America’s academia - universities are finished, and are spreading a self-destructive, dualistic, mechanistic poison. A classical pyramid scam - the new RICO case..
“Recognition refusal” has become not just a psychological defense but an epistemic one. It protects the fragile coherence of the self—whether personal or institutional—from collapse. In this light, the refusal to see or integrate new realities, whether emotional or scientific, is not merely stubbornness. It is the persistence of shame as an organizing principle.
Shame as an Institutional Reflex
This same reflex animates much of modern life science. The academic establishment—still bound to its dualistic and mechanistic metaphors—enacts a similar defense against change. The living world is treated as a machine; mind and matter, subject and object, are kept in sterile separation. Reductionism becomes not a method but a fortress, to be mercilessly defended by state power-judiciary.
What we call “scientific conservatism” may be, at a deeper level, the shame of an epistemic body that cannot bear to feel. Academia’s rejection of complexity, emergence, and embodied intelligence mirrors the organism’s rejection of its own vulnerability. To admit the irreducible, relational, and affective dimensions of life would mean confronting its own disembodied foundations—the shame of having amputated feeling from knowledge.
If you wait for the State you’ll wait till doomsday.
Take a look at what Solidarity is doing in South Africa. Faced with a similar crisis in tertiary education and the collapse of standards it has in record time built a technical university (SolTech) and is currently in construction of an academic university. All with private initiative and funding from mom & pop to corporate sponsors.
Yeah I have been reading and they might increase incrementally toward something like this but if that is their plan they have not talked about it openly.
I actually interviewed there and frankly was unimpressed: they don't seem to care about the liberal arts (and are apathetic toward intellectual discourse) and presume that all you need to do is scrape the woke off the top and voilà—will somehow have a genuine heterodox pedagogy as a result. Nope, that's not sufficient. I'll be curious if they survive.
With all due respect, how about everybody watch this documentary (The Agenda by Oracle Films), to find out how they were destroyed and by whom in the first place. It's not just a random accident. This is war:
Under "the state's role" you do not address the funding of scientific research, and how this is done will be crucial to the success of the project. Simply replacing state funding with private money will not help; indeed part of the problem we have with research is that it is not truth-seeking, but instead highly motivated to serve the goals of the funders. Swapping political goals for commercial ones doesn't address the problem.
Funding of scientific research will continue to be done the same way it is currently done. A significant part of the current scientific research ecosystem (which we will call the knowledge-industrial complex), say 10-30%, is well-suited to the end of incremental and applied research and of producing scientists who can do that reasonably well. A large part of the remaining ~70% can be reformed to join that 30% with adequate supervision and auditing with regard to reproducibility. That stays the same, but with more administrative oversight.
An institute of this type would have to start private for legal reasons, but if it shows promise, it could be provided with constitutional accommodation by Congress, similar to the Smithsonian. It could be called something like The National Institute of Free Science and receive federal funding. Alternatively, if a private version of such an institute is very successful as a prototype, this could be used to drive a wedge to not only widen the range of exemptions for the institute but provide fodder to weaken support for the more noxious elements of the civil rights regime more broadly, making constitutional accommodation less necessary over time and allowing, eventually, the receipt of federal funds of this and daughter institutes without requiring constitutional accommodation. Which should certainly be the long-term target.
Essentially, you want institutions that can pursue a Humboldtian “pure science” model unencumbered by the cultural baggage of civil rights law mission creep. The institute can either be a wedge to provoke broader systems change, or if that is not possible, a sanctuary for pure science in an otherwise hostile broader institutional culture.
I don’t see how you can legislate for that. You just have to do it but even then it’s not a quick win. It would take a decade to start producing superior results and 3-5 decades for the old credential-laundering ideological system to rot away.
You can create a constitutional carve-out via Congress. Obviously it would have to be pushed hard by Trump. Without that, you’re going to be faced by relentless lawsuits by the left and shut down immediately. As for results, it depends. University of Berlin, founded by Humboldt, attracted top talent and immediately became one of the centers of Enlightenment education and thought. Within a year. If you could attract top talent and give them the kinds of perks and resources that would be available to this model (though salaries will likely be modest), with good leadership, I believe you could produce rapid results instantly and relentless buzz and excitement that would compound under appropriate leadership.
You are describing MIT—unfortunately it’s gone woke!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFHHOBiUrkg
America’s academia - universities are finished, and are spreading a self-destructive, dualistic, mechanistic poison. A classical pyramid scam - the new RICO case..
“Recognition refusal” has become not just a psychological defense but an epistemic one. It protects the fragile coherence of the self—whether personal or institutional—from collapse. In this light, the refusal to see or integrate new realities, whether emotional or scientific, is not merely stubbornness. It is the persistence of shame as an organizing principle.
Shame as an Institutional Reflex
This same reflex animates much of modern life science. The academic establishment—still bound to its dualistic and mechanistic metaphors—enacts a similar defense against change. The living world is treated as a machine; mind and matter, subject and object, are kept in sterile separation. Reductionism becomes not a method but a fortress, to be mercilessly defended by state power-judiciary.
What we call “scientific conservatism” may be, at a deeper level, the shame of an epistemic body that cannot bear to feel. Academia’s rejection of complexity, emergence, and embodied intelligence mirrors the organism’s rejection of its own vulnerability. To admit the irreducible, relational, and affective dimensions of life would mean confronting its own disembodied foundations—the shame of having amputated feeling from knowledge.
Does this help?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFHHOBiUrkg
https://manhattan.institute/article/the-anatomy-of-institutional-capture-gender-medicine-policy-and-the-texas-medical-association
This is worth a read, Dr. Kevin. You might find the themes familiar.
If you wait for the State you’ll wait till doomsday.
Take a look at what Solidarity is doing in South Africa. Faced with a similar crisis in tertiary education and the collapse of standards it has in record time built a technical university (SolTech) and is currently in construction of an academic university. All with private initiative and funding from mom & pop to corporate sponsors.
Perhaps it's a bit beyond that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFHHOBiUrkg
I think UATX in Austin is a new private university with the power to reshape what excellence is.
Yeah I have been reading and they might increase incrementally toward something like this but if that is their plan they have not talked about it openly.
I actually interviewed there and frankly was unimpressed: they don't seem to care about the liberal arts (and are apathetic toward intellectual discourse) and presume that all you need to do is scrape the woke off the top and voilà—will somehow have a genuine heterodox pedagogy as a result. Nope, that's not sufficient. I'll be curious if they survive.
Have they gone ESG?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFHHOBiUrkg
With all due respect, how about everybody watch this documentary (The Agenda by Oracle Films), to find out how they were destroyed and by whom in the first place. It's not just a random accident. This is war:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFHHOBiUrkg
Under "the state's role" you do not address the funding of scientific research, and how this is done will be crucial to the success of the project. Simply replacing state funding with private money will not help; indeed part of the problem we have with research is that it is not truth-seeking, but instead highly motivated to serve the goals of the funders. Swapping political goals for commercial ones doesn't address the problem.
Funding of scientific research will continue to be done the same way it is currently done. A significant part of the current scientific research ecosystem (which we will call the knowledge-industrial complex), say 10-30%, is well-suited to the end of incremental and applied research and of producing scientists who can do that reasonably well. A large part of the remaining ~70% can be reformed to join that 30% with adequate supervision and auditing with regard to reproducibility. That stays the same, but with more administrative oversight.
An institute of this type would have to start private for legal reasons, but if it shows promise, it could be provided with constitutional accommodation by Congress, similar to the Smithsonian. It could be called something like The National Institute of Free Science and receive federal funding. Alternatively, if a private version of such an institute is very successful as a prototype, this could be used to drive a wedge to not only widen the range of exemptions for the institute but provide fodder to weaken support for the more noxious elements of the civil rights regime more broadly, making constitutional accommodation less necessary over time and allowing, eventually, the receipt of federal funds of this and daughter institutes without requiring constitutional accommodation. Which should certainly be the long-term target.
Essentially, you want institutions that can pursue a Humboldtian “pure science” model unencumbered by the cultural baggage of civil rights law mission creep. The institute can either be a wedge to provoke broader systems change, or if that is not possible, a sanctuary for pure science in an otherwise hostile broader institutional culture.
I don’t see how you can legislate for that. You just have to do it but even then it’s not a quick win. It would take a decade to start producing superior results and 3-5 decades for the old credential-laundering ideological system to rot away.
You can create a constitutional carve-out via Congress. Obviously it would have to be pushed hard by Trump. Without that, you’re going to be faced by relentless lawsuits by the left and shut down immediately. As for results, it depends. University of Berlin, founded by Humboldt, attracted top talent and immediately became one of the centers of Enlightenment education and thought. Within a year. If you could attract top talent and give them the kinds of perks and resources that would be available to this model (though salaries will likely be modest), with good leadership, I believe you could produce rapid results instantly and relentless buzz and excitement that would compound under appropriate leadership.