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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28780 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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Very similar to the situation in academia.

Academia ultimately is the root cause though, at least from a practical perspective and not counting abstract social forces.

You can have perfectly fine academic institutions that are not bloated with useless crap. My point is that these institutions in the west became bloated precisely because of the kind of attitude is being expressed by the DeSantis 'attack' on colleges and universities in Florida. The root cause is not academia in and of itself. It's instead whatever process that bloats it.

The root cause is not academia in and of itself. It's instead whatever process that bloats its.

What bloats it is part of academia. It's coming from inside the ivory tower. Before it got bloated, this tendency was kept in check by external forces (e.g. not enough resources to waste on it) which are now gone.

We keep returning to 'academia' as a current thing. Sure, current academia suffers from all the ills. My point is that an academic institution doesn't have to. To point at current academia and say that it had to become this way because it did is not very pertinent. Stricter oversight over what can be taught, rather than promises of more 'academic freedom' would be a step in the right direction, which is the opposite of the DeSantis rhetoric. Which at best deflates a small part of academia without removing its ability to inflate itself again.

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