Member-only story
It Is a Great Time to Leave Higher Education
I quit my tenured teaching job a year ago.
I started writing this the day after the Florida State University shooting that killed two men. When I quit teaching last year, West Virginia was preparing to allow anyone with a license to carry concealed pistols and revolvers on college and university campuses. It wasn’t the main reason I quit, but it was a factor.
It is a great time to leave higher education, and not just because teachers have a target on their backs. I can count on one hand the number of people employed in higher education who I could trust. It is loaded with liars, scoundrels, cheats, charlatans, backstabbers, cowards, bullies, and ne’er-do-wells, and more and more, it has come to be managed mainly by that group. Because of this, academia’s actions are often at odds with its stated values, and being exposed to its hypocrisy is like a demeaning hazing ritual that everyone who participates in it has to endure.
At every stage of my association with it, higher education has tried to control, limit, erase, and punish my speech. It claims to hold freedom of speech most sacred, but it is its worst defender and its most dangerous enemy. The most obvious evidence of this is its capitulation to authoritarianism. So far, it seems only the wealthiest school in the world can afford to…
