A Defence Of Academia At The End Of The World
There is a widespread frustration among activists, civil society leaders and even within academia itself. The prevailing wisdom is that academia falls somewhere between an impact-less ivory tower – where small groups of academics write for and read one another – and acting as the handmaiden of capitalism – a bourgeois class refining and reproducing the logic of the dominant destructive system.
There is truth to both these claims. There is pressure to publish at ever faster rates. And some of this work will only be read by a handful of people.
And, yes, much academic work acts to legitimate business as usual.