Ways Academia Is A Cult
The Washington Post has pointed out the ways that academia resembles a cult, and recovering academic Karen Kelsky’s viral Ted Talk “Academia Is A Cult” outlines many of the hallmarks:
Us/Them mentality
Insider Jargon
Sacred texts
Strict hierarchies
Fetishization of white male genius
Elaborate rituals
Jobs that lead to more debt than earnings
Sub-minimum-wage labor
Unpaid labor
It is no secret that academia is the model of the Albany sex slave cult NXIVM featured in the Netflix documentary The Vow and the more hard-hitting STARZ documentary Seduced. The NXIVM cult leader, imprisoned racketeer and sex offender Keith Raniere even called himself a scientist, though his knowledge is cereal box level.
The NXIVM cult is based on courses, seminars, and workshops. You work your way through a curriculum to earn sashes. Academic jargon like Proctor and Prefect define the institutional hierarchy. You teach for free before you get a low-paying role. Only those at the administrative level make money. The cult charges very high rates for its classes but is really supported by large donations from the ultra-wealthy. The cult conducts “studies,” and there is a blurred line between research subjects and cult members. Latin phrases are used to define elite groups within the cult: (the enslaved women in Nexium were referred to as Dominus Obsequious Sororium (DOS) and told that translated to “Master Over the Slave Women”).
Fred’s University English Department Cult Characteristics
At Fred’s University, our English Department graduate students experience all the signs of a cult above.
But here are some other ways our department resembles the NXIVM cult.
Like cult leader Keith Raniere, our Department Chair does not wash his long hair believing his aroma is intoxicating.
Like cult leader Keith Raniere, our Department Chair believes that a soiled 1970s-style sweatband over his unwashed hair is a sexy costume for volleyball.
Our Department Chair naps on a filthy old beige corduroy couch from the 90s, perfect for upskirt surveillance.
Our Department Chair often asks attractive young students in a heavy, breathy voice, “Do you like Led Zepplin” and then mansplains Zepplin in greasy horndog detail.
Our Department Chair gets young women to read and write for him, takes their unpaid work as his own, and then can’t help bragging about it.
Our Department Chair creates assignments and deadlines with a false sense of urgency to deprive his victims of sleep and make it easier to manipulate them.
Our Department Chair jokes about the enormous size of his penis with female students to test how much he can get away with. His narcissistic personality disorder becomes an open secret which is part of his appeal.
Our Department Chair uses long words to convince women that ignoring sexual harassment, sexual exploitation and degradation is a sign of strength and even an example of enlightened “feminism.”
Graduate students at Fred’s University who sleep with our Chair believe he thinks they are brilliant and promising scholars–until he moves on to his next victim, usually a roommate of the first victim he picks up in an accidental awkward late-night bathroom meeting. Such a meet-cute.
Graduate students who work for our Chair are encouraged to write papers and give lectures promoting and praising his work in a footnoting competition.
Graduate students in our department often feel alienated from their families because of their new academic values, vocabulary, and off-brand fleeces. Because of low pay, they are also unable to visit their relatives, further isolating them.
Graduate students in our department live in dark rooms on the outskirts of campus.
Graduate students in our department are afraid to speak out because they are in debt, unemployable, and frightened of retaliation. None of our friends outside academia think these are good excuses for the abuse we submit to.
Graduate students in our Department share a filthy kitchen and are expected to clean up after the Chair when he makes his disgusting snacks on an old beige range. Our chair likes to walk around with peanut butter toast and wipe his hands on pieces of communal furniture.
Graduate students who are coerced into sex with the Chair note that he doesn’t wash his sheets because he is too busy thinking important, profound thoughts which are recycled, hackneyed word salad.
Graduate students who make it to graduation wear the exact same polyester sashes that cult members wear in NXIVM. It is literally from the same academic regalia company. So creepy!
See: How Not To Harass Your Students
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**Starred Comments**
LtnNerd
Please read “A Public Service Announcement about Sex Cults and Bad Latin,” where a classicist explains why the Latin of “DOS” is so bad and often mistranslated. But keep in mind the women in DOS were told that DOS meant master of the slave women, or dominant over submissive, and none of them are Latin scholars. The whole point of a cult is that the master defines the terms.
CultDetective
Primates express domination and mark territory by spreading their scent. If you watch the cult footage, you can see Keith Raniere smearing his sweat all over the houses where he held his captives and creating situations where you had to smell him to listen. You can practically smell the couch where Raniere has a tripod set up to film him seducing his victims.
NexiumForum
The coerced volleyball games that would happen in the middle of the night meant that Keith Raniere’s followers were learning his lessons sitting in a sweaty huddle as he held forth. In one of the rapes described in the trial, particular mention is made of the fact that Raniere violated the victim on a filthy bed.
Grads
The systematic denigration of women was a big part of the NXIVM cult, which was underplayed in The Vow. No wonder the Oxenbergs went with a female team to tell their story in Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult. Coverage of the story in the news media also zooms in on the sensational topic of the branding of women but doesn’t spend much time on the systematic sexist indoctrination, including camps where men were taught to get in touch with their sexually violent natures.
Systematic sexism is a huge part of the history of academia as well: enormous academic resources were historically given to proving white men were smarter and stronger than women and to excluding women and people of color from the canon of remembered works. To this day, even though girls do better in school and boys are given an advantage in admissions, the best-paid ranks of academia are dominated by men.
Freder
You forgot our department has an unsolved murder, just like the Nexium cult. (It was not part of the RICO charges against Raniere, but there are suspicious deaths in the cult.)
TruthY
Why didn’t you link to the site Academia Is Killing My Friends, where you can see a live feed of what really goes on?
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