ivory tower

Academic elitism is a charge sometimes levied at academic institutions and academics more broadly, arguing that academia or academicians are prone to undeserved or pernicious elitism or both; the term "ivory tower" often carries with it an implicit critique of academic elitism. Criticism of perceived academic elitism may or may not target intellectuals in general, academic institutions or education itself, but always^{[citation needed]} targets present leadership, practices and/or policies in academia.

Description

Anti-intellectuals, or those regarded as anti-intellectuals by their critics^[who?], often perceive themselves as champions of ordinary people and as defenders of populism against elitism, especially academic elitism. For example, some of economist Thomas Sowell's writings (Intellectuals and Society) suggest that while academicians and intellectuals have done much valuable work, they also have an undeserved "halo effect" and face fewer disincentives than other professions against speaking outside their expertise. Sowell cites Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky and Edmund Wilson as paradigmatic examples of this phenomenon. Though respected for their contributions to various academic disciplines (respectively mathematics, linguistics, and literature), the three men became known to the general public only by making often-controversial and disputed pronouncements on politics and public policy that would not be regarded as noteworthy if offered by a medical doctor or skilled tradesman.^[1] In another example of academic elitism, Sowell notes that Ignaz Semmelweis's promotion of antiseptic hand-washing to dramatically reduce the incidence of often-fatal of puerperal fever in pregnant women was rejected as absurd by the academic establishment of the 1840s.^[2]

Critics of academic elitism argue that highly-educated people tend to form an isolated social group whose views tend to be overrepresented amongst journalists, professors, and other members of the intelligentsia who often draw their salary and funding from taxpayers. Economist Dan Klein shows that the worldwide top-35 economics departments pull 76 percent of their faculty from their own graduates. He argues that the academic culture is pyramidal, not polycentric, and resembles a closed and genteel social circle. Meanwhile, academia draws on resources from taxpayers, foundations, endowments, and tuition payers, and it judges the social service delivered. The result is a self-organizing and self-validating circle.^[3]

Another criticism is that universities tend more to pseudo-intellectualism than intellectualism per se; for example, to protect their positions and prestige, academicians may over-complicate problems and express them in obscure language (e.g., the Sokal affair, a hoax by physicist Alan Sokal attempting to show that American humanities professors invoke complicated, pseudoscientific jargon to support their political positions.) Some observers argue that, while academicians often perceive themselves as members of an elite, their influence is mostly imaginary: "Professors of humanities, with all their leftist fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy."^[4]

Academic elitism suggests that in highly competitive academic environments only those individuals who have engaged in scholarship are deemed to have anything worthwhile to say, or do. It suggests that individuals who have not engaged in such scholarship are cranks. Steven Zhang of the Cornell Daily Sun has described the graduates of elite schools, especially those in the Ivy League, of having a "smug sense of success" because they believe "gaining entrance into the Ivy League is an accomplishment unto itself."

See also

• Academia
• Anti-intellectualism
• Anti-intellectualism in American Life
• Collective narcissism
• Gifted education
• Graduate Record Examination
• Intelligence quotient
• Ivory Tower
• Liberal Elite
• Model minority
• Education_in_South_Korea#Academic_Elitism

References

• Adams, Mike S. (2004). Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel: Confessions of a Conservative College Professor. Harbor House. ISBN 1-891799-17-7. 
• Bair, Jeffrey H.; Boor, Myron (1991). "The Academic Elite in Law: Linkages Among Top-Ranked Law Schools". Psychological Reports 68 (3): 891–94. doi:10.2466/PR0.68.3.891-894. 
• Bair, Jeffrey H. (2003). "The Academic Elite in Law: Linkages Among Top-Ranked Law Schools". The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0254/is_2_62/ai_100202314. 
• Keally, Charles T., "Academic Elitists and Elite Academics: An Essay". Sophia International Review no. 28, 2006.
• Lin, Xi, "The academic elite; Cynicism and disillusionment are protocol for UW elites". The Daily of the University of Washington, 1998.
• Zhang, Steven, "[http://cornellsun.com/section/opinion/content/2011/04/12/poison-ivy-league The Poison Ivy League". The Cornell Daily Sun, 2011.
• Newitz, Annalee (2000), "Ivory Tower. (Out of academia)". Salon.com, 2000.
• Schrecker, Ellen W., "No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities". 1986. ISBN 0-19-503557-7
• Sprain, Leah (2004), "Sending Signals from the Ivory Tower: Barriers to Connecting Academic Research to the Public", Student writing on public scholarship
• A video on Elitism in College Admissions produced by The Massachusetts School of Law

Further reading

• Trow, Martin, "Problems in the Transition from Elite to Mass Education," Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, 1973 [1].
• Papers about Academic elitism