David Graeber on why there are so few anarchists in the academy:

It’s not just that anarchism does not lend itself to high theory. It’s that it is primarily an ethics of practice; and it insists, before anything else, that one’s means most be consonant with one’s ends; one cannot create freedom through authoritarian means; that as much as possible, one must embody the society one wishes to create. This does not square very well with operating within Universities that still have an essentially Medieval social structure, presenting papers at conferences in expensive hotels, and doing intellectual battle in language no one who hasn’t spent at least two or three years in grad school would ever hope to be able to understand. At the very least, then, it would tend to get one in trouble.

All this does not, of course, mean that anarchist theory is impossible — though it does suggest that a single Anarchist High Theory in the style typical of university radicalism might be rather a contradiction in terms.

More here.