Academic Exile, Two Years On
Quillette | Bo Winegard
Psychologist Winegard laments the state of academia after his exile for unfashionable ideas. In this long-form piece, Winegard recounts a trying journey—”my truncated career, like a public execution, became another warning…do not tread this path or you too may suffer this fate”—and discovery of hard truths—“academia has become an intellectual prison.”
“…Just as a man may not recognize that he is in a prison until he tries to break free, a scholar may not understand the taboos that confine him until he transgresses them,” he writes. “Academia has become an intellectual prison, and many of the incarcerated professors were therefore compelled to live a dual existence…”
In his own field, Winegard explains, “The line between social psychology and activism, which was never rigid to begin with, has now dissolved entirely, and social psychology has become a form of activism masquerading as a science.” He then goes on to talk about academia in general.
As he recounts, it is survival through silence: “Many professors and scientists are devoted to pursuing the truth… However, these people must survive… They fear losing their jobs…losing their professional status…injuring the careers of their graduate students. And so, they generally remain silent.”
Winegard’s laments are not about those who populate academia, however, but about the entire enterprise—“The execrable state of the university system…has quashed the spirit of free inquiry…it has expelled so many important ideas and debates …[and] is no longer devoted to understanding human nature. Instead, universities exist to promote ideas that advance a particular policy agenda and to suppress those that do not.”
In the end, he offers a glimmer of hope with a dire warning:
“…Science remains the most effective instrument for understanding the world…[and] the best way to promote human flourishing. If our universities continue to pander to political sensitivities, replacing a fearless pursuit of knowledge with a craven capitulation to dogma, then our loss will be immense. We will have robbed posterity of our single greatest resource: knowledge.”
