Academic Research Industry: A Toxic Nexus of Power, Prejudice, and Privilege
Why Jordan B. Peterson is Wrong about Diversity Being the Cause of Demise of Academic Institution
Jordan B. Peterson made a recent video about criticism of diversity in academia. I think he missed the point altogether, either intentionally or due to a lack of awareness. This article deals with a real and unbiased reflection of the academic situation. Here is the link to that video.
Brief Overview of The Institution
Since the times of antiquity, thinkers and educators had an important role in society. This role manifested itself in the form of shamans, teachers, discoverers, and, philosophers. Although these roles didn’t seem to provide any immediate tangible benefit to the lives of the people at the time, however, these roles were crucial for survival of the societies. Every society needs culture to survive. Culture is a form of perceptual filter that shapes our realities. Such filter is necessary to survive because it forms a safe space by encapsulating the true reality using the past experiences. The cultural norms provide guidelines on how to survive within the explored territory however, they don’t give any information about the world outside the walls of the culture. These people were regarded due to their ability to see beyond the bounds of cultural constraints & perceived realities. They were the outsiders within their own communities, yet they were crucial for the survival of the group. These people formed the beginning of research & scholarship. It was a selfless institution which every member of the society was neither willing nor capable to pursue.
With the advent of scientific method, the material benefit of such people in society suddenly became apparent, and this gave birth to the institution of university. Societies started to invest more and more resources into this institution and more members of the society became interested in becoming part of this institution. This transformed a highly spiritual institution into a tool of capitalism.
The teachers and scholars who were once considered valuable due to the sacred knowledge about the truth of the world they possessed, now became the skill trainers, which is no different than an animal trainer in a circus.
Many people with business mindset flooded into the academic positions who neither had the temperament nor were suited to be in academia. This turned universities into an extension of industry whereby the goal of a university became to serve the demands of the industry rather than further the pursuit of knowledge & scholarship.
The Nightmare of Academic Career
Due to the influx of money from the industry, the role of a professor shifted from being a knowledge bearer to a business administrator. Every Professor now runs a small slave farm whereby young people are exploited and abused. With little to no prospects of getting career advancements after completing an arduous journey of doctorate, postdocs are put into a career dead-end. A very small number of academic positions are filled with favoritism, thus maintaining the status quo. After decades of hard-work and mental toil, older post-docs are left with no option but to leave the academic career and seek job in the industry where they are treated as beginners once again. Industry runs its own hierarchical status quo which doesn’t recognize university work experience and it prefers young docile minds for the entry level positions so, post-docs are quickly written off as being overqualified. This forces many post-docs to spend a life of poverty and suffering regardless of high expertise and experience in the field.
Regardless of what academics preach about social justice and equity, universities are by no means a place of equality and equity.
Every professor acts like an oligarch whose prime objective is to raise funds to feed the appetite of the capitalistic underbelly.
This sinister aim is accomplished by abusing doctoral candidates/post-docs and robbing them of their prime years of life. Like a mafia enterprise, career advancements are only possible if the minds become so corrupted that they see nothing but darkness. This means if somebody survives the system and becomes professor someday, they are ready to propagate the cycle of abuse.
The psychological ramifications of the abuse suffered by graduates at the behest of professors and administration are startling. Most of the people who pass through this circle of hell, find themselves suffering from chronic depression, anxiety, and lifelong stress. There are countless number of people whose life has been shattered by the university system.
Meritocracy or a Rotten System?
Academic research, which was once a tool, to seek knowledge and discover truth has become a highly commercial affair. This has led to the enforcement of bogus academic criterions (e.g., citations, no. of publications etc.) to rank research findings. These criterions bring forth the popular research and create a filter on knowledge which is dangerous and self-defeating for the whole institution. Most of the research that is produced by this system is put in predatory publications which are inaccessible to public without subscription. This closed system of publications and citations from within the community as a measure of performance is very dangerous for the pursuit of knowledge and provides a way to maintain the status quo.
Publications funded by taxpayers money are put into closed journals and conference proceedings and then universities pay per view to access the same articles. It is a closed system of corruption, power and abuse which resembles a mafia enterprise.
Systemic favoritism is a common phenomenon specially in the STEM related research areas. Professors recruit, prefer and promote certain types of individuals who are supposedly on merit. The merit criterion is citations which is an obvious measure of popularity, and nothing makes somebody more popular than being a flag bearer of a power group or ability to create an inflammatory content. Most of the citations to a publication are given not because of its content but because of the author’s ethnic group and social influence. Narcissistic personalities are rewarded with funding and opportunities for growth based on their high number of citations and “visibility” that they garner. It is a toxic system whereby some win big and live like a leisure class in society while others from the same institute & subject area suffer a life-long poverty.
Universities as a Social Networking Platform
Capitalism rewards people with dark personalities and regards them as “leaders”. The definition of academic leader has shifted from a self-less wise mentor to a cunning manipulative psychopath. The role of educators has shifted from knowledge acquisition and transfer to entertainment and profit generation for the institute. The students enrolling in the universities are not motivated by gaining knowledge of the field but rather to attain a platform for social networking and entertainment. The true academics and dedicated students have been systematically weeded out of the institution.
With the rise of social media and distributed learning platforms, universities have lost their monopoly on knowledge, research & education. This has made universities an insecure institution whereby they try to compete in the academic market against cheap (or even free) & entertaining educational content. The focus of universities has therefore shifted from a serious non-profit research and education to a profit seeking social networking platform. This means universities seek to employ only those people who have garnered enough popularity in the social world regardless of their lack of academic aptitude or natural inclination to academic pursuits.
Conclusions
Under these new realities of our age, universities are no longer a symbol of academic scholarship but another business enterprise of the society. And to a business enterprise, the most efficient and the most viral content creator is the most valuable. This has nothing to do with diversity or lack thereof. Some of the viral content comes from the non-white ethnic group and therefore, they get their share in academic pursuits. At the same time, many non-white deserving academics can’t get their foot into the institution because they are not popular enough due to their lack of ability to create popular and inflammatory research. So, why then diversity be blamed for demise of academia?