The WSJ has an article titled The Alienated ‘Knowledge Class’ Could Turn Violent, subtitled: Societies that exile their intellectuals risk turning them into revolutionaries. It happened in the 1970s.
The author cites the Weather Underground in the United States, the Red Army Faction in Germany, and the Red Brigades in Italy, and notes that many members of these organizations were highly educated, middle- or upper-middle-class young people. These weren’t the oppressed proletariat of Marxist theory, but the disillusioned children of privilege and university lecture halls. He goes on to assert that:
A similar dynamic could take root in the U.S. As the Trump administration downsizes public agencies, dismantles DEI programs and slashes academic research funding, it risks producing a new class of people who are highly educated but institutionally excluded. History suggests this group may become a source of unrest—and possibly violence.
He is certainly correct that highly educated people have played a leading part in many revolutionary and terrorist movements…he could also have cited the example of Russian revolutionaries between the mid-1800s and the early 1900s, and many of the terrorist leaders in today’s Middle East…not to mention the Khmer Rouge. And yes, it’s the educated (or at least credentialed) people who don’t obtain the positions to which they aspire, and that they think they deserve, who are most likely to become involved in such movements. Speaking of the causes of sedition in a kingdom, more than four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon said one such cause could arise when more are bred scholars, than preferments can take off. (extended quote) A modern translation of the preceding might be when more people get PhDs than have any hope of getting tenure.
Eric Hoffer, in the late 1950s or early 1960s, speaking about the ‘underdeveloped countries’, as they were then called, said:
Nothing is so unsettling to a social order as the presence of a mass of scribes without suitable employment and an acknowledged status…The explosive component in the contemporary scene is not the clamor of the masses but the self-righteous claims of a multitude of graduates from schools and universities. This army of scribes is clamoring for a society in which planning, regulation, and supervision are paramount and the prerogative of the educated. They hanker for the scribe’s golden age, for a return to something like the scribe-dominated societies of ancient Egypt, China, and the Europe of the Middle Ages. There is little doubt that the present trend in the new and renovated countries toward social regimentation stems partly from the need to create adequate employment for a large number of scribes…Obviously, a high ratio between the supervisory and the productive force spells economic inefficiency. Yet where social stability is an overriding need the economic waste involved in providing suitable positions for the educated might be an element of social efficiency.
It has often been stated that a social order is likely to be stable so long as it gives scope to talent. Actually, it is the ability to give scope to the untalented that is most vital in maintaining social stability…For there is a tendency in the untalented to divert their energies from their own development into the management, manipulation, and probably frustration of others. They want to police, instruct, guide, and meddle. In an adequate society, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them. This requires, first, an abundance of opportunities for purposeful action and self-advancement. Secondly, a wide diffusion of technical and social skills so that people will be able to work and manage their affairs with a minimum of tutelage. The scribe mentality is best neutralized by canalizing energies into purposeful and useful pursuits, and by raising the cultural level of the whole population so as to blur the dividing line between the educated and the uneducated…We do not know enough to suit a social pattern to the realization of all the creative potentialities inherent in a population. But we do know that a scribe-dominated society is not optimal for the full unfolding of the creative mind.
(from The Ordeal of Change)
And in 2020, the Assistant Village Idiot linked an article from The Economist, titled Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?, and said:
People with advanced degrees who are not prospering are often deeply resentful, certain that something must be wrong with “The System”*. I have worked with them for years, MSWs who believe that in a just world they would be entitled to the salaries that other people with their number of years of education get. Other measurements, such as relative value to society, difficulty of the task, level of risk, and the like do not factor in…That they may have been lied to by the educational establishment or their upper-middle-class expectations (“For a good job, get a good education”), that they may have made poor economic decisions due to Following Their Dreams, or that they may have chosen one of the easiest of Master’s degrees to pursue does not occur to them. It is largely political, cultural, and attitude training.
In my post linking the above, Advanced Degrees and Deep Resentments, I said: I don’t like the title of the Economist piece…“Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?”…which confuses intelligence with credentialism, but I think the point about highly-degreed and resentful people is spot-on.
In the WSJ article, the author goes on to say:
Today, a similar form of status frustration is building. The postwar expansion of higher education has created a surplus of advanced degree holders. People with doctorates far outnumber tenure-track positions. Many members of the American intelligentsia face precarious employment, rising debt and declining institutional pathways. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s agenda has disproportionately harmed the “knowledge class”: policy analysts, researchers, educators and civil servants who once found stability in public institutions.
This is more than a mere bureaucratic shake-up. When large numbers of educated, politically engaged people lose access to institutional influence, they often seek alternatives. For now, most are channeling their frustration through protests, digital activism and ideological writing. But under certain conditions—state repression, widespread disillusionment or charismatic leadership—radicalism can escalate. We already see hints in environmental sabotage, anarchist organizing and violent clashes involving Antifa and far-right groups. These remain on the fringe, but so were the Weather Underground and the Red Army Faction in their early days.
President Trump’s policies could intensify this dynamic. By hollowing out state infrastructure and devaluing educational institutions, the administration risks creating a surplus of ideologically driven people with no outlet for their talents. Many are trained in critique, moral reasoning, and systems thinking—the very profile of earlier generations of radicals. Most won’t resort to violence, but history shows that a small, committed vanguard can inflict enormous damage.
and
The question is whether political leaders will mitigate or exacerbate the risks. Defunding and demonizing higher education may offer short-term political gains, but doing so carries long-term dangers. By targeting perceived left-wing strongholds, some on the political right may cultivate the very radicalism they fear.
This sound to me perilously close to blackmail…give these credentialed people their desired jobs, or they will destroy our society.
There are indeed a lot of important and useful things being done by university and government researchers, but this doesn’t mean that we need to ignore institutional misbehavior and outright malevolence. If an important defense contractor was allowing Ku Klux Klan meetings at their facility, and the Klan was allowed to intimidate minority employees, should the government just let it go on the grounds that the work being done there is so important? IMO, what the government should do in this case–and what I believe it actually would do–is to yank the contract on grounds of noncompliance with federal contracting provisions and reassign in to a more responsible company, along with any government funded equipment–while encouraging key people to move to the new assignee. There might also be a lawsuit to recover transition costs due to the first company’s improper behavior. Why should the case of universities that tolerate anti-Semitic harassment be treated any differently?
People often assume that if a certain kind of work is being done by certain institutions, and if that work is valuable, there is no alternative to continuing with those organizations as the doers of that work. But consider: “Computers” once meant “IBM”. This wasn’t strictly true, of course, there were also the Dwarves (NCR, GE, Univac, etc.), but IBM was indeed overwhelmingly dominant in the industry. Today, IBM is still around, but it is just one company among many in the industry. Did that change inhibit innovation in the computer field?…or did it actually promote it? To take another example, General Electric was once a tremendously important part of the US economy. But in 2024, following a string of bad decisions and management problems, the company was split into three separate companies: GE Vernova, GE Aerospace, and GE Healthcare. This transition has not led to the destruction of America’s capability for producing jet engines, power turbines, or medical imaging equipment.
It’s often pointed out that important cancer research is being done at (for example) Harvard, along with a lot of other important research. But this doesn’t mean either that Harvard as an institution receiving government funds should have free rein to do whatever they want, nor that government-funded research there and elsewhere should be exempt from cost-benefit scrutiny. And the fact that there are many people in universities who are indeed very knowledgeable in their fields does not mean that all academics should be automatically granted the same halo.
Is a sociology professor at Columbia really more ‘knowledge class’ than a mechanical engineer at Tesla or an air traffic controller at Potomac Approach?…some sociology professors may be deserving of this accolade, but I’d want to know a lot more about their thinking and research before granting it to them. Are academics as a class really “trained in critique, moral reasoning, and systems thinking”?…I would say they that too often they are more trained in glibly reciting approved verbal formulations and categorizing everything into trendy categories.
It should be noted that many of the traditional benefits said to be obtained from higher education–broad knowledge of literature and history, ability to reason and debate, an understanding of the fundamentals of mathematics and science…are in too many cases absent today.
I do have some concerns with the way that the Trump administration has carried out the research funding cuts, but my concern is from the standpoint of doing what’s best for America and the American people, not from the standpoint of protecting a class of people who believe that they should be untouchable.
Your thoughts?
Didn’t Mao send hordes of urban “intelligentsia” to work in the fields? Maybe he can teach us something. When all the illegals are deported, then the unemployed and potentially credentialed-terrorist Gender Studies PhDs from the Ivy League can pick our lettuce and mow our lawns. They’ll be too tired at the end of the day to engage in any mischief.
The only time these spoiled brats can pose a threat is when the authorities sponsor them (see: Biden regime), or at the very least stand down. As soon as law enforcement takes charge, and refuses to tolerate their nonsense, they melt down like the cowards they are. Good recent example is the NYPD finally removing the Hamas “peaceful protesters” from Columbia University.
The revolting intelligentsia/bureaucrats seem like a particular case of the issue that J. Tainter described in his book “The Collapse of Complex Societies“. For the most part, academics and bureaucrats (the products of those very academics) are societal overhead — they add to the costs without producing much value; indeed, they often reduce a society’s ability to produce goods & services of value. That is where the West is today. It applies to companies as well as governments.
What is the solution? Unfortunately, history says there probably is not one. The comfortable overhead elite will hold on to their power until collapse drags it from their cold dead fingers.
“highly educated”: as C P Snow might have said, that depends on what you mean by educated. Ask them to give a couple of the statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and then compute how many are educated. Damn few, I’d think.
Or another test: have they read The Wealth of Nations, The Origin of Species, the Decline and Fall, and a fair assortment of Shakespeare? Nope? Not educated, then.
Adam Smith wrote about the same problem; the example he discussed was more men training as lawyers than could possibly thrive at the trade. I suppose he hadn’t envisaged as law-saturated an economy as the US’s.
I was going to suggest nuking these ‘institutions’ from orbit and salting the earth where they stood… but the suggestion from AWOL Civilization reminds me that such harsh actions are at best incomplete; they might require some kinder, gentler follow-up to absorb the massive outflow of rats abandoning ship.
I thought that credentialisim had reached an apogee of ridiculousness more than a decade ago when I read an ad recruiting employees to pick up dog excrement from lawns that asserted a preference for “some college”. I continue to wonder just what knowledge, conferred by some indeterminate sojourn in those ivied precincts, rendered one superior in the pursuit of dog droppings. Possibly just a general familiarity with the material in question and a proven tolerance to the smell. PhD.: piled higher and deeper.
Those that can, do; those that can’t, teach. To what extent do colleges and universities provide sinecures for second and third rate minds? Especially in the humanities, where objectivity is expressly forbidden? You occasionally hear about an actor either possessing or pursuing an MFA as if a career in a ruthlessly Darwinian field wasn’t enough of a credential.
Another term for this situation is “elite overproduction”. For more about this topic see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction
This sound to me perilously close to blackmail
Gonna be a long, hot summer in the faculty lounge!
https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/381690/witness-to-jihad/
Many revolutionaries seem to be educated/ intellectuals simply because that class has free time to ponder the world. The blue collar crowd is too busy holding down jobs, putting food on the table, and going to bed early due to fatigue, only to get up next day and repeat. They don’t have the free time to worry about the oppressed proliteriat, much less do something about it.
But college students do.
I have to note that there are a lot of people who are *neither* academics or in academic-adjacent fields *nor* blue-collar workers.
” there are a lot of people who are *neither* academics or in academic-adjacent fields *nor* blue-collar workers.”
We call most of them “bureaucrats”. :)
I think you’re missing the point here. It would seem that these guys are actually saying that the people who have the capacity to perceive and understand the things that are going on around them will eventually get fed up and fight back if they aren’t kept busy. The Intelligentsia are credentialed and in positions of influence and knowledge because they have the strongest capacity to think.
First, why would you want to kill these people and destroy the institutions where knowledge is transferred, like universities as recommended by that other guy? Should our entire country be run by idiots so we can no longer fear the Intelligentsia? We rely so heavily on technology that removing these people from society would cause our society to immediately collapse. Who’s gonna get your football broadcast back up and running?
Secondly, it seems pretty logical that the smartest people in the country would be upset about having their jobs taken away by a reality TV star. I’m sure they’re just as pissed as someone “losing their job to an illegal”. When someone you comes and disrupts your peace you have to push back.
Secondly,
they aren’t most educated, they are most indoctrinated, and much of their function, inhibits our republic, anyways Congress is doing very little to institutionalize these cuts, so likely they will return in time,
The KKK analogy fails. The fear is not of an already-organized and purposeful group acting out in response to explicit input. It is of how the behavior of a broad class of individuals may develop in response to general conditions.
A useful comparison could be the often-advocated policy of providing harmless activities for young men to divert them from mischief. The targeted youths don’t consciously threaten mischief if not catered to – they drift into it out of boredom.
More like bourbon redeemers the planter elite that used the klan to resume power
“The Intelligentsia are credentialed and in positions of influence and knowledge because they have the strongest capacity to think.”
lol garbage input = garbage output
…the people who have the capacity to perceive and understand the things that are going on around them will eventually get fed up and fight back if they aren’t kept busy.
I love this comment so much. It’s a shining example of why so many people have nothing but contempt for the so-called intellectuals infesting American society. I certainly want them kept busy- busy working actual jobs like coal miner or press operator so they can pay back the student loans they lacked the capacity to perceive and understand were “loans”.
The Intelligentsia are credentialed and in positions of influence and knowledge because they have the strongest capacity to think.
That’s their superpower- they can think. I’m glad you didn’t attempt to assert that they were in positions of power and influence because they know things, since my all time favorite anecdote about Harvard was when it turned out that some significant fraction of the student body thought winter happened because the Earth got further away from the sun.
…why would you want to kill these people and destroy the institutions where knowledge is transferred, like universities…
First, I don’t recall anyone wanting to kill “these people.” Second, these institutions have already destroyed themselves by enthusiastically transforming into diploma mills for whomever is willing to pay the most and go into debt the deepest, to allow the employment of the maximum number of administrators. Not a great plan, I think.
We rely so heavily on technology that removing these people from society would cause our society to immediately collapse.
These people wouldn’t be removed from society. They’d just be expected to get economically viable jobs, like those held by the people who enable football to be broadcast.
…the smartest people in the country would be upset about having their jobs taken away by a reality TV star.
They’re certainly not the smartest people in the country if they can’t grasp that the reality TV star that might be taking away their job is actually the President of the United States these days. It’s kind of like how U.S. Grant was a grocery clerk in his dad’s store and then stuff happened and he became President. People change jobs.
I’m sure they’re just as pissed as someone “losing their job to an illegal”.
I don’t blame them but they might be getting more sympathy if they’d shown some for the vast numbers of Americans who have had their jobs offshored, outsourced, replaced by one of the endless series of special work visas, or simply replaced by someone here illegally. But they had no sympathy and now all the people who have been getting screwed over by their regime have none available for them. I’d suggest they learn to code- but now AI can do that. Bummer.
When someone you comes and disrupts your peace you have to push back.
Sure. That’s how Donald Trump became President. The people our so-called intelligentsia have been metaphorically micturating upon my entire life got fed up and pushed back.
Shrug. If that costs them their jobs, too bad. Learn to- well, not code, not anymore- but learn something to pay the bills. Like everyone else is expected to do.
‘they can think’
hahahahaha
No.
Many of the best thinkers in academia are narrow specialists. Publish or perish, and what is needed for worthwhile publications in worthwhile fields are pretty prohibitive of big picture thinking.
Some of the strategic planning documents/work at a university are hilariously blind.
The basic and fundamental problem with university results and outcomes now is the multidisciplinary collaboration when the behavioral fields are so obviously incorrect and invalid. If the fields were all at completely separate institutions, then no matter how badly anthropologists screwed up (apparently on purpose), chemical engineering would probably still be fine.
(Don’t get me wrong, there are quite a few fields with utterly terrible results in so called STEM as well.)
It actually maybe requires a fairly competent generalist or multidisciplinary thinker to understand the degree and scope of the catastrophic errors that academics have largely inflicted upon themselves.
And/or an ‘uneducated’ person tired of being condescended to by the stupid ignorant credentialed elites.
It takes a lot of work to find the ideas in various spots, and pull them together and wrap them up in ways acceptable to academic trained sentiment.
But, you could do an almost good enough short course on Austrian economics, and why the bets academia has been making about academia and the economy are very likely to be profoundly wrong some of the time.
Fucking covid lockdown basically was on its own proof in several different ways that the model academia uses for itself, and the model that the public has used for academic experts, are simply incorrect.
Anyway, the behavioralists are maybe the most deeply and profoundly wrong. Largely because of doing very bad historical analysis based in ‘peace default’, a hilariously wrong assumption. But, almost all of the behavioral fields believe strongly in a theory about a prehistoric word magic super-conspiracy, and that they can today use word magics to produce an entirely different society. Basically, the psychopaths driven mad by the study of those fields have trained themselves to be savage barbarians, and are deeply concerned that ordinary Americans are witching them. Those specific academics are ready to murder Americans in job lots, because they want the witching to stop.
This is a problem for them, because almost all of the funding to universities is officially premised on the idea that there are people at the universities who can act as honest proxies for the public, and do task for the public that require special skill.
Now, in reality, a lot of that research is simply congress paying for propaganda and for terrorism support services.
But, the rest is in peril, because the universities have administrations which seem pro-Mengele enough that they would fuck up actual accomplishable medical research by hiring a bunch of Mengeles and refusing to remove them or to honestly discuss them when asked.
Sustainable is not sustainable, and academia is not sustainable. We really needed sharp medicine in univesritites years back if we wanted to save much now, and right now we almost certainly need some extreme cuts if we want to have tertiary schools at all viable in the not too distant future.
Right now, a bunch of ill educated badly trained bad people are being paid by the government to do bad things. If they were isntead employed by private industry, they might also do bad destructive things, but it is possible that some of them could learn to do good things instead of bad.
We are not ‘losing’ science, many of these people had been carefully trained to have no way of knowing what they were talking about. We are giving people an opportunity to learn to do something productive with their lives. Ill-thought badly evaluated academic research has been building up for decades, and the actions taken on behalf of it are choking the economy to death, and choking the life from society.