On: Anti-Intellectualism
Anti-intellectualism… doesn’t seem like a reasonable thing. Who would be against the growth of one’s intellect? I think the answer is a little more surprising than you think.
Anti-intellectualism is the distrust, rejection, or hostility toward intellectuals, experts and the value of critical thinking and academic knowledge. “You think you know so much because you went to college??” a comment you may hear from someone holding anti-intellectual tendencies.
In practice, it shows up when people dismiss those who spent years, sometimes decades, researching, examining, testing, experiencing certain subjects. Those who think scholars, scientists, journalists, or educators are out of touch, elitist, or unnecessary. Instead of engaging with peer-reviewed research, evidence or expertise, those with anti-intellectual attitudes tend to favor intuition, tradition, political loyalty or what is increasingly framed nowadays as “common sense”. The idea is not simply disagreement with experts, it is a deeper suspicion that intellectual work itself has little value or that educated people are somehow dangerous to ordinary society.
But what does this mean for our society? And the real question worth asking yourself is this: when we stop valuing expertise, who ends up making the decisions instead?
Recently, we have seen the dismissal of scientists, career civil servants, and even the weakening of entire institutions whose sole purpose is the expansion of our understanding of the world and the way it operates. And what does this leave us with? I believe that we are left in a world that is much more dangerous than it was before. One of the most valuable things we have is time. When individuals or institutions dedicate decades to studying a single issue, that expertise deserves to be respected and heard. I am not saying they are the end all and be all, but they deserve a seat at the table.
When we go down a path that follows so called “common sense” we miss things that are important. If you think about the things that are common sense today, they started from a place of intellectual pursuit. Washing our hands regularly feels like common sense today, but it only became common because scientific research proved its role in decreasing the spread of disease. We don’t have a world without intellectuals.
This is also where the value of a college education is often misunderstood. Critics of higher education frequently frame college as a place where people go to become “indoctrinated” or disconnected from ordinary life. But at its best, college is not about memorizing facts or collecting credentials. It is about learning how to ask better questions, how to evaluate evidence, and how to think critically about the world around us.
A college classroom forces people to confront ideas they may disagree with. It asks students to defend arguments with evidence rather than instinct. It teaches them how to read sources carefully, identify weak reasoning, and understand complexity instead of reducing everything to slogans. Those skills matter far beyond the classroom. They shape how people interpret news, how they evaluate political claims, and how they participate in democratic life.
This does not mean that someone without a college degree cannot be intelligent or thoughtful. Intellectual curiosity exists everywhere. But institutions of higher education serve an important role in cultivating that curiosity and sharpening it into disciplined thinking. When we dismiss the value of those institutions entirely, we risk discarding one of the few places in society designed specifically for the pursuit of knowledge.
And that pursuit matters more than we sometimes realize. going back to my handwashing example, many of the things we now call “common sense” were once controversial discoveries. Germ theory, modern medicine, civil rights scholarship, and even basic economic policy all began as ideas that required careful research and debate before they became widely accepted. What feels obvious today was once the product of serious intellectual work.
If we lose respect for that process, we do not return to a simpler or more authentic form of knowledge. Instead, we create a vacuum where evidence matters less and authority shifts to whoever speaks the loudest. A society that stops valuing intellectual work does not become more practical or grounded. It simply becomes easier to mislead and misinform.
The question is not whether intellectuals should run society. They shouldn’t. A healthy society needs farmers, mechanics, teachers, builders, entrepreneurs and yes, scholars. But a healthy society also recognizes the value of people who dedicate their lives to understanding complicated problems.
The real danger is not disagreement with experts. Disagreement is healthy. The danger is deciding that expertise itself no longer matters.
Because when knowledge loses its value, decisions and people don’t become more practical or more grounded. They simply become easier to manipulate.
Talk Soon,
Tyreke
