Academia is Overdue for a Reality Check

Emina Melonic

At American Greatness, Emina Melonic writes about intellectual coercion inside the university, and how it leaves a profoundly negative mark on the whole of society when ideology takes precedence over reality and the pursuit of truth.

The object of linguistic coercion in the academy is to change students on an existential level. The weak succumb immediately but the strong quietly accept their fate while still having an awareness that they are swimming in a sea of lies. This is the great sadness that today permeates higher education.

Are academic ideologues like the imprisoned souls in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” seeing only shadows with a firm conviction that shadows are the things themselves? This is perhaps true of students but it is certainly not true of most professors. Prisoners in Plato’s cave are oblivious and the only harm that they are inflicting is on themselves. Academicians may be living in an existential darkness and be sadly unenlightened beings who lack reason, but they are willful and quite deliberate in the harm they perpetuate. This harm usually takes the form of revolt against tradition and the order of things, and we have seen the poisonous fruits of this labor in the public square.

Read the whole article at American Greatness.

 

Image Credit: Public Domain

  • Share

Most Commented

July 12, 2023

1.

Scott Gerber’s Case in Context

Ohio Northern University seems intent on chiseling into granite its protocol for getting rid of a faculty member who disagrees with the institution’s woke ideology, even when the......

July 19, 2023

2.

On Collegiality

Increasingly, collegiality is being added to the traditional triad of excellence that wins professors tenure. And now, the issue of collegiality is a fraught minefield, and has become&#......

June 20, 2023

3.

Letter: Academic Freedom Requires More Than Words

There is still no word from Ohio Northern University administrators after their removal of Professor Scott Gerber without due process—a clear violation of Gerber's rights......

Most Read

April 14, 2023

1.

Faculty Fight for Academic Freedom at Harvard

While many faculty quietly endorse views they privately disagree with, Harvard faculty band together to resist administrative overreach, overzealous students, and protect academic freedom....

May 15, 2015

2.

Where Did We Get the Idea That Only White People Can Be Racist?

A look at the double standard that has arisen regarding racism, illustrated recently by the reaction to a black professor's biased comments on Twitter....

June 20, 2023

3.

How Many Confucius Institutes Are in the United States?

UPDATED: We're keeping track of all Confucius Institutes in the United States, including those that remain open, those that closed, and those that have announced their closing....