Greg Afinogenov uses the 2026 Boghossian “Report on the State of Scholarship in Humanities” — a reheated batch of 80s theory-war grievances — as a springboard to examine something more interesting: what he calls hyperpolitics, borrowing Anton Jäger’s term from New Left Review. The condition: everything has become political. TV habits, food choices, interpretive approaches to 19th-century literature. All of it reads as political sign, and all of it requires competitive position-taking.
The irony is that the report’s attempt to oppose the politicization of academia is more stridently political than the fields it aims to critique. And hyperpoliticization has served no one well:
- The antiwoke right built a counterpublic (Quillette, UnHerd, the University of Austin) — but the University of Austin’s early non-ideological recruits were driven out as it became avowedly conservative
- The academic left’s furious posting and protesting hasn’t halted tenure-slashing, budget-raiding austerity, or right-wing capture of universities in Florida and Ohio
- Hyperpolitics undermines the institutional building that durable change requires — unions, organizing, diverse majorities
Afinogenov’s conclusion is quietly radical: he’s become a “crypto-Weberian.” Affirming the facts/values distinction while maintaining epistemological relativism. Teaching students to understand opponents’ beliefs, not just take reflexive positions.
The most politically engaged students, he finds, are the readiest to see the advantages of a more Weberian approach. You cannot win a campaign if you cannot dispassionately assess the field of battle.