It doesn’t matter where you work, or the field you work in. It actually has nothing to do with the contributions you’ve made to that field; The number of peer reviewed, published papers, the books you’ve written, Today you’re position as an academician is determined by your value on the scale of Social Justice. In academia, it’s the opposite of get woke, go broke. Not being part of the “Social Justice Movement” (whatever that happens to be, any week of the year) means that everything you have contributed in your field is worthless and is worthy of no more than dismissal by those that are better socially adjusted.

Higher education used to mean exploring ideas. Debating the same. Even the bad ones. How would anyone be able to discern what may be bad ideas otherwise? No one can say for sure that one idea is bad and another is good and today, if they do? It’s strictly an opinion because no one wants to discuss anything anymore. We’ve become of a society of , If you’re not with me, you’re against me, which does nothing to attempt to bring people together, at all. And this is the state of society today. It’s worse in academic circles: How dare you propose and idea, with data, that contradicts what we believe. I begin to see this happen at least weekly nowadays. It’s as if truth doesn’t exist. And it doesn’t. Ever hear some sat, “Well, that’s your truth, not mine”? We’ve inculcated an entire generation, maybe two, to believe that their truth is what is more important than the truth.

It’s called Postmodernism, and it’s a disease that has not only infected society way beyond the extent of the Wuhan Virus Pandemic, but has slowly, in the past decade or so, begun infecting those we, the remainder of society, have come to trust to an extent over decades: Academia. It’s actually a disease that is easily defeated, but those administrations on campus find it easier to defer to the loud minority than to stand up to them and allow what may be unpopular opinions to be heard. I’m not advocating neo-Nazi’s on campus, but there are educators and scientists in various fields, some of whom may represent a minority opinion on a subject that still deserve to be at least heard, debated, questioned. Just rejecting something because it doesn’t fit into a particular worldview doesn’t make it wrong, nor does it automatically make it right. It’s a conclusion, based on (hopefully) facts. But even facts may be incorrect if they are cherry-picked.  This is actually what seems to be occurring on campuses today. Some want to leave out those inconvenient facts that would shatter their individual or collevtive worldview.

Learning cannot occur in these environments. Teaching becomes limited to acceptance of all views as being valid instead of a singular truth. Every day, academia dies a little more when even academics themselves cannot trust what is being published in their field. Peer review has become a joke. Trust in science by the public, overall, has dropped dramatically – mainly due to the incompetence of the messaging from scientists themselves during the current pandemic. Social Science? Forget attempting to discuss any research that is outside the bounds of those that claim to be representing Social Justice. You’ll be hounded off Facebook, Twitter, etc., if you don’t actually lose your job. It’s a tragedy of enormous proportion and by allowing this trend to continue, it’s impossible to know what the state of academia will be in say, 20 years – if it exists at all.

It’s strange to think that The Enlightenment, which began in the 17th century and powered not only our politics, science and engineering, but also our social structure, would be =come relatively extinct in the 21st. One would think that in our current time, that it would, in fact, become more important than ever as we, as a species, have made great strides in the intervening centuries. It appears though that there are those that would prefer to discard all of the advances we have made. They appear to be winning and those in academia that reject the  New Social Order are tossed to the curb. Those that are turned out of universities and colleges in the future are doomed to the future they will have created for themselves.