Embracing academic elitism

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis note began as a conversation at the South Asian History and Culture Roundtable of 2016. The conversation had started out as an attempt to explore ways of being ‘differently academic’, but soon became one about ‘academic elitism’ and the role the double-bind peer review. Was the peer review merely a way of social exclusion engineered to keep out those who do not conform to a narrow set of ideological positions? Or was it a genuinely valuable vetting mechanism that ensures the integrity and quality of research? These questions cannot be considered without taking account of the ways in which anti-elitism has itself become a political issue mobilized by new forms of populist politics. Not just in South Asia, but across the world, we see populist politicians casting any kind of intellectual activity, particularly those devoted to humanist inquiry, as elitism. Such anti-intellectualism by masquerading as a form of anti-elitism has often paralyzed left-liberal opinion. Confronting this right-wing, populist anti-intellectualism is particularly important for disciplines like History and to do so we must embrace a certain kind of ‘academic elitism’. At the same time, academic elitism cannot be allowed to legitimize or enable social elitism nor be confused with a meritocracy.