We are off-topic, in the way my original reply tried to bring out. But let's pursue this line of thinking. Your claim is that significant elements of the publ

We are off-topic, in the way my original reply tried to bring out. But let's pursue this line of thinking. Your claim is that significant elements of the public scorn professors because they are perceived as, and act as, an elitist caste. I call BS on this as well. A large segment of academia is very devoted to public outreach, including by pop science TV/youtube, press releases, free in-person and video lectures, public outreach, blogging, and posting papers on arxiv. This is the best of academic culture. A sensible person can take advantage of this wealth of free knowledge. A bigoted person can invent some kind of culture war and play out stick figures in their head. I come from people who had greatly varying degrees of education. Many didn't go to college, some failed out. A couple are (or were, RIP) sometimes bigoted towards people who have specialized expertise and training, but aside from those very few, the vast majority have respect for specialized knowledge in general, and academia in particular. I think it does a great disservice to the common sense of that vast majority of non-academics, to suppose they are bigoted towards academia because of some kind of culture war stereotype.