Think about it: the only honest reason why people gravitate to the academy is that it's a sinecure (like the public sector, without the stigma). You don't have to do anything even approaching real work and you have most of your time free to do pretty much anything you want. The only price used to be that you won't make much money, but that is no longer true, and if you're on the administrative side, you can do very well indeed. So it's worth asking: what types of personalities like this? I'm afraid the answer is not flattering to those involved.
As to this Prof, I'd say his essay carries very little weight, as he put up with this dumpster fire until he could safely retire, and then wrote this piece cloaking himself in moral righteousness to justify a pedestrian financial decision. Like I said, look at the people involved in these entreprises, and you'll begin to understand the problem. 'Twas ever thus.
Much of academics is anything but sinecure these days. Maybe this is the 1950-1980's academic fantasy most people still associate with the profession, but today it's a never ending battle to justify your position and 'tenure' is largely a thing of the past (or if it exists, it only covers a trivial amount of your salary). Today, professors at top ranked research institutions are seen through the lens of the the dollar amount they bring in to the university. Now, it isn't exactly put like that, but essentially you are graded on proxies of that measure: the status of your publications, your recent grants and other activities that are essentially profitable for the institution (ie patents). If you aren't productive in ways that pay your salary, the university essentially has a system to "fix the glitch" as done with Milton in Office Space, and you simply stop receiving your paycheck. Everything just works itself out naturally.
Now, if you want to talk administrators, that's a whole different ballgame. We keep seeing an expansion of administration roles in academia, and I think that largely stems from very high leadership that need to be seen as proactively doing something new or at least reactive to the latest political trends. So, they wield their institutional funds to create a FTEs for various roles at both faculty and staff levels. The interesting thing here is that these types of roles are generally lacking externally derived funding, so they are supported on the backs of professors that bring in money to fund their own salary and research program.
And the interesting part there is applying this to the situation in the article. If licensing of Predpol's algorithms brings in much money to the university (and if developed at UCLA, certainly UCLA has some financial stake here), all the activism in the world is going to have a very hard to time unseating it and its creator. Like I said, you are largely as good as your revenue in academia. And, ironically, the money brought in via Predpol is likely contributing to the pool of money that fund the salaries of the people that want it axed. These facts aren't lost on the highest level leadership either.
But I'm just a disillusioned and cynical academic scientist, so take all this for what it's worth.
“The principal driver of the doublethink in my department and so many others at UCLA is fear of the woke faction. “
This only happens because the university leaders are cowards.
Think about it: the only honest reason why people gravitate to the academy is that it's a sinecure (like the public sector, without the stigma). You don't have to do anything even approaching real work and you have most of your time free to do pretty much anything you want. The only price used to be that you won't make much money, but that is no longer true, and if you're on the administrative side, you can do very well indeed. So it's worth asking: what types of personalities like this? I'm afraid the answer is not flattering to those involved.
As to this Prof, I'd say his essay carries very little weight, as he put up with this dumpster fire until he could safely retire, and then wrote this piece cloaking himself in moral righteousness to justify a pedestrian financial decision. Like I said, look at the people involved in these entreprises, and you'll begin to understand the problem. 'Twas ever thus.
Much of academics is anything but sinecure these days. Maybe this is the 1950-1980's academic fantasy most people still associate with the profession, but today it's a never ending battle to justify your position and 'tenure' is largely a thing of the past (or if it exists, it only covers a trivial amount of your salary). Today, professors at top ranked research institutions are seen through the lens of the the dollar amount they bring in to the university. Now, it isn't exactly put like that, but essentially you are graded on proxies of that measure: the status of your publications, your recent grants and other activities that are essentially profitable for the institution (ie patents). If you aren't productive in ways that pay your salary, the university essentially has a system to "fix the glitch" as done with Milton in Office Space, and you simply stop receiving your paycheck. Everything just works itself out naturally.
Now, if you want to talk administrators, that's a whole different ballgame. We keep seeing an expansion of administration roles in academia, and I think that largely stems from very high leadership that need to be seen as proactively doing something new or at least reactive to the latest political trends. So, they wield their institutional funds to create a FTEs for various roles at both faculty and staff levels. The interesting thing here is that these types of roles are generally lacking externally derived funding, so they are supported on the backs of professors that bring in money to fund their own salary and research program.
And the interesting part there is applying this to the situation in the article. If licensing of Predpol's algorithms brings in much money to the university (and if developed at UCLA, certainly UCLA has some financial stake here), all the activism in the world is going to have a very hard to time unseating it and its creator. Like I said, you are largely as good as your revenue in academia. And, ironically, the money brought in via Predpol is likely contributing to the pool of money that fund the salaries of the people that want it axed. These facts aren't lost on the highest level leadership either.
But I'm just a disillusioned and cynical academic scientist, so take all this for what it's worth.