29-05-2025
Books written by academics are a con, says professor
Books written by academics are a 'con' designed to sound more complex than they really are, according to a prominent professor.
Prof Kehinde Andrews dismissed the work of many of his peers as 'devastatingly bad' and 'mind-deadening'.
'We make money as academics by being overly-convoluted. That's the game. That's the con. Honestly, it's a con,' said Andrews, the UK's first professor of black studies.
He claimed that one academic had written something so bad that 'he writes like he has a brain injury'.
'There's a way you write as an academic, there's a way you're trained into writing - it's devastatingly bad, honestly. I was in that same world of having to do it. I stopped going to academic conferences because it's mind-deadening.'
He referred to one book which 'kept using the word 'quotidien'. What does 'quotidien' mean? 'Everyday'. Why not just say 'everyday'? That's how we do things. No need.'
His abiding rule when communicating is to 'make it plain'. In a conversation at the Hay Festival, he said: 'There is no concept that is so complicated that a seven-year-old shouldn't be able to have some vague understanding of it.'
Prof Andrews, of Birmingham City University, published a book in 2023 entitled The Psychosis of Whiteness. He previously caused controversy with his claim that 'the British Empire was worse than the Nazis' because it lasted longer and killed more people.
His latest book is Nobody Can Give You Freedom, a biography of Malcolm X. In it, he describes himself as 'a recovering academic' who had graduated with 'the Whitest psychology degree in human history at the University of Bath'.
He writes: '[I] bear the title of 'professor', which I view in a similar way to that of 'chief constable'. I've been trained in the ways of Whiteness and sold my soul to the academic industrial complex to reach where I am today.'
Elsewhere at the literary festival, historian and broadcaster Alice Loxton discussed the power of social media as an alternative to academia.
Loxton has amassed more than two million followers on TikTok and Instagram, where she shares short videos about historical locations. She has written a book, Eighteen, about the lives of famous figures as they approached adulthood, from the Venerable Bede to Vivienne Westwood.
Loxton, 29, has a history degree and worked for History Hit, Dan Snow's podcasting and documentary channel before becoming a social media star. She admitted that she is a communicator rather than an expert, and said all the chapters in her book were fact-checked by Oxford professors.
She said: 'Today it's probably more useful to have a social media account than it is to have a PhD if you want to be published. What does that say about the publishing industry? That is up for debate.'
