"We have rhapsodized demolition as liberation" Sounds like a conservative criticism of the Enlightenment. "There was this sense that we were being broken down

"We have rhapsodized demolition as liberation" Sounds like a conservative criticism of the Enlightenment. "There was this sense that we were being broken down and built up again as new people, as these high-powered minds — only without the groupthink that gets enforced in a barracks." Is he sure about that? It seems certain ideas are enforced with cult-like rigidity. My experience heading toward the academic track, and then ducking out, wasn't a great one. I felt like I learned more on my own, out of my own interest in the subject, than in any classroom. It gave me a few starting points, but that's all. Academia seems to have ceased to be a place where people engage in and built upon the Western cultural project, and instead is a place of 'liberation' from that project, from the west, from the canon, from everything that put a foundation under our civilization, letting in everything that doesn't matter. In a sense, it deserves to die. And it deserve to die even more for not seeming to recognize why it's dying, and for placing all the blame on others. And yet, cultural studies, humanities, and history, are all absolutely necessary for democracy, and if it truly ends, what then? If I'm allowed to be rude, another problem is a serious lack of thoughtful people, even this guy doesn't seem to be saying anything interesting or provoking, yet he thinks he's worthy of a position. I really noticed a lack of any kind of academic debate going on in my time at university. I felt alone in my desire to test and challenge ideas. One female student in an English class once attacked me for 'wanting to argue with ideas all the time'. What should I make of that? I'll end with a provoking thought, the kind of thing that should be allowed in academe: so men together, in the good old boys club, built things, and women and men together produced what? too many heirs? :^)