The Kind Academic

A recent UK news article made headlines for ridiculing a list of PhD projects funded by public money. It promised outrage, and it delivered: research on “queer pirates” and “the history of fatness” was held up as proof that universities have lost the plot. Politicians dived in, calling these projects “vanity studies” and demanding that public money go toward research that “builds the economy”.

Now, I’ll admit – I understand the instinct behind the argument. The question of what higher education is for is an important one. Are universities primarily here to prepare people for jobs, or is diverse knowledge development an end it itself? Should research always have an immediate, measurable “impact”? How can universities serve society?

In some parts of the world, those questions are not abstract. In South Africa, where I grew up, many students take on massive debt to study degrees, often in the humanities, and then struggle to find work. When you see that happening, it’s hard not to ask tough questions about the purpose and value of higher education.

So yes, it’s a valid debate that’s certainly worth having.

But the way this article went about it wasn’t debate at all. It was performance. It didn’t invite discussion; it invited mockery. The examples were carefully chosen for maximum eye-roll potential, and the tone was smugly self-assured. Nearly all of the projects it ridiculed had to do with fatness or queerness, research exploring the lived experiences of marginalised people. Apparently, these were just too silly to take seriously.

That’s not critique. That’s just mean.

And then there was the byline, which referred to a woman cutting down yellow ribbons displayed in support of hostages taken during the October 7th attack in Israel. Aside from the fact that she too is a PhD student studying something the authors disapprove of, she wasn’t mentioned again in the article.

The irony is that the byline actually does point toward genuinely important issues: freedom of speech, identity politics, safety on campuses and the impact of geopolitics on academic life. All of those are serious conversations worth having. But given these aren’t referred to in the article, we can assume this is pure journalistic clickbait.

Here’s the thing: we can have hard conversations about what’s funded, what’s valued, and how universities contribute to society. We should have those conversations. But we can do it without being cruel. We can question relevance without ridicule. We can hold universities accountable without belittling the people who do the work.

Because the mockery of these PhD projects tells us more about the writer’s worldview than about the research itself. It assumes that economic value is the only kind that matters, and that curiosity outside those boundaries is inherently frivolous. It’s the intellectual equivalent of saying, “‘I don’t get it, so it must be stupid.”

Kindnes isn’t about everyone agreeing or holding hands around a seminar table. It’s about basic respect – engaging in good faith, assuming there might be something to learn before we dismiss it. It’s about disagreeing without being an arsehole about it.

A kinder conversation about the value of higher education might sound like this:

• How do we balance intellectual exploration with real-world needs?
• How do we support students to find meaningful work without narrowing what “meaningful” means?
• How can we value research that helps us understand who we are, not just what we produce?

Those are hard questions. They’re political, messy, and uncomfortable. But they’re also important. Because the moment we lose the ability to talk about them with care, respect and genuine curiosity, we lose something essential about what universities are for.

The problem with unkind debates is that they shut down thinking. Once mockery enters the room, nuance quietly slips out the back door. We stop listening. We stop learning.

So yes. Let’s have critical higher education debates. Let’s talk about what higher education is for, who it serves, and how we make it fair. But let’s do it without treating people’s work, or identities, as the punchline.