The timing of this conversation is quite interesting, as Kathleen Stock published a blog yesterday which engages with some of these questions. Nominally about Philosophy but I think applies more broadly to Humanities and some SocSci: kathleenstock.substack.com/p/cocooning-philosophy?r=7vxvx&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Some interesting bits:
"Though this is fairly subjective, based on my own experience of both giving and attending talks around the country I too can attest to a change in social norms in the philosophy seminar room during this period [the 2010s] - fuelled partly by the influence of the report but also by the increasing numbers of North Americans getting jobs in UK Universities back then, and so bringing cultural norms of US academia with them. "
"It also became much more common for audience members to start by thanking speakers fulsomely for their talk, then offer banal and unfocused lines of questioning such as: “I was really interested to hear you say X in your talk. Could you say a little more about that?” (Other audience members, inwardly: please God no!). Instead of trying to eviscerate the speaker with a devastating question, the new tendency was to try to be constructive and collaborative in one’s approach, identifying not what was wrong with the speaker’s argument, but what was right about it - a bit like the “Two stars and a wish” approach of the primary school teacher, and with about the same level of satisfying adult engagement."
"But whatever the truth about its origins, the demise of the old approach meant that aggression was still knocking around - of course it was - but now it had to go somewhere else. As the numbers of Phds being disgorged into the philosophy job market every year increased, and the number of jobs available decreased, competition amongst philosophers, always high anyway, became even more intense than usual. Where that aggression had formerly been expressed and so somewhat contained within the combative rituals of the seminar room, it now sought new outlets. And what it found was the internet."
"As these figures virtue-signalled, gate-kept, and generally queen-beed around in virtual spaces, they consolidated their own power. An example was being set for younger onlookers, desperately hungry to get into the profession permanently, and standing relatively little chance given the paucity of jobs and the high number of competitors. It told them that self-aggrandising and bullying others was acceptable in the philosophy profession as long as it was in the name of social justice. And it told them that drawing attention to their own presumed victimhood was good for their careers, since it was likely to draw the approval of more powerful others."
"By now I’m a veteran of denunciations, character-assassinating blogposts, open letters, petitions, protests, deplatformings, objections to “non-consensual co-platforming”, and general pleas to the profession to Just Get Rid of Her Already, and I can honestly say that after a while you realise - somewhat deflatingly, even - that it was never really about you at all. For women in particular, but also for less powerful others generally, the internet functions to provide a “safe” outlet for their aggression and competitive urges (safe for them, I mean, though not particularly safe for you), because these can be presented under cover of some more socially acceptable behaviour: being kind, good, standing up for vulnerable others, and so on.
Eventually you realise that you’re a mere means to others’ relatively impersonal ends: a useful peg on which to hang their febrile projections, or a conveniently-shaped vehicle with which to establish their place in a hierarchy. As long as their envy, anxiety, or desire for the approval of Mummy and Daddy figures can be shoehorned into a vaguely credible story about your moral corruption - and as long as they don’t risk much professionally by attacking you - it’s game on."