Neutral scholarship rhetoric often conceals worldly power connections

Evidence

The interesting point about this entire essay, nevertheless, is how it calls for science and scientific procedures in name only. When it comes to what the truth of nonpolitical Middle East studies is, or could be, the author simply says nothing. In other words, the attitudes, the postures, the rhetoric — in fine, the ideology — of scholarship is what counts. Its content is simply not spelled out, and what is worse, there is a deliberate attempt to conceal the connections between scholarship and what we might call worldliness, for the sake of maintaining the fiction of nonpartisan and unpolitical scholarly truth. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 309

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the ‘troubling transparency’ thread: procedural rhetoric that promises objectivity while concealing actual content and interests. — connects to: Academics who shaped the crisis conceal their consulting ties while playing impartial arbiters — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 572; Some policy debates feature one side uninterested in truth where scholarship is propaganda — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 829; Inevitability rhetoric erases the fingerprints of actual power holders — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 703 (+2 more)
• SHARE: For anyone who works in or critiques academic/Middle East studies — this diagnosis of ideology disguised as scientific posturing is exactly the point they’d want to discuss.

Related

• Value-free scientific posture masks scholars’ ties to state power (similarity 0.83)
• Scholarship is never neutral, so honesty requires declaring one’s standpoint (similarity 0.82)
• Some policy debates feature one side uninterested in truth where scholarship is propaganda (similarity 0.80)
• Scholarship cannot be politically neutral (similarity 0.80)
• Academics are neutralized into status symbols by the coverage system (similarity 0.79)
• The ideal of nonpolitical scholarship is unattainable in practice. (similarity 0.79)
• Islamic scholarship functions as an arm of state power, not disinterested learning (similarity 0.78)
• Scholarly independence from institutional power enables critical insights into Islam (similarity 0.78)