The middle-class academic elite is totally out of touch

It's not so much that academics are unaware of poverty, but more that the 'solutions' that so many voters find for their problems are not so easy to predict and countermand. Voting to leave the EU makes a lot of sense if one opposes the European courts being able to rule on domestic British issues, but it doesn't make much sense if one is worried about unemployment and inequality. As this article notes, the Trump and 'Leave' votes have a large component of roulette - a desperate hope that upending the system will lead to a good outcome. This is not something that will change if more working-class students become sociologists.

The article confuses cause and effect, appearing to blame 'academia' for all of society's ills. Have academics in the political and social sciences (as well as other disciplines) railed against the failure of UK 'democracy' - of course they have. Have they criticized the ineptitude of the political class? The vicious iniquity of Neoliberal ideology? The failures in housing policy? The unjust cruelty of tax evasion and the destruction of public goods? The untrammeled greed of Thatcherite consumerism? Of course they have. Have they condemned the marketisation of our universities, the ghastly insidiousness of league tables, endless pressure to publish in top ranked journals, the disproportionate salaries of university CEOs, the destruction of the values that used to underpin our institutions, our teaching and our research? Of course they have. What has led us to this grim financially driven market dominated state of affairs? The answer is not we academics. It is government policy, dictated by narrow cabals of self interested ideologues in positions of power at the head of our rotten so-called democracy. Academics, many of them, are also victims in the creeping destruction of public goods and communitarian values. Change will only come when we reform UK politics, and deal with who uses and abuses power. Academics are not to blame for this mess. Where I would in part agree with the article is that too many of us are too passive. We should protest more loudly and more often through every channel available, including new ones. We are living through a right-wing coup without tanks. We should unite in opposition to what is happening, and fight it tooth and nail.

Gave up reading after the 6th “I”.