The issue here (aside from the incentives of social media itself) is the nature of academic funding. Academics are to a significant extent expected to "earn" their own salary in the form of external grants. And one of the factors grant givers look for us outreach and engagement. They don't want to know you plan to write a book for an academic press that will be read by 9 people. They want to know about your plans for public focused work, your op eds in major papers, your participation in policy discussions, how you'd work has been adopted by some agency or institution.
And of course there is a political element, for a while it seemed anyone could get a grant if they could link their project to climate change (which is fair for oceanographers or whatever but honestly produced a lot of tendentious crap in the humanities).
But the grantsmanship pressure is real, I've seen people sacked for not bringing in enough money....don't hate the player, hate the game.
Indeed, incentives like that will often work to produce 'good' outcomes for individuals at a cost to wider credibility. But layered onto these incentives seems to be a widespread assumption that 'intellectuals' have a literal duty to shape the world themselves, rather than to create the conditions of understanding in which policy can be hashed out. This kind of dirigiste scholarship doubtless feels like 'doing good' for those involved, but anyone paying attention can see that it's coming at a cost. By lionising 'expertise' (pursuing scientism) to the exclusion of more nuanced approaches to understanding the world, we have annoyingly invited anyone with an Internet connection to become a guru of TRUTH AND FACTS.
It's exhausting to see this play out, just for want of some awareness and humility.
Honestly, these malignant narcissists have always been everywhere in academia. Social media just made them visible to everyone outside! (With the detrimental effect of loss of general respect for all of us).
The issue here (aside from the incentives of social media itself) is the nature of academic funding. Academics are to a significant extent expected to "earn" their own salary in the form of external grants. And one of the factors grant givers look for us outreach and engagement. They don't want to know you plan to write a book for an academic press that will be read by 9 people. They want to know about your plans for public focused work, your op eds in major papers, your participation in policy discussions, how you'd work has been adopted by some agency or institution.
And of course there is a political element, for a while it seemed anyone could get a grant if they could link their project to climate change (which is fair for oceanographers or whatever but honestly produced a lot of tendentious crap in the humanities).
But the grantsmanship pressure is real, I've seen people sacked for not bringing in enough money....don't hate the player, hate the game.
Indeed, incentives like that will often work to produce 'good' outcomes for individuals at a cost to wider credibility. But layered onto these incentives seems to be a widespread assumption that 'intellectuals' have a literal duty to shape the world themselves, rather than to create the conditions of understanding in which policy can be hashed out. This kind of dirigiste scholarship doubtless feels like 'doing good' for those involved, but anyone paying attention can see that it's coming at a cost. By lionising 'expertise' (pursuing scientism) to the exclusion of more nuanced approaches to understanding the world, we have annoyingly invited anyone with an Internet connection to become a guru of TRUTH AND FACTS.
It's exhausting to see this play out, just for want of some awareness and humility.
Honestly, these malignant narcissists have always been everywhere in academia. Social media just made them visible to everyone outside! (With the detrimental effect of loss of general respect for all of us).
And where do we end up ? Trump
Unfortunately clearly the lesser evil between two deeply flawed major party candidates in 2016.
You mean you weren't 'with her'? Shocking
No, I suspect it’s more than that
Well, he's good for business. Think of all the extra studies we'll get that show how terrible his base is.