Was there perhaps an indigenous tribe somewhere that had called upon Ciccariello-Maher to come save it, tweet by tweet, from persecution? None came forward to express gratitude for his bravery on their behalf.
I published “Exalted Slogans: The Curse of Radical Academic Discourse” in The Baffler.
An excerpt:
What may already be obvious about the seemingly disparate cases of Cornel West and George Ciccariello-Maher is this: much of their chatter about radicalism is nothing more than an attempt to earn cultural capital, alongside some actual capital in the form of visiting professorships, paid gigs, talking-head and expert status, and the selling of books. But if we fail to scratch the surface, to go beyond merely ascribing motives, we miss the opportunity to think through what the real stakes are in this fiasco. And we miss seeing the vast canyons of inequality and poverty yawning in the background as we obsess about these disputes over “academic freedom and free speech.”
You can read the rest here. Contact me for a pdf if you can’t access it.