Barthes, anti-intellectualism, and the academy

In this paper the UK university system is conceptualised as an institutional space that has been transformed to become a resolute, functional haven of anti-intellectualism. This argument is qualified by adopting an understanding of intellectual work that is taken from Roland Barthes, where the intellectual is somebody who works against, outside, or at the margins of established frameworks of thinking, and where an intellectually driven organisation would be a place which openly permits if not encourages such behaviour. The broader political consequences of such a transition in which anti-intellectualism has become rampant in the academy are considered in light of how Barthes understood the rise of populism in 1950s France.