The crisis in academia is of course a godsend to the right, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t also real and serious. Indeed, it is much more serious than most people realise. High-profile cancellations are what make the headlines, but they are merely the occasional effect of something deeper: the capture of entire sections of the academic bureaucracy by ideological lobbies, which insist on imposing their beliefs on all and sundry. We have seen this sort of thing before.
“Books, newspapers, official communications and forms issued by administrative departments – all swam in the same brown sauce,” wrote the German philologist Victor Klemperer, referring to the monotony of thought and language in Hitler’s Reich. The sauce is no longer brown, but apart from that, Klemperer could be describing a modern British university.
But if this is the case, why do we not hear more about it from academics themselves? The reasons are complex. Some academics believe in the new agenda. Some see it as a route to personal advancement. But most, I suspect, are simply reluctant to say anything against it for fear of damaging their careers. Academics in general are a craven lot, for all their bold talk of “questioning authority”. There are good sociological reasons for this. Academics live or die by the judgement of their peers – a small group of people all known to each other personally.
Universities have been transformed from cosy self-governing clubs into administrative despotisms, intensifying greatly the pressure to conform. Now academics have to worry not only about censorious peers but also officious line managers rapping them on the knuckles for remarks that “bring the institution into disrepute”. No wonder most of them keep quiet.
—Edward Skidelsky, Newstatemsn.com, 27 February 2024
Skidelsky is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Exeter. He is the director of the Committee for Academic Freedom.
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