I find out that I am ... "bourgeois trash"

The academic world is a strange place.

Yes, that was an understatement.  But, I am trying to be polite here ;)

A couple of days ago, I was in my office, reading and writing as I always end up doing.  After all, in my life as an exile, it is not as if busloads of students and faculty come to chat with me, right?

I heard two colleagues conversing in the hallway, and quite loudly too.  From their voices, I knew who they were and didn't even have to peek out.

The louder of the two was complaining about some faculty colleague, who is not a member of the union.  Apparently this non-member had raised some questions regarding the use of "fair share" money for political activities.   I knew it couldn't be me--it has been years since I commented on anything, after I was told to "please shut up."

Anyway, this was when the louder voice got even louder: "that bourgeois trash has no idea how we do things" he yelled.

Such name calling does not surprise me anymore.  In the academic world, it has practically become the standard operating procedure not to debate ideas but to instead engage in ad hominem attacks.

And then the louder voice remarked to the other person: "you have one close to home too."  The other voice now mumbled something and the two immediately lowered their decibels.

Guess who was being referred to as the one close to home?  Yep, moi.

Which means, I am also "bourgeois trash."

Why academics shy away from intellectual debates baffles me to no end.  After all these years I should not be surprised, yes.  But, I cannot help it but be surprised at the virulent anti-intellectual atmosphere at a place that the rest of the world would think it is all about intellectual discussions!

I was thinking about this and walking towards the campus health center to get my flu shot.  I suppose I was so deep in my thoughts that I didn't even hear a colleague calling for my attention.  The driver of the car honked to get my attention.

"You are not supposed to walk in front of oncoming cars" she joked.

In the conversation that followed, she lamented about the anti-intellectual college environment.  "It is like what my friend says--the church is the best place these days to hide from god."

This atheist is now convinced that god is also my kind of people: "bourgeois trash" ;)

The politics of the libertarian mob

Democrats were day-trading, Republicans were divorcing. We were all individualists now.

A wonderful line from Mark Lilla's essay in the NYRB, which has a neat title: "The Tea Party Jacobins."  Lilla is a professor at Columbia, after quite some time at Chicago.  More than anything else, Lilla is a faculty who is comfortable in both academic and journalistic domains--a trait I admire and look up to.
What is Lilla writing about there?

A new strain of populism is metastasizing before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that have unsettled American society for half a century now. Anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither, it is estranged, aimless, and as juvenile as our new century. It appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that. This is the one threat that will bring Americans into the streets.
Welcome to the politics of the libertarian mob.

Instead of the old Jacobins, who were leftist radicals, Lilla says we have the new Jacobins.  How different are these from the old?

When the new Jacobins turn on their televisions they do not tune in to the PBS News Hour or C-Span to hear economists and congressmen debate the effectiveness of financial regulations or health care reform. They look for shows that laud their common sense, then recite to them the libertarian credo that Fox emblazons on its home page nearly every day: YOU DECIDE.

Lilla has a point when he notes that the new Jacobins prefer:

the company of anti-intellectuals who know how to exploit nonintellectuals, as Sarah Palin does so masterfully.¹⁶ The dumbing-down they have long lamented in our schools they are now bringing to our politics, and they will drag everyone and everything along with them. As David Frum, one of the remaining lucid conservatives, has written to his wayward comrades, “When you argue stupid, you campaign stupid. When you campaign stupid, you win stupid. And when you win stupid, you govern stupid.”

So, where is this heading towards?  Lilla thinks that the Tea Party itself might dissolve soon, as much as a float is taken down after the Homecoming party!  But:

Now an angry group of Americans wants to be freer still—free from government agencies that protect their health, wealth, and well-being; free from problems and policies too difficult to understand; free from parties and coalitions; free from experts who think they know better than they do; free from politicians who don’t talk or look like they do (and Barack Obama certainly doesn’t). They want to say what they have to say without fear of contradiction, and then hear someone on television tell them they’re right. They don’t want the rule of the people, though that’s what they say. They want to be people without rules—and, who knows, they may succeed. This is America, where wishes come true. And where no one remembers the adage “Beware what you wish for.”

I wish Lilla had phrased something else in place of "libertarian mob" because true libertarians like the intelligent folks at Cato or Reason are not quite thrilled with the Tea Party folks' anti-intellectual ranting.  And, to a Libertarian Democrat like me, well, this nutcase mob is not anything like our idea of why we like the libertarian streak in our politics .... But, that is my only quibble :)

On intellectuals ....

I detect today a certain public scepticism when intellectuals stand up to preach to us, a growing tendency among ordinary people to dispute the right of academics, writers and philosophers, eminent though they may be, to tell us how to behave and conduct our affairs.  The belief seems to be spreading that intellectuals are no wiser as mentors, or worthier as exemplars, than the witch dotctors or priests of old.  I share that scepticism. A dozen people picked at random on the street are at least as likely to offer sensible views on moral and political matters as a cross-section of the intelligentsia. But I would go further. One of the principal lessons of our tragic century, which has seen so man millions of innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve the lot of humanity, is--beware intellectuals.  Not merely should they be kept well away from the levers of power, they should also be objects of particular suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice.  ... For intellectuals, far from being highly individualistic and non-conformist people, follow certain regular patterns of behaviour.  Taken as a group, they are often ultra-conformist within the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and value.  That is what makes them, en masse, so dangerous, for it enables them to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies, which themselves often generate irrational and destructive courses of action. Above all, we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas

Paul Johnson in Intellectuals, published way back in 1988.

My favorite intellectual, (whom the conservative Johnson does not critique) ....?

George Orwell, of course :)

Why?  Because from the little bit of reading that I have done, Orwell came across as essentially a left-of-center guy who did not care for ideological labels.  And he was highly suspicious of conformity.

Christopher Hitchens says it best:

My worry has more to do with another thing Orwell warned about—the willingness of people to police themselves, and to believe anything that they're told. Especially the willingness of intellectuals and academics to become worshipers of whomever is in power, or passers-on of whatever the reigning idea is. Conformity, in other words. That will always carry on being a threat. People don't remember Orwell for his opposition to conformity as well as they should.

I don't know if I have always had that intense suspicion of conformity, which was then reinforced by reading Orwell, or if watching 1984 at the British Council in Madras was the real trigger.  In any case, Orwell is my go-to intellectual. 

Anti-intellectualism in American politics

Q: How does the anti-intellectual presidency undermine democracy?
A: At the heart of democracy is the idea that citizens make civic decisions based on information. When presidents do not offer information, but instead offer only sound bites, platitudes, and vacuous slogans, citizens are ill-equipped to make those decisions. Even worse, they are persuaded to make decisions according to nonrelevant, tangential cues such as personality and partisan punch lines.

Q. Why do presidents generally prefer to appear less intellectual than they are?
A: Presidential communication these days is more about the insinuation of meta-messages, not what is actually being said. And the meta-message is authenticity. When presidents or candidates dumb down or oversimplify, they are essentially employing a rather insidious method of argumentation that goes something like this: "Never mind what I am saying, but know that you can trust me because I am like you. And because I mimic you, I must therefore be for you."

Q: Why do you date the birth of the anti-intellectual presidency to 1969?
A: In 1969, Richard Nixon created a White House speechwriting office, which in effect severed the functions of policy advising and speechwriting.

Read the rest of the answers from Professor Elvin Lim at the Chronicle of Higher Education.