[lbo-talk] posh as fuck

[123hop at comcast.net]

I have certainly run into some outstanding individuals in academia, and there are some very hard working profs doing some great work now...Graeber comes to mind. And it is the case that college is the last public shared space where students have a chance of learning about how exactly authority is constituted. But overall, I have to agree with Michael Smith: "there's also a lot of faddism, groupthink, and parroting of conventional wisdom. And there's a fair amount of downright ideological thought-policing." There's also a fair amount of downright sadism in how some teachers treat students. 

Some of the worst traits of academia stem from the fact that 1) many academics have never been out of school 2) the way in which teachers have been pitted against one another as a result of the scarcity of jobs 3) privatization. 

Is this different from the world at large? I spent a quarter of my life in academia and half in corporate IT jobs, and I found the working atmosphere in the corporate IT world to be far freer and more collegial than in academia. I suspect this is partly because IT is a work in progress and it actually matters if you can do your job right and it's plain as fuck that everyone is making shit up as they go along. Also, programming is the most humbling grind you can imagine. 

At the same time I write in the hope that the occupy movements and the drift of neoliberalism is having a positive effect on academics. 

I'd also like to add that it pains me to see Alan R. and Michael S squabbling because it's pretty clear to me that you guys are both very cool and that you have a good deal more in common than in diff. 

Joanna 

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