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1. Those who are most naive and optimistic often become the most bitter when their Pollyannish beliefs are wrecked on the shoals of reality. I confess this is what happened to me about academia. I truly believed it was place for provocative ideas and debate. And now I'm bitter.
2. People who are outside of this world don't have a clue how bad it is. I must have been told by at least five professors in graduate school, "yeah, those are interesting ideas and plausible, but don't talk or write about them until you get tenure 7 years from now."
3. Sadly, I've given the same advice to friends of mine who are younger. It's just not worth pursuing the truth, if the truth contradicts sacred values. Remember, it *only* takes one person on a hiring committee to raise a red flag to sink your chances of getting hired.
4. Working for 10 years to get a PhD and being so toxic that you can't get a job is absolutely terrible. It's like an athlete suffering a devastating injury at age 19 just before the draft. One wouldn't wish it on anybody.
5. Thus there's a dual world in the academia: The world of those who care about truth and interesting ideas and the world of those who care about social justice and promoting some ideology or another. The ratio is probably 70% truth seekers and 30% ideologues.
6. That sounds great. Truth seekers vastly outnumber the ideologues! Three things. One, most of the truth seekers are too afraid to challenge the ideologues. Two, the ideologues are much more zealous. And three, the ideologues have the support of much of the media.
7. Consequently, professors quickly figure out who is in the justice camp and who is in the truth camp. They then talk to the truth camp about their interesting ideas, have lively debates, and hope that they haven't misjudged their interlocutor.
8. Many who know better end up quietly watching colleagues and even friends get assailed and insulted, possibly fired, for fear that the artillery will turn on them if they speak up. They've made peace with the illiberal system they inhabit. I don't blame them.
9. I mean, I think it is cowardly, especially for those who have tenure. But I also understand. The risks are real. We've seen mobs come after Hsu (forcing his resignation from a prestigious position) and Pinker (no consequences thus far) in the past month or so.
10. Neither had committed publicly to the ultimate taboo hypothesis. And Pinker is very circumspect, although certainly a laudable advocate of free speech. If the mob can come at and cause damage to Pinker, then it can absolutely ruin somebody with less prestige.
11. For the tenured, the fear isn't getting fired. That's not what they are afraid of. It's losing their prestige. Having colleagues disdain them. Losing access to The Atlantic or some other elite outlet. Becoming so toxic that others refuse to work with them.
12. It's easy for me to judge this, because I will likely never be lionized by the MSM. I'm already too toxic. I stated my views early in my career, before I had public prestige to lose. But I am sometimes very disappointed in these professors.
13. They know better. They should heed Chomsky's advice in "The Responsibility of Intellectuals." The goal of intellectuals, put succinctly, should be to challenge dogmas and pursue the truth, no matter how unpleasant and potentially costly.
14. And those who have tenure, unlike the young people I advise to avoid certain topics, can't lose their jobs. They are guaranteed healthy incomes for the rest of their lives. But public approbation is a hell of a drug. And social pressure is an impressive cudgel.
15. And so, as I said, there is a dual world in academia (and in the intelligentsia more broadly). The private world away from the ideologues is fun, exciting, effervescent. Ideas are debated and explored. The public world is dull, tedious, and carefully patrolled by PC police.
16. Imagine this: In a domain (academia) that prides itself on challenging dogmas and entrenched power, professors routinely advise their friends, colleagues, and mentees *to avoid challenging dogmas.* Some of these same professors even *denounce* those who do challenge them!
17. I obviously won't name names, but I've had people privately praise a paper and then publicly condemn me! As I recall, @charlesmurray said this was one of the most hurtful things about "The Bell Curve Wars." The hypocrisy is hard to stomach.
18. People say, "Don't defund academia...it's still awesome. There's lots of good work!" That's probably true. But the social sciences? Forget it. They've been hollowed out; they are a husk floating on the sea of social justice activism. The resistance has been destroyed.
19. Finally, let me preempt one objection that I often get: "But Bo, I've never heard anybody say they were afraid to talk about issues X, Y, or Z. You are just exaggerating." If that's true, it's probably because people think you are an ideologue, lol. They are afraid of you.
20. Now, maybe I'm exaggerating. But I literally don't know a professor in the social sciences who *isn't* a dedicated social justice type who thinks that people are truly free to discuss ideas, theories, arguments openly. There's always the problem of reading your motives.
21. If you chastise people or accuse people of racism, then, yeah, people aren't going confide in you. They are going to be afraid and suspicious of you. Perhaps instead of accusing me of exaggerating, you should ask why nobody will talk to you openly.
22. I was once an optimist. I thought that one major point of academia was to challenge dogmas and entrenched interests, to explore interesting and provocative ideas, to take chances. In the social sciences that is not true if it ever was. A stale orthodoxy prevails.
23. Now I am a pessimist, perhaps even a fatalist. I don't see anything getting better in the social sciences soon. In fact, I see a slow, steady, and inevitable worsening as the impurities ("truth seekers") are boiled out, leaving only a vapid broth of ideologues.
24. Does the GOP demagogue this issue? Yes. But, you know what, it's not as if it's hard to do so. If positions were reversed, Democrats would be crying that academia is a sexist and bigoted white supremacist den that needs to be destroyed.
25. My only optimism comes from this: So many people are aware of this and alienated from academia that they might be able to create countervailing institutions, institutions that are 90-99% truth seekers. If/when those arise, we need to nurture and cherish them.
