Misplaced anti-intellectualism

THIS is the season when it is so easy to fault people for using their academic credentials to establish credibility and legitimacy.

This is the effect of social media, when access to the production, reproduction and transformation of public discourse has been democratized, that academic credentials are no longer necessary to become a political analyst, or even an investigative journalist.

And in a polarized political environment, the partisanship of academia has not helped at all. The natural tendency of universities and scholars to gravitate towards liberal ideas has necessarily pushed them to bear oppositional discourses vis-à-vis strong states and leaders, such Rodrigo Duterte.

Thus, the inherent intellectual elitism of universities, which in fact is deeply embedded in their very nature since time immemorial, has been unfairly associated with the exclusionary and predatory elitist politics associated with oligarchic privilege.

They are now confronted by ordinary citizens who populate as President social media, are overwhelmingly supportive of the President, and are led by opinion leaders who are not constrained by academic credentials. These leaders are not lawyers yet they articulate their opinions on legal issues such as the Marcos burial and the declaration of martial law in Mindanao; are not political scientists yet they discourse on political issues as complex as constitutional reform; and are not investigative journalists yet they are as good in exposing the real identities of anonymous bloggers.

These social media enablers of President Duterte are antagonistic towards the journalists in mainstream media, and the so-called thought leaders who,because most hold academic credentials in their own disciplines, are perceived as elitist intellectuals.

However, it is totally wrong to dismiss the relevance of intellectualism in the shaping of the national narrative, as what many pro- Duterte social media bloggers readily do.

The university is also a fertile domain for political contestations. It is not entirely correct to perceive the academia as having only one political color. There are as many other voices in any academic institution, some of whom may in fact be supportive of the President. It is most unfortunate