A Cambridge professor has warned that the woke ethos of diversity, equity, and inclusion threatens to “destroy” universities and turn them into “empty shells” without the pursuit of knowledge as the principal goal.
Professor John Marenbon, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and the British Academy, issued a dire warning for the state of higher education in the United Kingdom amid growing attacks on freedom of speech and academic liberty by the far-left internationalist woke movement.
Writing for the Politeia think tank, the medieval philosophy professor said that the woke attack on “academic freedoms, non-discrimination, the pursuit of excellence and truth embodied in cultural tradition… is fierce, and it now threatens to destroy the universities, turning them into empty shells, institutions of advanced training without knowledge as their goal.”
The Cambridge professor said that woke ideology has been “formalised” within universities and elsewhere under the banner of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), an ideology antithetical to the concept of freedom of speech, which is enforced by a “whole battery of bureaucrats” on campuses across the country.
“It has meant that speakers are silenced when they insist that only those with female organs are women or lecturers forced out of their jobs because they hold unpopular views, or academics more generally obliged to self-censor,” Marenbon wrote.
“The concept of academic freedom was developed to protect academics from interference by politicians, university administrators and funders, the public and the press. But it does nothing to protect academics from other academics, often colleagues in their own department, or protect their specialism. Too often these colleagues, academics themselves, have been most vigorous in enforcing conformity of thought,” he added.
The professor also suggested that the spread of woke ideology has also inverted the structure of learning itself in that it has undermined the authority teachers need to have over their students.
“Universities are hierarchies where students and their teachers occupy different ranks; students should respect and honour their teachers and those engaged in research, and recognize their authority, teachers should do their pedagogic duty and researchers their more austere duty of searching for knowledge,” he wrote.
Perhaps more fundamentally, Prof Marenbon argued that in order to function properly, universities must function on an unequal basis, in which academic rigour is held above desires to rectify disparities among groups in society.
He argues that universities must be “counter-inclusive,” saying that the “disinterested” pursuit of knowledge is impeded by forcing schools to emphasize diversity standards and select less qualified teachers, researchers, and students. The professor argued that selecting candidates based on sex, race, and other characteristics for university slots also hurts society as a whole.
“Inclusion is a vice in universities, which need to be exclusive. They should exclude not only all who are not able to benefit from the teaching there or who are not up to their vocation as instructors or researchers, but those too who… lack dedication,” Marenbon said per The Times of London.
The Cambridge professor, highlighting the decision by the largely pro-DEI left-wing Labour government to scrap the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, went on to warn that universities will merely be the canary in the coal mine for a broader attack on freedom of speech throughout society.
He wrote: “Will freedom of speech be ever more restricted by a system of taboos about minority groups? When lecturers are silenced, because their views are unpopular, the whole of society becomes less free; and less free still when academics can no longer pursue their traditional goal and of seeking knowledge.”
