This week on X (formerly Twitter), there was a notable dispute between the conservative journalist Charlotte Gill and British humanities academics. In a series of posts which gained wide attention, Gill published the abstracts of projects which had received significant funding. Like the infamous Libs of TikTok account, Gill intended to mock.
British academia may need allies, but I'm not convinced it deserves them. It's become a playground for the bully-activists who feel entitled to public money all while denigrating said public.
I'd like to see academia thrive for the sake of the public good, but it's its own worst enemy these days, not a conservative with a mocking tone.
Sticks and stones. If you don't tolerate noisy dissent, weak and stupid ideas survive and proliferate. Our problem right now is not too much dissent, but not enough. Good ideas will cope. Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.
Those who dominate the academy oppose liberal principles (e.g., freedom of expression, equality-before-the-law).
What is happening, including in US red states, is not attack on the university but is defense of the liberal university.
The great political conflict in democracy is no longer about how much social to have in our democracy (more=left; less=right). It’s about how much liberal principle to have in our democracy, about the basic rights that protect the individual from arbitrary action by the powerful, by the state.
While I don’t know who Gill is and she may have been facetious in her expose, there remain persistent and valid concerns about the quality, rigour and ethical integrity of HE and its outputs, which to the public appears as mission drift. HE underfunding may be partially at fault, with external and commercial funding encouraging political, professional, and in some cases personal biases to flourish among teaching and research staff, leading to corrupt and unreliable results rather than any service to society.
If the truly beneficial outputs from HE were more visible in the public eye, rather than escalating student debt and scandalous and perverted research, perhaps the public would support HE more. Instead there are a few allowed to flourish in HE that do a disservice to the whole sector and the public. If HE tidied up its act and stopped funding those that bring it into disrepute, improved its ethics and showed the public the wonders HE really does deliver, instead of conspiracy theorising about conservative thinktanks, maybe we’d all be better off. HE has the power to do this, with or without extra funding. It should be the change it wants to see, shake off its paranoid biases and get to mapping the course and securing the future for humankind.
Echoing Georgia's sentiment. A problem I intuit is that (insofar as they can be seen as a bloc) ideologically leftishist academics are so deep into their self image as an enlightened group that the situation is not recoverable. Ask why university funding is not a public opinion priority in the current climate and I feel confident to make this prediction of the answer; that conservative media is bad for questioning research quality and people are stupid.
My limited contact with the field suggests that the issues are subsumed by identity. Us (the Elect) vs Them (the stupid public).
HI Thomas, as always, an interesting read. I don't read Gill's outputs and don't want to waste my time scrolling through her posts so can you elaborate on this please:: "Yet it is difficult to defend the work of some of Gill’s targets", which targets do you find hard to defend? Did she target the use of critical theory and autoethnography, which you identify as problematic? Incidentally, that masturbation paper received a lot of fully justified criticism from the Left too and I can't remember seeing anyone defending it. although I can imagine someone did. Its publication may say more about the broken journal system than the lack of critical reflexivity in academia, which, nevertheless does exist as it does everywhere.
British academia may need allies, but I'm not convinced it deserves them. It's become a playground for the bully-activists who feel entitled to public money all while denigrating said public.
I'd like to see academia thrive for the sake of the public good, but it's its own worst enemy these days, not a conservative with a mocking tone.
Sticks and stones. If you don't tolerate noisy dissent, weak and stupid ideas survive and proliferate. Our problem right now is not too much dissent, but not enough. Good ideas will cope. Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.
“Left-liberals” no longer dominate academia.
Those who dominate the academy oppose liberal principles (e.g., freedom of expression, equality-before-the-law).
What is happening, including in US red states, is not attack on the university but is defense of the liberal university.
The great political conflict in democracy is no longer about how much social to have in our democracy (more=left; less=right). It’s about how much liberal principle to have in our democracy, about the basic rights that protect the individual from arbitrary action by the powerful, by the state.
I'm curious why you say these posts got wide attention. It looks like only about 1000 people saw them?
While I don’t know who Gill is and she may have been facetious in her expose, there remain persistent and valid concerns about the quality, rigour and ethical integrity of HE and its outputs, which to the public appears as mission drift. HE underfunding may be partially at fault, with external and commercial funding encouraging political, professional, and in some cases personal biases to flourish among teaching and research staff, leading to corrupt and unreliable results rather than any service to society.
If the truly beneficial outputs from HE were more visible in the public eye, rather than escalating student debt and scandalous and perverted research, perhaps the public would support HE more. Instead there are a few allowed to flourish in HE that do a disservice to the whole sector and the public. If HE tidied up its act and stopped funding those that bring it into disrepute, improved its ethics and showed the public the wonders HE really does deliver, instead of conspiracy theorising about conservative thinktanks, maybe we’d all be better off. HE has the power to do this, with or without extra funding. It should be the change it wants to see, shake off its paranoid biases and get to mapping the course and securing the future for humankind.
Echoing Georgia's sentiment. A problem I intuit is that (insofar as they can be seen as a bloc) ideologically leftishist academics are so deep into their self image as an enlightened group that the situation is not recoverable. Ask why university funding is not a public opinion priority in the current climate and I feel confident to make this prediction of the answer; that conservative media is bad for questioning research quality and people are stupid.
My limited contact with the field suggests that the issues are subsumed by identity. Us (the Elect) vs Them (the stupid public).
HI Thomas, as always, an interesting read. I don't read Gill's outputs and don't want to waste my time scrolling through her posts so can you elaborate on this please:: "Yet it is difficult to defend the work of some of Gill’s targets", which targets do you find hard to defend? Did she target the use of critical theory and autoethnography, which you identify as problematic? Incidentally, that masturbation paper received a lot of fully justified criticism from the Left too and I can't remember seeing anyone defending it. although I can imagine someone did. Its publication may say more about the broken journal system than the lack of critical reflexivity in academia, which, nevertheless does exist as it does everywhere.