Academia

I used to think that all real academics ended up unpopular. If you never ended up unpopular, you never stepped on anyone's toes, you never burnt bridges or inflamed sensibilities, you were probably never an academic. Or at least you were an academic who became an administrator before you got caught.

But I'm beginning to think that some people see it the other way round. There are some academics out there whose idea of burnishing their academic credentials is to be a pain. Then, when some negative response is produced, they will say, "See, I'm a real academic. I have been persecuted. There are people out to get me."

It's a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Apart from agreement, here are maybe three non-compliant responses to academic freedom (which in some circles is the freedom to say anything whether it is academic or not). One, you can ignore the noise. Two, you can attempt to educate the academic. Three, you can attempt to refute the academic.

In the first case, the academic may respond, "See? You are ignoring me. I am being persecuted!" In the second case, the academic may respond, "See? You are trying to brainwash me. I am being persecuted!" In the third case, the academic may respond, "See? You are trying to confuse the issue. I am being persecuted!" I think it may be possible that if you agree with the academic, he might respond, "See? You are merely humouring me. I am being persecuted!"

At this point, most people are already entertaining the thought that the academic ought to be persecuted, and some of them will put that thought into action.

To be sure, there are indeed at least two social forces that are dangers to real academic freedom. The Gnome, as I've repeated almost ad nauseam, identified them as the cult of obedience and the cult of secrecy. In academia, the first one manifests as unwillingness to contest a dominant narrative simply because it is asserted as dominant; it is also manifested when people defend a dominant narrative simply because that is what they were taught or conditioned to do. The second one manifests when people obstruct academic research either actively (by promoting secrecy and hiding information), or passively (by not saying things they know to be true), simply because they prefer things not to be known for the sake of keeping things unknown.

In that sense, academic work in the human domains, as opposed to work in domains which are less human-dependent (mathematics, science, engineering), is more difficult. It's not just nature and your peer community that you are up against, you are also up against Polyamnesia (the goddess of collective lack-of-memory) and other minor deities of the anti-academic persuasion.

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Note: I was raised a university brat. That means I have actually seen all kinds of academics in both their private and public personae. It's all true. But there are also good academics, unfairly-treated academics, and forces that make academics turn on each other and devour themselves. It's a mad world; the ivory towers are sometimes abattoirs and arenas.