Proud as I am to call myself a scholar, I fully understand why many Liberians today distrust and even revile “book people.Their cynicism stems from this bitter truth: Liberia’s most prominent and vocal “scholars” have borne mostly ill fruits.
For 40 years, Liberia has been held hostage by discredited ideas and policies promoted by a small group of advocates masquerading as scholars. Many have never undergone a blind review process. For them, a Ph. D. is a ticket to a political career.
These “scholars” operate as guns for hire, willing to say and write whatever pleases their political paymasters. As a result, worthless ideas never die. In the absence of blind review, they just get recycled over and over again.