[brindlejim]

University faculty-activists are a perfect example of elite overproduction a la Turchin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction

We create small, smart cadres of people who watch power and wealth pass them by, and they advocate to overturn the system driving their envy.

[aaplok]

> We create small, smart cadres of people who watch power and wealth pass them by, and they advocate to overturn the system driving their envy.

"They're just jealous" forms of arguments are an ad-hominem fallacy, where characteristics of the opponent (here their supposed intent) are used to discredit their argument [0]. Not only is there no evidence that these activists aren't sincere (which doesn't mean that they are right) but even if they were driven by envy, that doesn't invalidate their criticism of those in power...

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

[why_is_it_good]

Some slopes are slippery and some people have the cause of their deeds in their [material] characteristics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motive_(law)

[aaplok]

Good point, motive and intent do have value in assessing the likelihood that someone committed an crime (or any action). It's not quite the same as using motive to claim that someone is wrong though.

However, I agree that ad hominem is not always fallacious. If I claim that tobacco is not bad for health and it turns out that I have no medical background and that I was paid by the tobacco industry, arguably an ad hominem argument can be used to cast some doubts on my credibility on this particular issue. Probably enough doubts that one doesn't need to pay further attention to what I said.

However it's an approach that should be used with caution. It is much too easy to misuse it to lazily explain away someone's inconvenient argument. It is particularly pernicious when it is using a supposed feeling like jealousy, that are hard to disprove.

[Gibbon1]

I might make an argument that we decided to sidestep fights over class equity for things like sexual and racial equity. That suits the powers that be better. Because now the lower classes are arguing about status instead of their share of the pie.

[thereticent]

I'd respond that there are many academic (and non-academic) intellectual activists that argue exactly that.

[Guvante]

Sexual and racial equality are lenses to show that the supposed meritocracy of Capitalism is bogus.

After all if Capitalism can't ignore things that don't impact profits how can it be the perfect equalizer it supposedly is?

Unfortunately the money spent by think tanks to prop up Capitalism is vast.

[rKarpinski]

> University faculty-activists are a perfect example of elite overproduction a la Turchin.

The faculty pushing back against "administrative encroachment" and seeking "the primacy of teaching, learning and research" are your perfect example of an over produced elite?

[tines]

No, the faculty-activists are the ones _being pushed back against_ by the faculty seeking the "primacy of teaching."

[aaplok]

From the article: "The concerns articulated in the FfY formation statement pertain to universities — and not their members! — as activists".

They push back on institutions taking up activism, not individual faculties engaging in activism.

[rKarpinski]

But the only faculty-activists are the 'Faculty for Yale' mentioned in the article?

Administrators (and students) are not faculty.

[2devnull]

Mentioned in the article, maybe. But it’s common knowledge that most faculty today are de facto activists, they just done self identify as such usually.

[aaplok]

> it’s common knowledge that most faculty today are de facto activists.

Whose common knowledge? I have never heard the argument that most faculties are activists.

This argument is a classic ad populum fallacy [0]. Using it to characterise (and discredit) and entire group is not a honorable thing to do.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

[2devnull]

Listen to the recent pinker mearsheimer debate. Pinker would be a good person to advocate for the triumph of enlightenment values and where else would those values be most evident than the academy, and yet Jewish students are made to cower in fear at the student mobs tolerated, if not in effect manufactured by the educators at the nations’ highest institutions, Harvard, Penn, MIT… I know people who were in forced out of grad school for not engaging in activism, let alone committing the ultimate sin, having heterodox views. Perhaps that’s less common in STEM, where politics are non-essential, but it’s de rigeur in social sciences and I’d imagine much of the humanities. It’s common knowledge in many circles that you’ll get different education at Claremont vs berkeley.

[thereticent]

It's not common knowledge; it's a common misconception. And it's pushed heavily by anti-intellectual, anti-academic people in order to advance agenda.

[rKarpinski]

Is it common knowledge? My understanding is that it's generally the administrators and students who are the main forces of activism on campus, not the faculty (outside of some departments).

[bena]

Both this article and the article on Turchin himself don't pass the smell test. They both read more like opinion pieces than informative articles. Like they were written by either Turchin himself or people who know him.

Contrast the article on Turchin to the one on Tim Berners-Lee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee).

No wishy-washy weasel language. No vague claims of contributions, just straight up: He was here, he did this thing.

[pictureofabear]

I didn't get that same feeling from reading the two articles, but Turchin's article on Elite Overproduction is relatively new and the idea is only as old as 10 years. It's a theory that's very convenient for explaining the present but seems to be grounded in past political instability, so who knows... maybe it'll stand the test of time. It is interesting though.

[thereticent]

This is a jaded and uncharitable take. I'm faculty and not an activist, but I know quite a few faculty activists, and they do what they do out of a sincere desire to help others. It's not about resentment at all.

[thereticent]

Quite a claim. No evidence.

As an example, I'm on the neurology faculty. One colleague is an academic activist in the sense that she educates, develops programming, and sits on several committees dedicated to ensuring that historically marginalized groups realize that neurology is a career possibility for them. It gets results, and it's not just self-validating. The claim that belief you can help someone assumes your own superiority is unfortunate.

[brindlejim]

Some form of at least partial superiority is inherent in the notion of "helping", as is a power dynamic.

You say that your colleague's diversity-focused activity gets results, and my question is: what results? A more diverse body of students studying neurology? And if that is the answer, then who cares? What is your argument that increased diversity makes neurology or science better?

If diversity is your objective function, fine. But there are other goals to pursue, and which should be pursued in academia by faculty. I think diversity is very far from what should be the top priority.

The advantage of diversity is that it is an easy metric to understand, pursue and make gains in.

[thereticent]

If you insist about the inherent superiority, you should define superiority. Obviously in the case of my colleague, she has achieved success in that career already. Surely that is the only "superiority" in the example, and that's benign.

The results are two-fold: most directly, more members of marginalized communities pursue and are successful in the field. More distally, clinical outcomes (patient return, treatment plan adherence, and medical outcomes) are higher when patients see doctors with a shared historically marginalized status, particularly race/ethnicity. That's borne out by the research. So increasing the diversity of the workforce enhances outcomes in diverse patient populations.

Your view is just overly jaded. There are data backing all of this up. It's not just done out of a feeling or a PR move or meaningless corporate metric (though those things indeed contribute to the motivation in a lot of cases).

[brindlejim]

A "sincere desire to help" is a form of self-validation, a move to serve the socially ambitious, and a show of power, in that "helping" implies superiority.

It would be great if educators they could separate the search for truth from the search for "justice". Many can't. Fields in which facts only exist to support justice narratives probably don't belong in university at all.

[solardev]

Do you really think people go into academia as faculty expecting to become rich, only to end up disillusioned? They can't be that smart then, lol. I don't think I've ever met a single faculty member who was there out of good business sense.

[washadjeffmad]

I take it you didn't go to business school, where VPs and C-levels retire to?

[solardev]

I doubt those are the activist faculty types...

(but no, I absolutely didn't go to business school, lol, about as far from it as you can get)