ZNet - Cowardice Pays - The Diigo Meta page

• 03 Apr 09
  

  Fhar Miess

  Excellent piece criticizing the defeatist attitudes of even the most "lefty" of mainstream academic pundits and their professorial minions

  academy theEconomy theDepression

  • My strong sense is that the famous economist and his professor-rich audience reflexively accept the "top-down" obligation that nothing be seriously advanced that might "substantially raise the relative power of working people" (in Mike Albert words)or challenge the existing concentration of wealth and power.
  • By my experience and observation, academic culture and work routine are deeply conservative.  They breed stifling, narcissistic indifference to the real world beyond the ivory tower and hostility to ordinary working people. They inculcate deeply ingrained habits of cowardice, elitism, and isolation.  Professors spend disproportionate time and energy in sheltered, arcane, and incestuous (inbred) discussions with each other.  They develop authoritarian habits and a related "know-it-all" mindset from lecturing captive and powerless student audiences. They often suffer from mental, moral, and physical torpor related to endless hours crouched over examinations, papers, theses, application files, committee documents and other clerical material.

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