| Thursday, October 20, 2005 |
| ACADEMIA NUTS |
That's true, I agree with him. The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it, I'd be ashamed of myself.[i] (Noam Chomsky)
One would think that in universities some of the finest minds of their time come together to work out new ideas and solutions. Sadly, this is not the case. The most closed minds I come across tend to be in the academic world. As an undergrad I spent years being dismissed as a fringe conspiracy nut because I kept bringing up the Project for the New American Century. I was saying that this very sinister group of people were planning some extremely serious and nasty business. Given that they now hold the positions of US Vice-President, head of the World Bank, US ambassador to the UN, US Secretary of State and many more and have begun a series of illegal wars I feel I have been somewhat vindicated.
I am still in the academic world. I tutor in a university and wanted to do a PhD but the more I look at it the less I want to do it.
The way the academic world works is that you have to specialise to become an expert in your own field and therefore gain repute by virtue of knowing so much about one or other matter. This narrows the focus of enquiry and sometimes seems to lead to a situation whereby academics can only see the world through the single lens of whichever specific area they study. Thinking 'outside the box' (sorry, that is an ugly phrase) or using unconventional sources (particularly from the web) is not always encouraged and is often frowned upon. I don't want this to happen to me.
Part of it is a generational thing. A majority of the employed Doctors and Professors studied from books and journals - not the web. This can lead to a sort of snobbery regarding web sources. You often hear that "there is a lot of rubbish on the web." Well, of course there is but there is a lot of rubbish written in textbooks as well. Academics happen to be very quick to point this out if someone they don't like has written a book.
Post-modern conceptions about the nature of truth may be another barrier between the public and the academic world. It is a form of arrogance to claim that one knows 'the truth' definitively about any one thing and in response to this much academic literature is worded in less forthright language. As Orwell pointed out in 'Politics and the English Language'
"It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think."
This style of language is also part of the reason that most of the work done in social science departments simply passes the public by.
So is keeping people away from alternative sources of information a deliberate attempt muzzle debate? A term often used in the American labour press was "the bought priesthood". This referred to "the media and the universities and the intellectual class, that is, the apologists who sought to justify the absolute despotism that was the new spirit of the age and to instil its sordid and demeaning values".[1] Not sure if this is true for the US, I think its only partially true here.
I think that many social scientists are far more concerned with the reactions of their peers in the academic world to their work than (i) the Aristotelian, Socratic and Platonic ideas of the 'Intellectual Tradition' (that is, in short, the duty to reflect on the truth then report it back to as many people as possible), (ii) the reaction of the public at large, or (iii) any impact the work may have on societal structures.
[1] From 'Democracy and Education' Noam Chomsky, Mellon Lecture, Loyola University, Chicago 19/10/1994. Available at http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9410-education.html
[i] On being accused of betraying the intellectual tradition. |
posted by michael the tubthumper @ 7:46 pm  |
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| 5 Comments: |
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i don't if i am really a non-academia type - i tutor in a university and spend a lot of time on campus but i find the closed mindedness of some of the professors extremely frustrating.
also, funding bodies are often loaded in such a way as to make sure funding for phds and masters courses most often go to people who are doing topics that are 'safe'
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missed a word out... that should read i don't know if....
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Michael, I think (or should I say "in my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that") you are accomplishing with your blog in its first week, what I have been yearning to accomplish in mine for the past year...writing excellent work that is all your own (not so many damn quotes with "witty" one sentence commentary). There I go using those damn quotation marks again...anyway, nice piece.
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thanks JOS. nice thing to say.
p.s. don't put yourself down. i like your blog
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I agree with so much of what you say.
Some days back, I gave one of my students a paper to write. After she'd read it in front of other senior teachers, she was asked about her sources. When she referred to web sources, she was grilled on her methods. Words that came up frequently for the internet were: haphazard, cluttered, non-academic! I had to jump in to defend the web (and the poor student), but the prejudices are incredible.
Because the university where I had studied allows a more interdisciplinary approach to literature, my Ph.D. proposal was to do more with 'history' (no, not English History) than with 'literature'. However, the university where I work almost did not grant me study leave for this very reason!
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Name: michael the tubthumper
Home: Glasgow, Scotland
About Me: Tub-Thumper - 1. A speaker or preacher who for emphasis thumps the pulpit; a violent or declamatory preacher or orator; a ranter. This blog will be a combination of reasoned posting somedays and an occasional rant.
28 years old, I write and research for a couple of websites and also do my own stuff.
See my complete profile
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| Thumping The Tub Video |
I have made a few short movies. Here are links to free downloads for them all in the order that I made them (as far as I can remember). Please feel free to use, distribute, disagree with, shout at etc etc
Praise The Lord and Pass The Ammunition
This was a REAL song from World War 2. I was so stunned by it I had to make a movie
How Far Is It From Here to Nuremberg
This is my attempt at a video for the excellent, if worrying, David Rovics (see links) song
What You Like
I believe the word for this is "splenetic". Only 20 seconds long.
Imperial Measures
What is going on in Iraq? Some things you knew, some you didn't. A couple of bits of info are out of date now.
Wish You Were Here
Wish You Were Here is a 6 minute film about the unprecendted rate of animal extinction we are currently experiencing
Gorillas and us
I don't like creationism, neither did Douglas Adams
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U.S. MONETARY Cost of the War in Iraq - other people are spending too, and the human cost is much higher
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| some of the blogs I look at |
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| Arse of the month |
The inaugural 'Arse of the month' award goes to our very own Scottish First Minister Jack (Joke) McConnell. He seems to spend a lot of his time sucking up to english politicians and yet it appears they don't even know his name. Follow the link to see..
NODOBY KNOWS ME
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| It's All Gone Scottish |
A list of some other Scottish sites and blogs most of which, if not all, are pro-independence. I don't agree with content on all of them obviously. Some are Scots at home, others abroad.
The Scottish Patient
Kim Ayres
Our Scotland
average tosser
1820
big stick small carrot
J. Arthur MacNumpty
World of Jack McConnell
The Firefox Chronicles
Independence 1st
Radio Free Scotland
Scots and independent
Scottish Independence Guide
TCOAW
Small Nation
Inveresk Street Ingrate
Radical Glasgow
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If you like this site and think it is time to start getting informed here are a few real favourites of mine that will help you blow away the corporate and government propaganda you are constantly bombarded with. It is added to every so often.
politics and the english language
Beyond Hope
the gore exception
your tax dollars at work
a cultural chernobyl
choose life (not trainspotting)
shooting an elephant
a war crime within a war crime...
the menace of liberal scholarship
the modern era of law
naming the problem
the four ages of sand
a news revolution has begun
come september
money is the cause of poverty
countering corporate power
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i don't if i am really a non-academia type - i tutor in a university and spend a lot of time on campus but i find the closed mindedness of some of the professors extremely frustrating.
also, funding bodies are often loaded in such a way as to make sure funding for phds and masters courses most often go to people who are doing topics that are 'safe'