1) Some thoughts on a phenomenon: The academic who openly advocates against other academic disciplines. ...

2) I understand why some academics would think their subject is more important or more deserving of resources than others. In many ways I don't think that's unreasonable. I also understand why people who don't work as university faculty might not think much of many fields. ...

3) ...that offer them no obvious benefits and in some cases may even appear to pose a problem for what they believe in (e.g. climate science or women's and gender studies). I don't agree with those who want to eliminate disciplines that challenge their worldviews, but I get it.

4) What's harder for me to understand is when faculty advocate for the destruction or marginalization of other disciplines. I suppose the reason is that I approach knowledge work with a serious commitment to knowledge, and have enough of a sense of history to understand ...

5) ...that knowledge work functions most successfully as a collective and corrective enterprise. And furthermore that there are such things as emergent phenomena, things about which our knowledge isn't logically reducible to more fundamental theories. For example...

6) ...theories of chemistry are more fundamental than literary theory. It's not possible to explain Cleanth Brooks by analyzing the chemical composition of the paper of The Well Wrought Urn.

7) I do understand that many such calls among faculty to destroy the fields of their colleagues are just kind of awkward attempts to make a case for only publicly funding certain 'useful' disciplines, or making a case for a different distribution of resources, etc.

8) Here I don't need to rehash the the problem with thinking you can predict the future of knowledge and the future of usefulness (virology appeared a victim of its own success by the late 20th c. and then, oh shit, AIDS epidemic! 'Why study [Russian] [Arabic] [Mandarin]?!' etc.)

9) But again it just doesn't sit right with me that people *employed as university faculty* would have such a mentality. If you want to be at an issue-focused think tank or research institute, by all means, do that! There you don't have to worry about sharing field priorities...

10) ...but if you want to work at a university, in my humble opinion you should at minimum buy into knowledge work as a collaborative and universal enterprise, and model that mentality to students.

11) Students really don't need to be propagandized to about how useless or stupid you think your colleagues are. Students have enough of that in their ears already from glib politicians and helicopter parents. They don't need *professors* turning their backs on knowledge too.

12) I obviously have my criticisms of other fields--and I've probably lost the goodwill of many in my own field because of my criticisms of it--but I'm not out here saying 'Hmmm should we maybe eliminate the econ dept? Just asking questions here..' It'll never happen. /end

Addendum: I should have clarified: There may be approaches, methods, theories, etc. within an area of study that should be stopped or changed. I'm not talking about that; I'm talking about advocating for the elimination of whole areas of inquiry. 'Why have history?' Etc.