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Academic Vulturism: Cultures of Scavenging


Academic cultures thrive on habits of scavenging.

These habits of scavenging are expressed particularly at moments of crises created by the oppressive forces in the academe.

When a scholar, a group of scholars, or a body of work is specifically targeted for having disrupted the structure, scavengers in various forms "scoop in" so they could profit from the crisis.

Crises thus are opportunities for profiteering for the academic careerist, eating from the deaths produced by the structure.

The oppressive force of the structures enables the scavengers, signaling the appropriate time, avenue, and context for scavenging. The scavengers enable the structure, recovering from the scraps salvageable publications, social impact metrics, and "measurable" outputs to be used by the structure.

After having dismantled the radical sites of resistance, the structure can go back to the products put together by the scavengers from the deaths of radicalism, claiming "Look, we value academic freedom. Here are the examples. This work happens in the academe here. Why, do you have any other examples that suggest there is pressure on academic freedom?"

This certainly relates to my experiences of negotiating crises, and the experiences of the Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) in negotiating crises produced by oppressive structures in authoritarian regimes.

In the midst of these crises, I have largely been struck, by the complete absence of academic voices.

Particularly saddening is the strategic exit of the very academic voices that have up until that point performed the rhetoric of solidarity and  personally benefited from the politics of radical activism. The public spaces are marked by the death of voices of solidarity.

In private spaces, shows of solidarity shown through private conversations point to strategic ambiguity, to politics of pragmatism, and to the relevance of accommodating the authoritarian structures. The oppressive techniques deployed by the structures, which these scholars are all too aware of, are pointed to as reasons for maintaining silence.

Once the structure scoops in, various forms of manipulation and control are put in place to create the narrative to account for the death of radicality.

Many of these same academics then jump in, attempting various techniques of manipulation, to see what they could extract from the death.

In one instance of CARE organizing a food pantry owned by and run by the poor, one set of scavengers came in asking how they can get to the poor to get "some data."

Another set of scavengers flew in to ask whether the team  had considered sustainability, offering to take over the project. These same set of scavengers offered free lectures to the team on the politics of pragmatism.

Yet another set of scavengers came to part of the team and expressed their pain at so  much data that was apparently left unused, offering to take the data and write-up the data into publications.

Manipulation, opaqueness and dishonesty are critical tools of the scavengers.

Yet another oft-deployed tool is "Divide and rule." Plant something negative about the solidarity work or about one of its members to then create the opportunity for scooping in.

Academic vulturalism operates on academic opportunism that sustains careers of "radical posers."

To sustain spaces of resistance and radicalism in the academe is first and foremost to out these radical pretenders that make a living out of performing chic radicalism, devoid of the commitment or embodied practice of change.




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