5 ms·

Instead of making a snarky smear upon the faculty of what is probably the most coveted university in the world, why don't you just come out and make an informed

Instead of making a snarky smear upon the faculty of what is probably the most coveted university in the world, why don't you just come out and make an informed argument on what you find so wrong with them? “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ― Issac Asimov

rayiner 5y ago
As an immigrant to America, I have thought hard about the differences between it and the developing country I came from. We don’t have any shortage of intellectuals, and those Harvard professors export their ideas for the whole world. Professors at elite colleges have created exactly zero prosperous nations. I’m convinced that what we’re missing is ordinary Americans.
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  >Professors at elite colleges have created exactly zero prosperous nations. You mean all by themselves? Well neither have plumbers, but I'm not about to disparage them over it, either.
- triceratops 5y ago
  > Professors at elite colleges have created exactly zero prosperous nations. It turns out that you can make that statement for any group of people. It takes all kinds of people to build prosperous nations. It'a also particularly ironic that you're writing this because of a project that professors (and grad students) at some elite colleges started back in the 1970s, with some funding from the defense department. And their creation (the Internet) led to historic amounts of wealth creation in a stupendously short amount of time. I also wonder where Britain would be without the numerous professors at elite colleges whose research in physics, mathematics, and chemistry made the Industrial Revolution possible.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    We’re talking about who to put in charge. The US was built with basically just a few kinds of people in charge: farmers, lawyers, businessmen, and military officers. It was already wealthy before there were any Ivy League professors doing anything. There are countries where the government was heavily influenced by academic theories. Marx was a PhD and a professor and his political philosophy was the basis for several quite unsuccessful efforts at governance. This is not a knock on academic elites in general. I want them sitting around and building the Internet! But I want a farmer actually running the country.
    - triceratops 5y ago
      > The US was built with basically just a few kinds of people in charge: farmers, lawyers, businessmen, and military officers. It was already wealthy before there were any Ivy League professors doing anything. The Ivy League wasn't the "Ivy League" back then - just a bunch of fledgling colleges without much of a reputation. America was a different country. Smart, ambitious people went into planting, trading, or soldiering. What things were like 200+ years ago has no bearing on how they should be today. > Marx was a PhD and a professor and his political philosophy was the basis for several quite unsuccessful efforts at governance. One academic's theories led to some failed governments, therefore academics are bad at country-building? Marx wasn't even in charge of any of those countries. Other people (such as Lenin, a lawyer, and Trotsky, born to a farmer) read his work, went "this shit sounds dope", and tragedy ensued. I can point you to any number of countries run by "farmers, lawyers, businessmen, and military officers" that weren't as successful as the US. As I already mentioned, Lenin was a lawyer. So was Fidel Castro. I hope I don't need to go through a list various military dictators. > But I want a farmer actually running the country. I want smart people with good ideas, integrity, and communication skills running the country. You can find people like that in every field. I couldn't care less what their background is. The US succeeded (in part) because the early leadership was of incredibly high caliber and integrity. George Washington stepped down voluntarily from the presidency after two terms. It seems normal to us but it was unthinkable back then. Everyone just assumed he'd stay in charge until he died.
      - 5y ago
mensetmanusman 5y ago
They are >90% very left leaning, which is common in elite academic institutes, but such groups are typically contemptuous of average Americans and their religious views. This would set up a likely conflict, such as what we got a hint of when the masses elected Trump as a big middle finger.
- markoman 5y ago
  Why is it that the politics of academics is found to be so distasteful, when we accept the politics of businessmen such as Peter Thiel and Rupert Murdoch as a matter of course? In a country that had always worshiped technological innovation, why are academics who provide the very seeds of this innovation, disrespected so easily? Look where your governance-by-middle-finger got us. It got us an egomaniacal dotard, drunk on power, who shifted his politics when the opportunism suited him. His TV show got him just enough notoriety to move the needle among the masses. When he found that his toxic personality, based on name-calling and blustery bufoonery found a reception from Right-wing voters, there was nothing that could stop him from winning their side. But this was a man who could work with no one who wasn't willing to serve him without question, be they judges or legislators, and certainly a deal-breaker for our allies. His world-view was an American centric one entirely, at a time when China had earned and demanded a role he couldn't conceive of or negotiate. Behind the scenes, he ruled a chaotic White House that was fortunately tested little. Still, the stories that escaped from this White House show that he was not to be contained by any legal constraints, and that he fostered an atmosphere where staff worked at cross-purposes to one another. Their singular focus was on the media, yet they couldn't even manage this successfully, despite the allegiance and sycophancy from Fox. Finally, COVID-19 was the test they would not pass. Although Trump was due to receive some sympathy from his two impeachments, once America saw the reckless way he managed this pandemic and the huge toll it bore on us, there was little chance he could win the 2020 election. What we saw after the election was an unheard of nothing-to-lose strategy of trying to steal the election by any falsehood necessary, whether within the courts or in the streets. The books are coming out on the market now, but they show that our wildest dreams of what could have been happening in that White House paled when compared to horrid reality of what did. We likely have to thank a mere few individuals such as Gen. Mark Milley, Mike Pence and such for holding together our country in the moments when it was the most vulnerable to those whose only concern was for power.
tptacek 5y ago
Are you really asking for an informed argument about what's so wrong with the rule of the Ivy League optimates? Isn't it pretty simple just to cite Robert McNamara and call it a day? What am I missing about the complexity of this issue?

rayiner 5y ago

As an immigrant to America, I have thought hard about the differences between it and the developing country I came from. We don’t have any shortage of intellectuals, and those Harvard professors export their ideas for the whole world. Professors at elite colleges have created exactly zero prosperous nations. I’m convinced that what we’re missing is ordinary Americans.

SantalBlush 5y ago
>Professors at elite colleges have created exactly zero prosperous nations. You mean all by themselves? Well neither have plumbers, but I'm not about to disparage them over it, either.
triceratops 5y ago
> Professors at elite colleges have created exactly zero prosperous nations. It turns out that you can make that statement for any group of people. It takes all kinds of people to build prosperous nations. It'a also particularly ironic that you're writing this because of a project that professors (and grad students) at some elite colleges started back in the 1970s, with some funding from the defense department. And their creation (the Internet) led to historic amounts of wealth creation in a stupendously short amount of time. I also wonder where Britain would be without the numerous professors at elite colleges whose research in physics, mathematics, and chemistry made the Industrial Revolution possible.
- rayiner 5y ago
  We’re talking about who to put in charge. The US was built with basically just a few kinds of people in charge: farmers, lawyers, businessmen, and military officers. It was already wealthy before there were any Ivy League professors doing anything. There are countries where the government was heavily influenced by academic theories. Marx was a PhD and a professor and his political philosophy was the basis for several quite unsuccessful efforts at governance. This is not a knock on academic elites in general. I want them sitting around and building the Internet! But I want a farmer actually running the country.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    > The US was built with basically just a few kinds of people in charge: farmers, lawyers, businessmen, and military officers. It was already wealthy before there were any Ivy League professors doing anything. The Ivy League wasn't the "Ivy League" back then - just a bunch of fledgling colleges without much of a reputation. America was a different country. Smart, ambitious people went into planting, trading, or soldiering. What things were like 200+ years ago has no bearing on how they should be today. > Marx was a PhD and a professor and his political philosophy was the basis for several quite unsuccessful efforts at governance. One academic's theories led to some failed governments, therefore academics are bad at country-building? Marx wasn't even in charge of any of those countries. Other people (such as Lenin, a lawyer, and Trotsky, born to a farmer) read his work, went "this shit sounds dope", and tragedy ensued. I can point you to any number of countries run by "farmers, lawyers, businessmen, and military officers" that weren't as successful as the US. As I already mentioned, Lenin was a lawyer. So was Fidel Castro. I hope I don't need to go through a list various military dictators. > But I want a farmer actually running the country. I want smart people with good ideas, integrity, and communication skills running the country. You can find people like that in every field. I couldn't care less what their background is. The US succeeded (in part) because the early leadership was of incredibly high caliber and integrity. George Washington stepped down voluntarily from the presidency after two terms. It seems normal to us but it was unthinkable back then. Everyone just assumed he'd stay in charge until he died.
    - 5y ago

mensetmanusman 5y ago

They are >90% very left leaning, which is common in elite academic institutes, but such groups are typically contemptuous of average Americans and their religious views. This would set up a likely conflict, such as what we got a hint of when the masses elected Trump as a big middle finger.

markoman 5y ago
Why is it that the politics of academics is found to be so distasteful, when we accept the politics of businessmen such as Peter Thiel and Rupert Murdoch as a matter of course? In a country that had always worshiped technological innovation, why are academics who provide the very seeds of this innovation, disrespected so easily? Look where your governance-by-middle-finger got us. It got us an egomaniacal dotard, drunk on power, who shifted his politics when the opportunism suited him. His TV show got him just enough notoriety to move the needle among the masses. When he found that his toxic personality, based on name-calling and blustery bufoonery found a reception from Right-wing voters, there was nothing that could stop him from winning their side. But this was a man who could work with no one who wasn't willing to serve him without question, be they judges or legislators, and certainly a deal-breaker for our allies. His world-view was an American centric one entirely, at a time when China had earned and demanded a role he couldn't conceive of or negotiate. Behind the scenes, he ruled a chaotic White House that was fortunately tested little. Still, the stories that escaped from this White House show that he was not to be contained by any legal constraints, and that he fostered an atmosphere where staff worked at cross-purposes to one another. Their singular focus was on the media, yet they couldn't even manage this successfully, despite the allegiance and sycophancy from Fox. Finally, COVID-19 was the test they would not pass. Although Trump was due to receive some sympathy from his two impeachments, once America saw the reckless way he managed this pandemic and the huge toll it bore on us, there was little chance he could win the 2020 election. What we saw after the election was an unheard of nothing-to-lose strategy of trying to steal the election by any falsehood necessary, whether within the courts or in the streets. The books are coming out on the market now, but they show that our wildest dreams of what could have been happening in that White House paled when compared to horrid reality of what did. We likely have to thank a mere few individuals such as Gen. Mark Milley, Mike Pence and such for holding together our country in the moments when it was the most vulnerable to those whose only concern was for power.

tptacek 5y ago

Are you really asking for an informed argument about what's so wrong with the rule of the Ivy League optimates? Isn't it pretty simple just to cite Robert McNamara and call it a day? What am I missing about the complexity of this issue?