Academic credibility on the line

May 23, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor
Many academics are discrediting themselves daily by meddling in the affairs of politics. Academics should limit their political concerns to matters of curriculum, pedagogy and departmental governance and leave broader political issues to others.
It dampens their credibility by polluting their academic achievements and they are seen in a different light by many.
The academia realm offers greater job security. Which sensible academic would want to give up such an opportunity, just to take a flyer in the political marketplace? Academics need to understand that in politics, politicians are always one election away from unemployment.
Politics hinders the progression of a professional academic’s career. Once in politics it is impossible to go back to teaching and research; it pulls you away from the literature and the routine of your academic life.
Academics are fully committed to the creation and transmission of fields of knowledge. Academics should focus on the disciplines to rational analysis and empirical investigation.

Any analysis should be linked together in a logically consistent proposition in order to derive predictions that can be tested against data from the external world. Politics is a different scenario. It consists of building coalitions to take power and manage the apparatus of government. Politicians aren’t engaged in formulating consistent theories and testing hypotheses.

Their stock in trade is rhetoric, not logic. The test for political leaders is not whether they are right or wrong, but whether they can win the trust of the people to hold their coalitions together.
A politician must take people as he finds them and try to bring some of them together in a coalition to gain power.

The test of success is not the logic of his thought but the appeal of his rhetoric to those he would lead.
Politicians rarely get to implement their own ideas in any straightforward way. More commonly, they end up brokering compromises among different factions of their supporters, ending up with second or third-best solutions that can be legislated without provoking a violent reaction from their opponents.

Academics should wake up and stop meddling in the affairs of politics, especially when it does more harm than good. I call on academics to rethink their position in politics since its only purpose is to draw down the academic’s intellectual capital with little chance to replenish it.
Ram Budram
Former University Lecturer