Academic prestige: Why climb the greasy pole? Because atop there lies Valhalla!

Harvard University
(c) east-west-dichotomy.com

Interesting piece in The Economist today about Academic prestige - Why climb the greasy pole?

I can only speak about the humanities, not the sciences. So, to start with: "better research" has nothing to do with it. That's not the point of elite institutions.

Rather, they are about what the Germans call Deutungshoheit -having the sovereignty over the definition of thought. If you or I have an idea, no ones give a mouse's crap, while if you are associated with a prestigious university and say it you will go down in history for having said it.

That's why Harvard & Co are focused on the sensational and the general. They want to get credit for the big topics and issues in life. And they have unique and easy access to top journals, publishers, and the media. In fact, they are always thought after (while the average academic has to try very hard, too hard). Important governmental and non-governmental institutions, even religious groups, establish offices in Cambridge, for example, such to have proximity to Harvard and MIT brands.

Just presenting a talk there is more valuable than tens of thousands of dollars in marketing. Those academics' opinions matter a million times more (than the rest) precisely because they are Harvard, Princeton, MIT etc. professors -and NOT because they are so original or unique. I love it how the research above concentrates on citations etc. That's laughable and besides the point of education, which is not about knowledge but about privilege.

A professor at some no-name college can write whatever he wants, he will never have access to the elite and powerful in academia. Last, if we look at the human race, the perks, privilege, and opportunities to those few chosen ones with a degree from (or a position at) those elite institutions are (almost) limitless.

Everyone wants to be associated with their brand. They feel like gods and goddesses, and in a way they are. So, Why climb the greasy pole? Because atop there lies Valhalla.

Roderick MacFarquhar sees in Xi Jinping's sex trade clampdown an 'earthquake'

Roderick MacFarquhar
at the Stanford Center of Peking University,
October 2013

INTERESTING quotes from Roderick MacFarquhar (Harvard University) in this latest media bomb:
China's Crackdown On Sex Trade: An Anti-Corruption Campaign In Disguise? by Heng Shao

Roderick MacFarquhar, a professor at Harvard University, is quoted in the above article as saying that Confucianism is about virtuous women and "men un-corrupt!" It is quite a stretch of imagination that Xi Jinping's thought is guided by Confucius, and a very interesting statement in itself that, if it's true, may change 300 years of China Studies. That's because Confucianism, a 2500 years old tradition, is ANYTHING BUT un-corrupt, at least from a modern perspective. It's about hierarchies, patriarchy, nepotism, abuse of officialdom, and moral dictatorship, and not a few people (Lu Xun, say, and most European philosophers and world historians, and Japan who willfully abandoned Confucianism, for a starter) in fact have argued that Confucianism had been the main reason for China's cultural backwardness, no offense intended.

READ MORE Can China's new government end corruption?

The Confucian canon, often referred to as a code of conduct rather than a proper religion, is essentially an instruction manual for cult leaders and dictators on how to morally blackmail the people into obedience. Hence the absence of universal concepts of freedom, individualism, and human rights (although there's a lot in it about human responsibilities, like filial piety, obedience, dependence) in China. The vibrant sex trade might as well be an afterbirth or direct expression of the out-dated but  not defeated Confucian tradition, and Xi Jinping's Anti-Corruption Campaign might as well be another attempt of modernism to drive out out-dated customs that blemished China's image in the world. How so? Well, we know quite well that it was the Communist Party who battled the Confucian traditions of polygamy, concubinage, arranged marriages, and mistress culture (albeit not always successfully). In fact, it takes forever to establish the rule of law in China precisely because Confucianism thought that coercing people with a sense of obligation, shame and "face" works just fine, with the unenviable consequences that the people of China, in Hegel's words, "cherish the meanest opinion of themselves, and believe that they are born only to drag the car of Imperial Power."

READ MORE No quick fix for China's mistress culture

Professor MacFarquhar, a political analyst, must know all this well but he and/or the article may have intentionally linked corruption in China to Communism, rather than Confucianism. I don't know which one is the greater evil. But I have this notion that actions such as the crackdown on rampant prostitution and corruption are based on reason and common sense of modern statesmanship and should not be attributed to the recommendations of Jesus Christ, the Buddha, Confucius, or any other quack who lived in the 1st millennium BC. This is the 21st Century!

Professor MacFarquhar seems to suggest that the troubled Communist Party of China under Xi Jinping, instead of dashing into an unknown future (of liberal democracy and Westernization, perhaps?), may want to revive Confucianism in order to justify its authoritarian leadership. As said, Confucianism works pretty good at that: The Confucian ideal of a government run by supreme human beings -the junzi- with superior moral values, not dissimilar to Plato's Philosopher Kings, is possibly the greatest corruption of all.

To keep up to date with this blog you can follow me on Big Think, Twitter, RSS, or my Website.

Pattberg meets Chomsky at Harvard Kennedy School, April 2010

Meet Noam Chomsky, the master of public intellectualism, who is also the founder of modern linguistics. Here at Harvard Kennedy School, April 2010:

Pattberg with Chomsky at Harvard Kennedy School