population", "demographics").
In both cases I think the divergence between academic and non-academic understandings of the terms is not simply a by-product of miscommunication but the necessary condition for attacking academic work as a danger to the public, civilization, etc, etc.
Wow. "Anti-Wokeism" is tearing itself apart with tone policing, ideological purity tests, and cancellation
who could have seen this coming from people who think scanning texts for "postmodern" vocabulary is intelligent criticism
Anyway Young does indeed appear more concerned with Conversationalist James's hectoring tone and pandering manner than with the fact that he is a fraud who makes things up, so a plague on both your houses, etc, etc
The last point is key and often gets lost. Running universities as brands first and academic institutions second will *always* mean sacrificing academic freedom to PR.
"Running it like a business" is antithetical to running it like a university.
Gauging concern about how and in what interests universities are actually run (as opposed to safe spaces, trigger warnings, etc) is, in my experience, a good way to tell who is concerned about academic freedom and who just wants to find the quickest way to shut other people up.
it's like watching someone turn into James Lindsay by choice
step 1: define your political opponent as bad, make up a term for them that underlines the imputed badness, but let the idea that the term is a neutral analytical one persist
step 2: appeal to common sense/intuition/reasoning as fact (without any real work to show why the point is in fact intuitive or reasonable, let alone factual)
Introductions and summaries have their place but "don't try to read the primary texts, you won't understand them and it will frustrate you," besides being patronizing, is bad advice.
Reading widely and talking with other people, formally or informally, is often a good idea.
Part of the value of primary texts is that they have been and still are open to different readings. Substituting a summary -- as opposed to using one as a help -- closes off that engagement. If you are curious about the ideas in the first place, why would you want to do that?
I also find that moving from incomprehension to (greater) understanding by working through texts or other primary material -- with helps, by all means! -- is a good part of the value of reading and indeed of education in general. Why would I want to short-circuit that?