Webloggin » Richard Pipes on the Oppressive Nature of Academia

Daniel Pipes writes about the state of the academic community, the lack of criticism faced by professors and the suppression of free thought on campus in “Five Years of Campus Watch.”

In the lead up to the article Daniel recalls the writings of his father, Richard Pipes, who was a tenured Professor at Yale University in 1957. The words of Richard Pipes elegantly capture the state of academia even today in what was perhaps a foreboding wake up cry.

Academic life is not all sweetness and light. Scholars are psychologically less secure than most people: by and large, once they pass the threshold of middle age they strike me as becoming restless. A businessman knows he is successful when he makes money; a politician, when he wins elections; an athlete, when he is first in sporting contests; a popular writer, when he produces best-sellers. But a scholar has no such fixed criteria by which to judge success, and as a consequence he lives in a state of permanent uncertainty which grows more oppressive with age as ambitious younger scholars elbow themselves to the fore and dismiss his work as outdated.

His principal criterion of success is approval of peers. This means that he must cultivate them, which makes for conformity and “group think.” Scholars are expected to cite one another approvingly, attend conferences, edit and contribute to collective symposia. Professional associations are designed to promote these objectives. Those who do not play by the rules or significantly depart from the consensus risk ostracism. A classic example of such ostracism is the treatment meted out to one of the outstanding economists and social theorists of the past century, Frederick von Hayek, whose uncompromising condemnation of economic planning and socialism caused him to be banished from the profession. He lived long enough to see his views prevail and his reputation vindicated by a Nobel Prize, but not everyone in this situation is as fortunate. Such behavior, observed also in animal communities, strengthens group cohesion and enhances the sense of security of its individual members, but it inhibits creativity.

What particularly disenchanted me about many academics was [the way they treated] a professorship not as a sacred trust but as a sinecure, much like the run-of-the-mill Protestant ministers in eighteenth- or nineteenth-century England who did not even pretend to believe. The typical academic, having completed and published his doctoral dissertation, will establish himself as an authority on the subject of his dissertation and for the remainder of his life write and teach on the same or closely related topics. The profession welcomes this kind of “expertise” and resents anyone who attempts to take a broader view of the field because by so doing, he encroaches on its members’ turf. Nonmonographic, general histories are dismissed as “popular” and allegedly riddled with errors – doubly so if they do not give adequate credit to the hordes who labor in the fields.

As it is, elites in academia are no different than elites in government. They hold onto power and status by marginalizing those they perceive as a threat. Thus the institutional nature of the beast is a growing monster that must be thoughtfully critiqued and challenged if we are ever to regain the true goal of creating free thinkers who can build upon facts instead of being selectively steered toward partial truths.

Update: This article segues perfectly with a Michelle Malkin experience at Columbia’s Mahmoudapalooza:

On my train ride home from Mahmoudapalooza, I spoke briefly with a Columbia University grad steeped in the Ivy League haze of non-judgment. She was upset and embarrassed — not by Columbia president Lee Bollinger’s bone-headed decision to legitimize Ahmadinejad at its World Leaders Forum. No, she was mortified that Bollinger had delivered his face-saving introduction challenging Ahmadinejad.

With childlike naivete, this Columbia alum told me: “I’m frightened by the polarity.” Which about sums up the majority view of academia and the Ahmadinejad excusers on the left:

They are more afraid of standing up and calling out evil than losing the West, their country and their own lives to it.

The delusional desire to overlook the actions of Iran on the world stage of terrorism in preference to a courteous dialog with the propagandist side of the murderous head of state is a product of a misguided educational system. The Columbia University grad here has not learned history, or better yet, learned from history. Instead she takes a head in the sand attitude that was taught to her in the vacuum of serious debate.