Misplaced anti-intellectualism

that many of them are silent and would rather focus on their teaching and research. For some, this silence is not even a product of choice, but is an outcome of peer pressure, or even of career survival. In a university setting where the political biases of administrators, owners and tenured peers are so palpable, it could be risky to one’s tenure and promotion to take an opposite view.

Thus, what this people need is for the pro-Duterte social media community to establish an enabling environment to harness the voices of these silent, and in some cases, intimidated and silenced, allies.

After all, any academic, regardless of political color, comes to the table not as amateurs. Many of them have gone up the academic ladder with their robust records in teaching and research. They live and breathe the theories, concepts and principles of their disciplines that they become experts to a point that these become inherent parts of their very nature, like their second skin. Well-versed academics do not need any further preparation to render their opinions on issues pertinent to their disciplines.

For example, political scientists who have gained academic credentials because of their published bodies of work that have been vetted by peers, are walking and talking political resources that just need to be tapped. They can give robust political analysis on any issue thrown their way even on an instant that they no longer have to even prepare for it.

Academics who are experts in their own disciplines would be much-valued additions to the arsenal of support for the President. It is just a matter of bringing them into the fold to harness their voices that are otherwise not noticed.

And this could not be done if the social- media enablers that dominate the President’s coterie of supporters will not consciously exert effort to also enable these pro- Duterte academics. Worse, if they continue this dismissive anti-intellectualism that generalizes all academics as wearing only one political color, or that they are useless armchair theorists.

Academics have been accused of “credentialism,” as if there is something wrong with it. On the contrary, calling attention to academic credentials is a necessary practice to establish legitimacy, as the basis from where one is speaking from. It is only wrong when it is done to flaunt and gloat, and to diminish the right of others without the academic credentials to speak.

fault in “credentialism” particularly when this comes from a misplaced kind of anti-intellectualism, one that feeds either from envy for not having such credentials, or from a feeling of hubris of being better despite not having the necessary academic credentials.

It is easy to dismiss the role of academics and intellectuals in a world where just anyone with a social media account can become instant experts. And universities will have to do a lot of stock-taking to correct the im- age of detached, arrogant, useless academics. For one, universities have to now go beyond the rubric of publication citations as the beall and end-all of their existence. It’s about time they measure their worth not in terms of subjective reputations, number of foreign students and faculty, and number of grants, but in terms of their real impact on society.

But it is equally problematic to dismiss the role that academics perform, and the value that they can contribute.

For the pro-Duterte camp, what is needed is not to dismiss the academic intellectuals and stereotype them as useless, or generalize them as antagonistic yellows.

There is a need to transform them into a potent force by making it safer for them to speak. It may be news to many who have become used to the fact that 82 percent of the population support the President. But the power structures and internal politics in universities may not necessarily reflect this.