When people use the term, it is obviously not a reference to just "knowing things" but rather 1) the distinct socialization one gets in academia that leaves one rather divorced from the real world (and I say that as an academic), and 2) hyperspecialization to the point one loses the big picture, a problem in education today.
I knew one or two profs like that when I was studying, but the vast majority of people in academia are just regular people with families and interests outside of academia. It's kinda disheartening to see the anti-intellectual bent this discussion has taken.
> but the vast majority of people in academia are just regular people with families and interests outside of academia
If most people realized that, we would have much less problems: academics are often shrouded in an aura of virtue and wisdom they don't deserve in the least. Like what you see in this thread, that their narrow (or worse, illusory) knowledge will somehow help them being good rulers/leaders.
This is probably a much better way of putting it than mine.
However, scorn and ridicule are also reasonable at times. And it started a conversation.
I've worked and known many, many academics in my life. I'm sorry, but if you think this is anti-intellectual, then there are some basic things you don't understand about people.
Academics really are naive and out of touch people. In a weird sort of way, being an academic means sacrificing your personal growth for either a) a deep love of their area of research or b) love of teaching. This means that the wider life skills one gains as an adult, they never get. They get to avoid consequences for being wrong but at quite a price. One of the worst things I have seen are what happens to academics who leave for the private sector later in their career. When they can't make it in the private sector, it is pretty crushing to many of them.
That being said, one of the prices of being an academics is being very "out of touch" with the rest of society. And that will take away your ability to read political situations or govern things well. Academics injecting themselves into such situations will almost always be disastrous as a result. Its just a consequence of how academia works. It doesn't have to be that way, but unless academia changes profoundly, it will be.
As an OP here, I'd like to mention that I don't agree with this characterization at all. When I said academics are divorced from the real world, I was speaking of them largely conforming to particular demographics that make them a bit blind to broader trends in electoral politics and culture.
Academics do just fine picking up "adult life skills". Only a small minority of academics find academic employment from their mid-thirties or so on, so everyone moves to other sectors for the rest of their lives. It is not as if they are just hapless misfits or on the dole for the rest of their lives.
That seems like the definition of anti-intellectualism because you're making an implicit value judgement that developing the skills to be successful in a corporate environment is more legitimate that developing the skills to be a successful researcher and/or teacher. Many people who began their careers in the private sector would make lousy academics, but few would hold that against them as evidence they failed to develop broader life skills.
Although in reality it probably doesn't make sense to talk about the private sector as some homogeneous representation of the rest of society in the first place. Many people outside of academia famously struggle to adapt their presumably well developed "wider life skills" to significantly different environments, like switching industries or going between large companies and small ones. There's really no universally applicable life skills or experience that everyone except academics pick up.
> there are some basic things you don't understand about people.
> Academics really are naive and out of touch people
That's a hilarious juxtaposition of sentences.
Seems entirely congruent.
The first sentence seems to suggest: you are naive.
The second sentence indicates the writer believes many academics are naive.
Where is this contracts you allude to?
I definitely agree existing in a particular silo gives you a narrow view of the world, but I've never understood the idea that the silo of academia is somehow worse or less representative of the broader world than small town living or being in the military or any of the other silos many people exist in. The real world almost by definition is made up of the combination of all the things people do and the environments in which they exist.
Obviously being a truck driver is different than being a physics professor. But I'm not sure there is much of a coherent argument supporting the idea that the former exists in the real world while the latter does not.
People use the term to manage their cognitive dissonance. They do not want to put the work in to become educated, and do not want to admit that this puts them at distinct disadvantage in many ways that matter.
> distinct socialization one gets in academia that leaves one rather divorced from the real world
It is absurd claim. Academia is part of real world. It is not an isolated island cut off from everything else.
It is no more divorced from real world then any other group of people. No more divorced then rural farmer are divorced from it, businessmen are divorced from it, sports fans are divorced from it. They are all having limits of understanding other groups.
Tech workers as likely more divorced from average person even.
At this stage, one would have to be intentionally ignorant of the history of academia and its current trajectory to believe that, or lying.
Rural farmers are responsible for whatever the fuck this is supposed to be:
Course name at Melbourne University:
Global Intersections: Gender, Race, Class - What is the relationship between gender, globalisation and identity?
Queering Europe -investigates the social and linguistic contexts, cultural production, and representation of LGBTIQA+ communities in Europe.
Gender, Care and Everyday - How do we care for ourselves, others and our environment? What are the dynamics of gender, race, sexuality, class, ability, and citizenship in relation to care?
Have you bothered to look at the literature the whack jobs who take these courses put out?
This redacted is paid for, supported by, and student loans granted by our governments here in Australia.
The worst marriage of government and academia modern democratic society has seen.
I dont see any issue with those courses. There is nothing wrong with studying any of those topics.
And I dont know what your remark about rural farmers is meant to be. My point was, they are in general fearful of cities and are out of touch with cities where majority of people live, academia and basically any not-rural-farmer subculture.
That is true.
The problem is not in that they are divorced from the real world. The problem is in the model that science get financial support, which leads to the existence of filtering that eliminates from the science anyone who is not far-left loyal dog and supporter of the "current thing".
Does that include all the money spent on military resesarch?
I don't know that I'd characterize the military industrial complex, especially the private parts, as being made of up far-left types.
It seems that funding has become much more political lately, the problem getting worse.
> far-left loyal dog
Is this how a 60-day old account has negative karma?
Maybe the problem is that your ideas don't withstand any academic scrutiny, since they aren't based on sound research or well-reasoned arguments.
> Maybe the problem is that your ideas don't withstand any academic scrutiny
My ideas do withstand the reality. Unlike their so called "sound researches" or "well-reasoned arguments".
So negative karma? I was banned on several platforms simply for saying that all available to me evidences point out that covid was developed in the lab, while ALL the scientist licked the communist China's boots and said that it is SCIENTIFICALLY impossible. So what does the karma means in front of the truth?
Yes, that is the worst part about that letter. It destroyed a lot of credibility. It may have done more damage to public health than COVID - and in the long term almost certainly will.
That is just not true. By not true I mean "a lie".
Yes, this was, obviously, my intended usage.
Not the wet lettuce straw man usage posited by the other comment.