The Dark Side of Academia

Insofar as the Network and the Galileo Commission question the predominant and exclusive validity of scientific materialism and its corresponding instrumentalist rationality, we represent a counter-cultural movement in advocating more integral ways of knowing and ontological/metaphysical reconstruction. We are wary of the influence of neoliberalism pushing universities in a market direction that makes students into customers and incorporates increasingly burdensome metrics around output and impact as well as a plethora of regulations. STEM subjects are prioritised, while Arts faculties are coming under pressure as irrelevant when they are in fact vital in transmitting what makes us human – this is why we have published A Call for a Renaissance of the Spirit in the Humanities (and see review of Jeff Kripal’s Superhumanities in this issue).

The anonymous author of this book has worked as a successful academic with over 80 peer-reviewed papers and seven books. Her disturbing story of being suppressed, marginalised and restructured out of her post is an object lesson in university power politics aided and abetted by obsequious colleagues and bureaucratic administrators as an exercise in reputation management. The issue was that she wrote a newspaper article on inclusive leadership that came to be regarded as an implicit criticism of the vice-chancellor’s authoritarian management style. At stake is the erosion of academic freedom and the very status of universities in relation to the pursuit of truth. Both institutions and journals – through editorial gatekeepers and peer review – tend to be inherently conservative and defend the existing paradigm instead of encouraging genuine innovation. Students are schooled within this paradigm and university careers depend on maintaining corresponding respectability and acceptability. Heretics like Peter Duesberg, Jacques Benveniste, Rupert Sheldrake and Brian Josephson are marginalised, attacked and excluded (p. 124). The book gives a number of interesting examples of such heresy, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, homoeopathy, and the background to the fire of London demoting Sir Christopher Wren from his position as the principal architect of St Paul’s Cathedral. Of a total of 224 design drawings, Hawksmoor was responsible for 100, Wren only 23. where it turns out that Sir Christopher Wren made only 23 drawings (10%) for the design of St Paul’s Cathedral as opposed to 100 by Nicholas Hawksmoor out of a total of 224.

The author argues that the common denominator in the cases cited is ‘a determination to preserve existing paradigms and theories’, which also applies to the Shakespeare authorship question being off-limits in Oxford and other leading universities (see The Shakespeare Enigma by Peter Dawkins) and the suppression of histories that reveal the real secret history of power, as in Carroll Quigley, Anthony Sutton and more recently Nicholas Hagger. All this means that ‘unorthodox scientific thinking can only surface in non-institutional publications.’ (p 125) As Iain McGilchrist has also discussed in detail, universities and institutions have become mechanistically hidebound and hierarchical, and the original spirit of enquiry and community has been largely submerged in corporate interests, as indicated, for instance, by the treatment of Professor Chris Exley – a leading researcher in neurotoxic effects of aluminium – when this might upset the cosy relationship with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: ‘truth has become secondary to protecting the commercial interests of the University.’ (p. 143). Dr Tess Lawrie, who contributes the afterword, had an identical experience in connection with Dr Andrew Hill with her work on ivermectin, when his university received a large pharmaceutical donation and he changed his tune and the conclusions of an article.

The upshot is that we need completely new institutions with independent affiliation to replace ‘the current moribund system’ where research would be freed from vested interests and government agendas. This probably means smaller scale operations, and the Alef Trust springs to mind as a creative community of teachers and learners. Moreover, the female voice in academia needs to be more prominent at the top level as argued in the chapter on this topic, where is evident that research by female academics ‘can open up areas of knowledge that were previously hidden from view.’ (p. 172) A structural issue relates to the marketisation of higher education. Institutions are forced to seek funds from foundations and industry that are in turn collaborating with powerful forces such as the World Economic Forum, which itself has a centralised and mechanistic top-down agenda. In the 19^th century, the impressionists achieved this through the Salon des Refusés – we now need such new creative spaces for freedom of enquiry and expression ‘closer in spirit and size to the universities that took root in Europe in the 11^th century.’ (p. 188)