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Tumblr post by user lumpenmole.

Text reads: "The reason academia doesn't treat anarchism as a real school of sociology is the same reason why they made an exception for Noam Chomsky. Anarchism is the philosophy of consent."

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[–] 20 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

I think it's probably true in a less targeted at anarchists sense, like if you're a vocal anarchist or Marxist you're probably not going to find it easy or even possible to have a career in academia. Richard Wolff has said in the past that the reason he focuses on co-ops as a path forward is that it's the furthest left position he thinks he can take while still having a career as an academic. To be a successful left academic, you kind of have to become compatible with the liberal capitalist paradigm.

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  • [–] [S] 9 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

    Davis Graeber talks about this in Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology.

    At the very least, one would imagine being an openly anarchist professor would mean challenging the way universities are run—and I don’t mean by demanding an anarchist studies department, either—and that, of course, is going to get one in far more trouble than anything one could ever write.

    Graber was on track to become a tenured professor at Stanford University. But they fired him. The school made the typical politically neutered statement, but his peers said it was because he refused to fire his grad students who were forming a union, as well as his insistance on writing academic text in an accessible way. And his is not an uncommon story when you begin reading anarchist theory.

    And I think this is because Marxism is not a moral framework, and it never really was. And as we see with Chomsky, anarchism is not immune to this problem, but it's less likely to become an issue because there is no position of authority for these people to occupy.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 hours ago (1 child)

    I always thought his position at the London School of Economics was a little bit just the university collecting an "interesting" American oddball. That is to say, not that I think he's that, but that was the spirit of the hiring. Love that guy, his writing turned me on to anarchism in college.

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