Critiques about academics not being "revolutionary" tend to neglect working in higher ed is a job or the possibility of higher ed becoming a public good. And also tends to fetishize "real politics" with revolution, which most people, including anti-academics, aren't doing, lolz.

A lot of the critiques of certain sectors working in higher ed (since many people work in academia doing various jobs) neglects that those positioned as knowledge producers are still workers in an industry. Terms like "elite" being used so flexibly tend to neglect this.

So a lot of those who work in academia as knowledge producers can be pedantic, weaponize claims to expertise like a cudgel, and are materially bound up with the production of "official" knowledge. Does this make them an elite the same as other elites? Or could we be more precise?

And many of those who identify as "radical academics" tend to focus on how "subversive" their scholarship is, as if "subversive" scholarship isn't also bound up to the market relations like that of their "non-subversive" colleagues that they might publicly critique.

And yet, we don't often have as image of the "radical academic" a person who engages in participatory democracy, i.e. organizing with others (not just critiquing the academy as "elite"), to challenge how higher ed is entangled with the market or to make higher ed a public good.

So the "radical academic" often celebrated tends to treat politics as writing about subversiveness, telling others no revolution is likely to come out of the academy (a critique that can be lodged against most work), and might not do any organizing to change material conditions.