Grand Theft Identity

OK - I was prompted to write this note in the light of an 'interesting' conversation I had the other day on the subject of conspiracy theories. In it was mentioned a blog called "The Daily Sceptic", which to be frank I was unaware of, but the notion that was floated that this might be some sort of source of 'truth', regarding climate change scepticism/denial, big pharma vaccine cons and the even more grandiose concepts of global elites cashing in on the gullibility of the masses prompted me to stick my toe into the shark-infested waters of paranoid public 'debate'. What I found was pretty much what I expected. However, on reading the first article I turned to: "Universities Are a Conspiracy Against the Public", allegedly by one James Alexander, later credited at the foot of the piece as '...a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey...' I discovered something less obvious but rather more insidious at play.

The piece starts by quoting Matthew Goodwin's book "Bad Education", published earlier this year. Goodwin is an ex-academic currently presenting on GB News, the fact of which immediately sets the tone for the content that follows: again, expectations fulfilled. What I hadn't expected was the quality - or total absence of it - in the writing of the article that followed. To be utterly fair, if this had been submitted as an essay by a schoolchild in an exam, it would have garnered an F- for their efforts. So, the veracity of the claim that this was the work of a university professor looked shaky to say the very least. So I looked into the quoted academic's alleged background and found that indeed, John James Alexander was an Associate Professor in Political Theory at the said institution. So, I looked into his published work and discovered a paper of his entitled "Three Ideas of the University", 2019.

Reading through it revealed the work of a rather more elevated and educated mind than that of the 'author' of the 'Sceptic' scribble. However, the link between the two pieces was evident in Alexander's abstract to the paper. I'll quote the relevant sections of both for you to compare and contrast: first, the 'Sceptic', then the original academic paper:-

'...What is a university? Well, the fundamental conviction that lies behind a humanist education, or a liberal education, an academic education, whatever you want to call it, is that universities are a ‘Time Out’ from reality.

I have three propositions. They form a twisted dialectical argument. The first is not particularly original though a bit old-fashioned. The second is completely obvious, a fact. The third, I think, is, if you can accept it, important.

1. Universities are a ‘Time Out’ from Reality

2. Universities are Far More Socially Significant Than They Have Ever Been

3. Therefore, Our Society is Now Engaged in a ‘Time Out’ from Reality

Shaw once said that all the professions — he meant law, medicine, business — are a conspiracy against the laity. The universities were not, or not much, since they were not professions set free to work on all society, but were instead Islets of Langerhans, or Ivory Towers, that were exemptions from the imperatives of all society. But now that the universities have become professionalised, and now that academics have become professions, by the logic of Shaw’s argument, the academy is now a conspiracy against the laity...'

Now the original abstract:

'...What is a university? In the nineteenth century J.H. Newman famously spoke of “the idea of a university”. This phrase has dominated all discussions of the nature of the university since. Most contemporary writers are against any attempt to theorise the university in terms of a single idea. But against the now standard view that universities should only be characterised empirically as institutions that perform many different activities, I attempt to defend the idea of the university, not by reviving a single idea of the university but instead by suggesting that there are, at root, three ideas of the university. These are rival ideas, and strictly incommensurable, though they are often found existing together in a state of tension in actual universities. I call them the eternal, the immortal and the immediate ideas of the university.'

I think even the most cursory of readings of both would render any notion of the former being the work of Alexander absurd in the extreme. The disturbing thing is that this is not a simple case of plagiarism, either, but apparently one of wholesale identity theft: the ideas expressed in Alexander's original work have not been reproduced as another's efforts, but have had their intention and meaning subverted to the twisted notions of the 'author' of the "Sceptic" article, and then re-attributed as the work of an established academic. The mind boggles, and all I would say to any regular consumer of the rank tripe peddled by sites such as "The Daily Sceptic" is: stop! Stop before your brain rots from the consumption of this arrant garbage...