The dogmatic PC approach in academia

“We have abandoned the ideology field; in literature we’ve abandoned it to fundamentalists whose pitiless rigidity and eagerness to judge show that they are clueless about the “Christian values” they would impose on others. And, in academia and the arts, to the increasingly absurd and dogmatic Political Correctness movement, whose obsession with the mere forms of utterance and discourse show too well how effete and aestheticized our best liberal instincts have become, how removed from what’s really important – motive, feeling, belief.” David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster, 2005.

I think the above quote, even though it dates back a hefty 20 years, sums up quite well the current state of academia and what is expected from the educators. The conversation has shifted from the deep, meaningful dialogues about ideological nuances, interpretations and applied societal paradigms that concerned students and lecturers only a few decades ago, to a rigid categorisation of what one can and cannot say in order to appear in line with the PC expectations of our cancellation-prone era. Terms that should be used in the faculty premises circulate fast in academic circles, ensuring the correct side is adopted fast, to avoid any doubts about dubious non-conforming personalities. You either support inclusivity or you are excluded from the conversation. There is no argument; language cannot be used in any other way. No matter what your actions say about who you are, how you teach, how much you care about your students and how passionate you are about your subject, you can’t survive the academic environment without embracing the dogmatic language of political correctness. How you appear on the surface has become the most important value of our time – image over substance, robotic repetition of key words over in depth ideological commitment.

The extent of the problem can be seen in everyday teaching, with English being deformed by pretentious diction and unnecessary formality, that allude to political doublespeak or legal addressing, and has as its main purpose to avoid accountability in the event of a student complaining about the language or taking personal offence at something that was left open to interpretation. Because this is now a thing – students complain about pretty much everything. Realising their consumerist rights, as paying customers of an education enterprise, they think they know better about how teaching should be conducted, the way presentations should be organised and the amount of work they should be expected to produce with a pace they consider acceptable for their “wellbeing” (a worn out, generic word that is used for just about everything in the 2020s). Telling them something is not good enough should be sufficiently dressed up in gentle PC feedback, following specific instructions set by upper management, to not hurt anyone’s feelings. Because their life ahead will most definitely be sprinkled with rose petals, working in dreamy employment conditions, having no deadlines, skill expectations and a fairy of a boss that will spray them with angel dust when they make a mistake.

How about we allow students to get offended and try to help them understand if the sentence used warrants this reaction, why was it thought to be offensive, how it was truly meant to be interpreted and start an interesting conversation out of any “controversial” subjects instead? Academia is supposed to produce the critical minds of the future and if the difficult conversations are constantly avoided and gently covered by a veil of soft, meaningless terminology, society will end up being controlled by fear of expression. How can we talk about inclusivity when we are asked not to stir up any hotly debated subjects that have been causing division? I want to include Palestine vs Israel, Trumpism, excessive capitalist consumption, outrageous university fees, immigration measures, the rise of fascism, mass social media influence, privatisation of public services, the lack of digital platform legislation, political lessons from the past and ways of resisting everything that is wrong with the world. Instead we are told to not touch any of these critical issues, but focus on the vanilla topics, where students can remain in a safe bubble of ignorance and the university can avoid any potentially costly controversiality. Let’s all put on our fake voices and keep humouring each other about the superiority of our intellectuality in the West, having achieved so much by removing dangerous words in an Orwellian manner from our conversational English, while the world crashes and burns. Let’s have people vote for Trump, as a reaction to the clinical PC approach of western politics and have the worst racist slurs as the direct result, to only strengthen the argument of policing language.

When academia becomes more about appearances and less about ideas, when freedom of speech is violated at the very foundation of higher education, the formation of critical thinkers is doomed from the start. The new generation of graduates will at best be able to say the correct things, address people with the correct pronouns and use PC language to post things online, but do they really know the reasons why they are meant to do all of the above? Can they question any of it when new restrictions will deem more words obsolete and offensive? Would it not be better to teach them ideologies, philosophy, and rhetoric as part of their core education, let them freely construct or defend their own arguments and arm them with the competence to improve their own future? Because at the moment and probably undeservingly, the university paints them in a non-flattering light, where all they seem capable of is complain, point the blame and pose a legal threat to the institution.

Author: Atticus Finch (December 2025)