Academic fields are divided by whether their ideology counts as political.

Evidence

One reason for saying that a humanist who writes about Wordsworth, or an editor whose specialty is Keats, is not involved in anything political is that what he does seems to have no direct political effect upon reality in the everyday sense. A scholar whose field is Soviet economics works in a highly charged area where there is much government interest, and what he might produce in the way of studies or proposals will be taken up by policymakers, government officials, institutional economists, intelligence experts. The distinction between “humanists” and persons whose work has policy implications, or political significance, can be broadened further by saying that the former’s ideological color is a matter of incidental importance to politics (although possibly of great moment to his colleagues in the field, who may object to his Stalinism or fascism or too easy liberalism), whereas the ideology of the latter is woven directly into his material—indeed, economics, politics, and sociology in the modern academy are ideological sciences—and therefore taken for granted as being “political.” — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 67

Categorization

• XREF: That humanities work is treated as nonpolitical while policy-relevant fields are taken as ‘political’ directly sets up the later Islamophobia readings’ problem of who gets to define what counts as political knowledge.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 67