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Anti-intellectualism describes a sentiment of hostility towards, or mistrust of, intellectuals and intellectual pursuits. This may be expressed in various ways, such as an attack on the merits of science, education, or literature.

Anti-intellectuals often seek to frame themselves as champions of the "ordinary people", and as advocates of egalitarianism against elitism, especially what they perceive as academic elitism. These critics argue from a perception that educated people form a social class by virtue of their education: that members of this class tend to talk chiefly to one another, and as such are remote from other points of view, and also that members of the intellectual elite tend to dominate political discourse.

Anti-intellectualism can also be used as a term used to criticize an educational system if it seems to place minimal emphasis on academic and intellectual accomplishment or a government's tendency to formulate policies without consultation with authoritative and scholarly study on the issues in question.

Causes

Anti-intellectual beliefs can come from a variety of sources. These include:

Religion

Although most religions have rich intellectual traditions, many often rely on arguments from authority that are not independently verifiable, along with a somewhat common tendency to reject secular critical traditions.

The Evangelical and fundamentalist wings of a religion are the most likely to harbor anti-intellectual sentiments, though not all such groups can be described in this way and many pride themselves on their scholarly traditions.

Some religions have doctrines that affirm statements about natural or human history, the provenance of sacred texts, and other matters that may be investigated by outside scholarship; this can give rise to conflict. However, religious anti-intellectualism is not confined to hostility against science: When bohemianism and romanticism become major factors in the fine arts, religious believers may perceive these trends to be subversive of morality and call for censorship. This has been a fairly common theme in socio-cultural trends in the Americas and Europe since the time of the Reformation. Some would argue, however, that this is just moral conservatism, which is distinct from anti-intellectualism, though the two positions are allied in many cases.

Some, notably many secular humanists, atheists and those holding related beliefs (especially radical variations thereof) assert that all religion is inherently anti-intellectual. It is commonly asserted by strong believers in atheistic humanism that religion is merely dressed up superstition, that it is a form of self-delusion or auto-aggrandizement, and that it is injurious in as much as it encourages individuals to engage in anti-common sense behaviours, such as speaking to somebody who isn't there, unhealthy denial of psychology, self-starvation, self-denial and magical thinking which tends to skew one's perception of reality. It is especially common for such advocates to point out the many wars and persecutions religion has been responsible for throughout history. See Antireligion and other criticisms of religion for details.

Authoritarian politics

Anti-intellectualism is often used by dictators or those seeking to establish dictatorships. The educated class has often been seen by totalitarian elements as a threat because of the tendency of intellectuals to use logic and reason to question situations they see as unjust. Thus, often violent anti-intellectual backlashes are common during the rise and rule of oppressive political movements, such as fascism, communism and theocracy. Because many intellectuals refuse to identify with nationalism, they are also commonly portrayed as unpatriotic.

The most extreme dictatorships, such as that of the Khmer Rouge, simply liquidated intellectuals as a class, while other regimes, like Iran, use a policy of harassment, intimidation, sporadic imprisonment and execution against intellectuals. In addition, intellectuals in countries ruled by authoritarian governments are often subject to popular condemnation and used as scapegoats to divert the anger of the public away from those in power. Anti-intellectualism is not necessarily violent however, and not necessarily oppressive. Anti-intellectual attitudes can be held by any group, including non-violent ones, as well as by individuals who merely disfavor intellectualism and learning in general.

Populism

Populism is another major strain of anti-intellectualism. Intellectuals are presented as elitists and tricksters whose knowledge and rhetorical skills are feared, not because they are useless, but because they may be used to hoodwink the ordinary people, who are conceived of as the 'salt of the earth' and the source of virtue.

In a similar vein, the curiosity and objectivity of intellectuals about foreign countries and beliefs is portrayed by populists as a lack of patriotism or moral clarity, and intellectuals are often held to be suspect of holding dangerously foreign, possibly subversive, opinions. An extreme form was embodied by Joseph McCarthy, the fanatically anti-Communist senator from Wisconsin.

Corporate culture

Corporate culture in modern times has demonstrated a general preference for 'pragmatism', and this is an occasional source of hostility toward learning. The idea here is that education is a costly and useless distraction from the more important business of making money. Reading and writing are solitary ventures, and according to this viewpoint these activities do little to make a person more affable or conventional and do not foster an aptitude for marketing or acumen for investment in profitable ventures. It is feared that intellectuals may acquire ethical and political ideas that may impede business or make its practices distasteful. Scientific and technological learning may be given a grudging respect; but the arts, literature, philosophy, and similar cultural pursuits are all considered a waste of time at best and subversive at worst. Those who pursue them are supposed to inhabit an 'ivory tower' of academia, full of grand plans whose practice is seen as impossibly flawed.

According to this view, education should be a sort of apprenticeship, rather than being done on the model of classical education based on Greek and Latin grammar and literature. The educational philosophy of John Dewey, founded on these assumptions, has had some influence on education in the USA, although it must be said that Dewey was also a philosopher and an atheist - two qualities guaranteed to raise suspicions among anti-intellectuals.

Issues within the educational system

The educational system may serve as a powerful tool for forming the culture of a nation. In the English speaking world, particularly in the USA and England, the schools and universities have often been criticized for being overtaken by overtly anti-intellectual trends and hence not preparing the youth properly to be members of society who would be cultured, prepared for challenging jobs, and capable of independent thought.

In primary and secondary schools
In schools there is often seen to be a lack of emphasis on mathematics and the sciences, accompanied by the rewriting of history curricula to de-emphasize facts in favor of political agendas, which may be either left-wing, such as political correctness, or right-wing nationalist narratives. Such critics would say, for example, that not teaching students multiplication tables in primary school and not making sure that they learn algebra by graduation is a blatant example of anti-intellectualism and malfeasance on the part of many schools. They would similarly criticize allowing students to graduate without learning the key facts about their country's national history, or without having read any Shakespeare.

Many critics of anti-intellectualism would also suggest the push to teach creationism (or Intelligent Design) over evolution is an example of anti-intellectualism.

=The demands of youth culture
= A major preserve of real, though hardly militant or even self-aware, anti-intellectualism in the contemporary world is a youth subculture often associated with those students who are more interested in social life or athletics than in their studies. Such subcultures, often marked by cliques, exist among students of all groups. Commercial youth culture also generates a dizzying variety of fads. Keeping up with the trends is difficult, and their content is frequently criticised by cultural critics of many different persuasions for being simple-minded and pandering to unsophisticated appetites. Pursuing popularity has been likened by blog writer Paul Graham to a full time job that leaves little time for intellectual interests. *

In the current of anti-intellectualism among African American youth is the perception that focusing on school studies means "acting white". Authors associated with this view include John McWhorter, whose book Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (Harper, 2001, ISBN 0060935936) collects narratives and criticizes the cultivation of "ebonics" as an alternative speech norm, specifically labelling this as an instance of anti-intellectualism. Conservative commentators Thomas Sowell and Dinesh D'Souza are also associated with this view. Henry Louis Gates cited an informal poll in which African-American students in the Washington, DC area were asked what constituted "acting white"; according to Gates "the top three things were: making straight A's, speaking standard English and going to the Smithsonian". * Needless to say, there are plenty of anti-intellectual white students also, especially among the rural contingent and the children of the leisure class.

In colleges
In the realm of higher education concerns are generally threefold:

=Political bias
= One type of criticism is based upon the perception that university professors and other academicians have increasingly inculcated their own political ideologies into pedagogical interactions and professional research at the cost of the quality, objectivity, and appropriateness of each. This claim is more often made by those individuals on the conservative side of the American political spectrum against political liberals, as understood in a contemporary sense of the term. Whether this focus on the proverbial "ivory tower left" is deserved is, rather unsurprisingly, the subject of much intense debate both within the Academy and various political spheres.

Generally, these criticisms are brought up against persons working within the field of the Humanities -- especially a set of the Humanities falling under the large subdivision of the Social Sciences. Among the fields most contested are Women's Studies, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies or Racial Studies, some divisions of academic History, and Political Science. Whether such field-specific attention is deserved is, once again, the subject of much intense debate.

When the criticism of political bias is set in the context of American liberals vs. American conservatives, as it often is, the dialogue between the two sides can become rapidly polemical. One finds conservative critics called "anti-intellectuals" as they attempt to bring the charge of political bias against various liberals even as the accused liberals are charged with such things as "re-writing history" (Historical revisionism); the fairness of each party's assertion must be recognized to vary from case to case.

=Deficient programs
= Another major concern centers on the perceived lack of general education in college curricula. Critics claim, for example, that college students ought to take more humanities classes, such as history or literature, along with the requirements of their major. Allegedly, there is also a deficiency of academic rigor in the university liberal arts programs that are available to students, stemming from the aformentioned political bias, which is said to lead professors to concentrate on trendy and controversial subjects to the neglect of what is considered legitimate art and literature.

Notably, the humanities requirements in American colleges are actually much greater than in many other countries, such as Russia or India where college instruction is focused almost entirely on professional, often technical, preparation. It may be argued that in these countries it is generally believed high school education has given a student sufficient exposure to general education topics.

=Lack of usefulness
= A third line of criticism, sometimes seeming to contradict the second, is the absence of 'real life' usefulness from the study of humanities. This has also contributed to anti-intellectualism, particularly among those who study, or have studied, technical subjects. This is sometimes considered more of a 'rival-intellectualism' rather than true anti-intellectualism, in as much as people who have received university-level technical training have themselves engaged in an intellectual activity of great complexity.

Anti-intellectualism in the United States

19th Century culture

19th century popular culture is important in the history of American anti-intellectualism. At the time when the vast majority of the population was involved in manual labor, and most of the population was rural and engaged in agriculture, bookish education, which at the time focused on classics, was seen to have little value. It should be noted that Americans of the era were generally very literate and, in fact, read Shakespeare much more than their present-day counterparts. However, the ideal at the time was an individual skilled and successful in his trade and a productive member of society; studies of classics and Latin in colleges were generally derided.

The 19th century predominantly valued the self-reliant and "self-made man," schooled by society and by experience, over the intellectual whose learning was acquired through books and formal study. In 1843, Bayard R. Hall wrote of frontier Indiana, that "(w)e always preferred an ignorant bad man to a talented one, and hence attempts were usually made to ruin the moral character of a smart candidate; since unhappily smartness and wickedness were supposed to be generally coupled, and incompetence and goodness." Still, there was a possibility for redemption if the "egghead" embraced common mores. A character of O. Henry noted that once a graduate of an East Coast college gets over being vain, he makes just as good a cowboy as any other young man.

The related stereotype of the slow-witted naïf with a heart of gold, which became popular in 19th century stage shows, still reappears in American culture, recently in the 1985 novel and 1994 motion picture Forrest Gump.

Right-wing currents

Conservative critiques of academia
William F. Buckley, Jr. once remarked that he'd rather be governed by the first hundred names in the phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University, and many other conservatives have displayed similar disdain for academia. Institutions such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and various other prestigious colleges have been portrayed on the right as centers of a radical and anti-American leftism. Robert Warshow has put forth the hypothesis that the Communist Party became central to American intellectual life during the 1930s:

For most American intellectuals, the Communist movement of the 1930s was a crucial experience. In Europe, where the movement was at once more serious and more popular, it was still only one current in intellectual life; the Communists could never completely set the tone of thinking. . . . But in this country there was a time when virtually all intellectual vitality was derived in one way or another from the Communist party. If you were not somewhere within the party’s wide orbit, then you were likely to be in the opposition, which meant that much of your thought and energy had to be devoted to maintaining yourself in opposition.*

Most observers believe that, while Warshow's criticism might have validity when applied to the Depression Era, it is not supportable today to claim that campus liberals form a hidden Communist or otherwise subversive force in America. Still, many conservatives and anti-intellectuals continue to argue this general point.

Religious fundamentalism
Much modern American anti-intellectualism originates from the commonly held view among conservative Christians that education subverts religious belief. The validity of this view, in fact, was well substantiated by the spread of atheism and Deism among the educated during the Enlightenment, and was deep-rooted even before that time. Hence, for instance, the New England writer and Puritan John Cotton wrote in 1642, "The more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan will you bee." More recently, an anti-intellectual current can be seen in the works of evangelical Christian cartoonist Jack Chick. In his anti-evolution tract Big Daddy? for example, he depicts the academic establishment as intolerant and elitist in their rejection of creationism. *

Some Christians, while not considering education an inherent evil, object to what they perceived as "un-Christian" elements, especially in public schools (K-12) and colleges and universities. Focal points for fundamentalist criticism are comprehensive sex education, evolution, and anti-prejudice programs.

Left-wing currents

1960s student culture
Especially in the 1960s many student demonstrators romanticized the impoverished populations of Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta. The lack of formal education in these regions was seen as a sort of freedom from "conformist" society that allowed one to lead a more genuine and worthy life. The sanitized version of folk music that became popular on campus around this time is a related trend.

The anti-war movement also despised the highly educated but cold-hearted Washington technocrat, epitomized by Robert McNamara, who was alleged to make decisions solely on numbers and probabilities and could not see individual lives or deaths as anything but statistics. The Vietnam body count was offered as an example of this inhuman intellectualism.

Also, some on the extremes of the student movement were heavily influenced by Maoism, which has a strong anti-intellectual component.

The intellectual as paid apologist for the status quo
Many on the left have claimed that the intellectual's status as a "professional thinker" requires the support of a member of the ruling class willing to cut their checks. Therefore, most intellectuals, in order to maintain their profession, must assume a subservient posture towards the current power structure even when their ideas are outwardly "radical." These critics point out that many a tenured professor has called for revolution, but few have ever taken concrete steps to promote one. This has the effect of discrediting the idea of social change by associating it with hypocritical academics, thereby serving the status quo.

In return for their rhetorical services, so this theory goes, intellectuals are rewarded with the power to set themselves up as the social betters of the proletariat and are given a measure of control over how normal people live their lives. In addition, when government actions go awry, intellectuals provide rulers with a convenient scapegoat - those who were paid to promote the policy can easily be blamed for creating it.

Although not a leftist thinker, Eric Hoffer is closely associated with this view of intellectuals. He compared them to the scribes that directed the construction of the pyramids - seemingly authoritative figures, who were in reality servants to the Pharaoh.

Current themes
More recently, in the politics of the United States, Democrats and liberals have become extremely suspicious of the neoconservative movement, which they often portray as a "cabal" of ivory-tower theorists who cause disaster when they gain power and try to put their abstract ideas into practice. The radical deregulation of the economy, tax cuts at a time of war, and the program to rapidly democratize the Middle East through military means are cited as examples of this.

Some even believe that neoconservatism is a front for a secret group that follows the teachings of the anti-democratic philosopher and intellectual Leo Strauss.

All of this lends to the portrait of neocoservatism as a sinister party of academics carelessly testing elitist theories on the suffering "ordinary people" of America.

Economic factors

In the past five to ten years once-plentiful high-tech and skilled technical jobs have begun to disappear from America, and have been replaced with low-wage service occupations which at most require a high school diploma. Therefore the economic incentive to attend college, where one might be exposed to intellectual ideas, has lessened. There thus exists the potential for increased anti-intellectualism in the future. However, statistics indicate that currently in the United States half the adult population has at least some college experience and one-third of that population are graduates.

In American political discourse

America, more than other developed nations, has been accused of suffering from anti-intellectualism, particularly by the liberal literati both in the United States and in Europe. Such accusations are particularly fueled by the political schism between the Republican and Democratic parties. The less scrupulous contenders on both sides use the accusation of anti-intellectualism as a rhetorical weapon, but most often it is Democrats that accuse Republican backers of exploiting public sentiments against the values of the cultural elite for their own economic gain.

Many Democrats and liberals claim that conservative beliefs about foreign affairs or economics stem from "ignorance," poor education, and a "lack of awareness" of the substantive issues involved, and as such are anti-intellectual. The liberal position often contends that conservative ideology has a tendency to approach issues such as morality and foreign policy in "simplistic" ways, breaking them down into easily understood confrontations between good and evil. The left views its own ideology as more sophisticated and worldly, and based on an interpretative study of human history. Conservatives have countered by claiming that it is liberals who are the true anti-intellectuals, ignorant of economics and relying on irrational and over-emotional arguments when debating poverty, civil liberties, and especially, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the media
In the 2000 Presidential Election, the media (particularly late night comics) portrayed Candidate Al Gore as boring "brainiac" who spoke in a monotonous voice and jabbered on about numbers and figures that no one could understand. It was also widely reported - erroneously - that Gore had claimed to have invented the Internet. It was the classic stereotype of a pompous, out-of-touch intellectual, and this perception arguably hurt Gore in the election. In the years since, debate between the left and right in America has often centered on the relation of the intellectual class to the public as a whole.

Conservative commentators such as Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh commonly argue that conservative politicians, particularly Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, have been attacked by a liberal media as being "incompetent" - this can be understood as an accusation of intellectual snobbery by the media. O'Reilly in particular is well known for having a hostile attitude towards what he calls the "Ivy League Elite." The word "intellectual" itself has been used as an insult by many on the right.

Both O'Reilly and Limbaugh, as well as other conservative hosts such as Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough are frequently accused of having anti-intellectual atmospheres on their shows, evidenced by their frequent interruption of guests who try to put forward complex arguments. Scarborough once commented that, "If my guest is allowed to speak uninterrupted for more than 15 seconds, then I'm not doing my job."

While some on the left claim this represents a right-wing bias in the American media, other analysts feel it merely shows that the media, in the service of higher ratings, has a tendency to promote argument and spectacle rather than informed debate

=Sensationalism
= Indeed, there is a strong feeling on both sides of the political divide that corporate news focuses too much on soundbites and headlines, and not enough on in-depth reporting. Researchers have noticed a trend in the amount of coverage newspapers and broadcast networks devote to various subjects: World events and political coverage are receiving a declining percentage of print space and airtime, while crimes, sex scandals, and celebrity intrigue take up more and more space.

This trend is clearly visible on cable television as well. For example, The Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel have shifted from airing purely documentary and informational content to devoting a large portion of their programming to makeover specials, home-remodeling shows, and programs focused on muscle cars and motorcycles.

This is cited as proof of a shift in American media that is undoubtedly anti-intellectual even though it is not rooted in any political or cultural bias.

Anti-intellectualism in the former Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union, within the first decade after the Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks generally scorned and suspected the educated as potential traitors to the cause of the proletariat. Whereas the core of the Communist Party was well-educated, the people who became local activists and officials in government and industry often lacked at least formal education and disdained those who had it. Lenin once called the intelligentsia, particularly those who opposed him, "rotten" and "shit". The boast, roughly translated as "we ain't completed no academies" ("мы академиев не кончали") became a byword for the new ruling elite.

Later on, the Soviet government came to see education as important and dedicated great resources to literacy on the one hand, and higher and professional education on the other. However, as a matter of social policy, the government sought to promote the working class over an intellectual elite. Accordingly, industrial workers often received greater salaries than university-trained professionals such as teachers, doctors, and engineers. Moreover, workers were covertly inculcated with the notion that only the manual labor creates real value in the economy, whereas the educated people just sit around writing papers. Some critics have seen this policy as anti-intellectual.

It must be stressed, however, that the anti-intellectualism of the Soviet political elite was closely associated with the fact that the Russian academic milieu, as a part of the tzarist state apparatus, had been hostile to the 1917 Bolshevik takeover almost by definition; however, when dealing with practical issues such as economic and scientific management, the early Soviet regime had to resort to such "bourgeois experts", therefore the tense relationship between the Communist Party elite and non-Party educated people. It was only during the early 1930s that Stalin attempted to do away with the old intelligentsia altogether, and to put a new Party one in its stead. Such favouring of partinost - that's to say a partisan stance towards all matters intellectual - over formal scholarship, no matter how crude such partisan stance happened to be - in the end amounted to a clear anti-intellectual stance.

The Soviet treatment of science is an example of anti-intellectualism - the triumph of Lysenkoism in Soviet Russia was a result of political bullying of scientists and the punishment of dissenters rather than the normal scientific process of publishing one's findings. Soviet promotion of this pseudoscientific idea has been compared to the recent statements in favor of creationism by the current American political leadership.

Anti-intellectualism in Asia - Maoist China, Cambodia and Iran

In Maoist China during the Cultural Revolution, a revolutionary transformation of all aspects of life, including education, was attempted. University education in particular was moved away from the generation of highly specialized experts, who were seen as constituting a self-interested class divorced from the rest of society, and into the service of the masses. Training programs were accelerated and connected to the practical needs of productive work and socialist development. Some universities were closed for several years during the transformation. At the same time, primary and secondary education were greatly expanded in rural China, and urban students were encouraged or required to spend some time in the countryside, both to teach the peasants and to learn from them. Critics have charged that the practice of curtailing and transforming university education and sending students to the countryside was anti-intellectual. In the view of the Chinese government, however, state-funded education should be made to serve first and foremost the needs of the society at large. A poor country with a mostly rural population, it argued, had more need of general, practical education for many than of highly specialized education for a few.

In Cambodia, a country in which few people have access to formal education (the literacy rate is about 50% as of 2004), the Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1979) was generally disdainful of intellectuals and saw many as enemies or traitors (see also: Khmer Rouge and Democratic Kampuchea). In some sectors anyone who wore glasses was shot by Khmer guards, as glasses were seen as a mark of education and intellectualism.

The revolutionary regime in the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran also displayed a streak of anti-intellectualism in its policy. Besides the emigration of many well-educated, western-trained, intellectuals in the wake of the revolution, the government decreed in 1980 that all universities are to be closed until the curricula are "purified" from the corrupt Pahlavi legacy. The ban on secular high education persisted until 1982. Also, the repressive attitude of the regime toward Iranian intelligensia is well known (a highly publicized case of intellectual repression was the execution of the poet Said Soltanpouhr in 1981). It is should be noted, however, that the revolutionary reforms in high education in Iran did democratize it somewhat, opening it to wider straits of population, who couldn't afford it beforehand (40% of all seats in the universities were reserved for Iran-Iraq war veterans) or were taken aback by the extremely westernized attitude of Iranian university circles under the Pahlavis.

Anti-intellectualism in the classical world

The Roman statesman Cato the Elder's public career displayed many traits that today would be considered anti-intellectual. He vehemently opposed the introduction of Greek cultural ideals and models into the Roman republic, believing them to be subversive of traditional plainspokenness and rugged military values. He urged the Roman Senate to pass its decree against the newly imported Bacchanalian mysteries, which it did in the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus in 186 BC. He urged the deportation of three Athenian philosophers, Carneades, Diogenes, and Critolaus, who had been sent to Rome as ambassadors from Athens, on the grounds that he believed the opinions they expressed were dangerous. The Emperor Augustus also exiled many philosophers.

However, rulers in the ancient and classical worlds were generally intolerant of anyone who disagreed with them. Anti-intellectualism as hostility by self-identified "common" people, or those that claim to speak for them, against a perceived class of cultural elites is generally considered a modern phenomenon.

A loaded term?

Not surprisingly, intellectuals commonly use allegations of anti-intellectualism as a charge against their critics. Critics of certain intellectuals in turn argue that "anti-intellectualism" is itself a loaded term. The term "intellectual" implies knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence, and thus to be called "anti-intellectual" can often be perceived as meaning one favors ignorance or stupidity.

Sometimes criticism of intellectuals can take the form of a specific critique of an intellectual's specific field of study or theory. Not all "intellectual" theories are correct, and thus an intellectual's beliefs can be disputed without necessarily being against the larger concept of intellectual study.

See also

References

Academia | criticisms

反智主义

 

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