Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Academia: If the Left Keeps Collapsing and the Right is Ascendant

Well, you know.
If the left keeps losing power and the right gains more influence...even if the former remains much more influential...academia's response will be to hit the rhetorical panic button, declaring, in effect, that it must be the spokesman for the left. No matter what happens, academia will spin it into a reason for "centering" or "foregrounding" (their stupid terms) leftist thought. 
   Or, y'know, it won't give any reason at all.
   Academia is the source of the mind virus, and its main vector of infection.
   Needless to say, I'm not in favor of suppressing leftist thought. But universities--especially public universities--at least have an obligation to make their bias known. There needs to be some reliable system of rating them for bias. Actually, I think Heterodox Academy has a system already.
   Universities--especially public ones--also have an obligation to maintain institutional neutrality with respect to controversial issues. But that's not going to happen at most schools now. So at least they need to make their biases known. Or somebody else needs to do it for them.
   Ideally, states and alumni need to cut funds and donations to universities with leftist bias.
   Schools care about (a) reputation and (b) money. And the two are related.
   At any rate. When the cultural pendulum swings leftward, academia will ride the wave...in fact, it'll commonly have started the wave. When the culture swings rightward, it'll represent itself as the brave and lonely voice of dissent and the downtrodden.
   But the most important thing here: states need to take the money away.

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