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anti-academia: that which academia thrives on in order to pretend it’s ‘liberal’: how radical can a blog be?

once upon a time, academia valued ‘interdisciplinary’ research and publication for phd students. in theory. in practice, advisors never understood or really supported it. that spate of academic illusionism destroyed lives. academia has always succumbed to what foucault diagnosed as disciplinary regimes – academia is an intellectual prison – it’s panopticon has several components: the elite ivy academics, the boards of universities, their funding mechanisms, their admission policies and faculty selectors; including their lackeys in sub-ivy institutions; the hierarchy of publishing regimes from journals like critical inquiry to… too many to name – the police state of ‘intelligence’ in any case overseen by editorial board equivalences of the NSA. the illusion of ‘academic freedom’ is exactly that – an illusion. publishing is determined by an elite force governed by a system of academic branding and certification according to pedigree. which means, ‘intelligence’ is pre-branded in a way no different than the quality of organic meat – harvard meat, princeton meat, oxford or cambridge meat, etc.

i had a professor once, who acknowledged this: he said to me: ‘once a yale professor said to me that no reputation or advancement through academic ranks would not be determined by the QUALITY of publications, but only on QUANTITY; so i then decided to get a big box [for his quantity but unqualified publications]. i had another prof, a phd advisor, a woman, who said proudly to me, about the phd program i was enrolled in at the time at UCSC-HISTCON: we have one working class prof [who happened to be hayden white] as though he were a gem from the identity ghetto, added to their elite crown. class was no different than race or gender, for her. he may as well have been a black basketball player.

it’s not new news that the only way to advance, or survive, in any field or domain, is through succumbing to branding, stardom. enrollments are based on star-power, not on intelligence. therefore, students are willing to powder the noses OR fuck, their professors in order to follow them on stage. they are even willing to allow their profs to steal their research from them and let them publish it as if it was their own. that happened to me. but the system didn’t allow me to complain or seek recourse. i’m even now loathe to name names. isn’t that frightening? is it any different than victims of rape being unwilling to name their assailants? so, okay, my research/writing was stolen from me by… and i know i’m not the first of her students from whom she stole research and capitalized on it for her own benefit. and even here, i don’t dare to name her… even though i have absolute proof.

i’m scared to post her name and the proof. why?

because: there is no ‘academic freedom’. Despite the:

1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure

In 1915 the Committee on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure of the American Association of University Professors formulated a statement of principles on academic freedom and academic tenure known as the 1915 Declaration of Principles, which was officially endorsed by the Association at its Second Annual Meeting held in Washington, D.C., December 31, 1915, and January 1, 1916.

Academic Freedom

Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.
Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.⁴ Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.⁵
College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.⁶

Such ‘freedom’ has been trashed. I know several who have been sacrificed to this illusion. The best way to test this false academic freedom is to cite all attempts by academics to criticize israel.

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for example:

The best account of israel’s colonialist/genocidal regime was that written by the palestinian poet, mahmoud darwish, and delivered by yasar arafat to the UN General Assembly in 1974. every detail of the darwish/arafat address has been corroborated by both palestinaian and israeli historians. beginning with the 1948 war, with which even the jewish historian, benny morris, agrees, from his study of archival materials, was started by ‘israel’, before 1948, before ‘israel’ was ‘israel’.

Let’s test the following theses, in terms of academic freedom:

The name today of: ‘Israel’, is the name for – a form of apartheid that has degenerated into pure genocide.
the name, ‘israel’, is worse than the name, ‘south africa’ under apartheid
the ’cause’ of ‘israel’ is the ’cause’ of all the trouble in the middle east
why else would the US give 38 billion in military aid over 10 years to ‘israel’?
only in order to keep the war going, in order to keep the military-industrial-info war going, because it’s profitable.
‘israel’ is the tail the wags the US dog.
to say so, is interpreted as ‘anti-semetic’. which is a false claim. it is only a historical fact.