I despise academics in certain fields that do nothing for humanity other than pontificate on their self worth and /or sit on the fence while spouting double talk. I used to attend lectures and seminars when I was with American Standard and stopped after attending a lecture on social engineering in 1970. We were told that productivity will increase if we are friends with the people we supervise. All that happened is that absenteeism increased on top of productivity dropping. The thinking was that you could not fire a friend.