Hugh Gusterson, in his article Want to Change Academic Publishing? Just Say No, expresses how sad he is that other people are making money off of his academic work. His solution is, in essence, "If other people are monetizing everything, let's us do that too!" What a sad outcome that would be.
We need academic freedom. We need academics free to pursue their ideas wherever they go. Basic research is the foundation of the progress of human knowledge. The more time faculty are constrained to consider the economics of funding their research, monetizing their time, and the value of the outcomes of their work, the more academic freedom is constrained.
This is also a fundamental underlying problem of neoliberal capitalism: it can't value anything except in dollars. How much is a human life worth? How much is your daughter's love worth? How much is the earth's climate worth? How much is an old-growth forest worth? How much are your ideals worth? The most important things can never be valued in dollars -- and it is a fundamental mistake to try.
Our society fetishizes numbers and quantification, as I've written about over and over again. Instead, we need to make sense of things and act according to how our reason dictates. Monetizing academia does not lead to where we want to end up. Instead, we should fight tooth-and-nail to get the money out of academic publishing and fully exert our right to academic freedom.
- Steven D. Brewer's blog
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