This is mostly just hot air and empty claims. Do you interact much with professors at leading universities? I do. In my experience it is a very talented, competitive, and hard-working group of people. Not at all like some distant, unaccountable caste.
I think you're missing the point. Sure, the professors I've met have been great people who are some of the most introspective and dedicated people I've met. But most people haven't met many, if any, research professors. To most of the public, academia is a largely closed off institution. The fact that they're often geographically separated, and socially separated through admissions requirements further exacerbates this problem. Not to mention rather politically homogeneous. To much of the country, professors are an insular, caste-like group of elites. People who have had the education opportunities that we have know differently, but chances are we aren't representative of the rest of the population.
> I only chose to respond because I found the “priestly caste” analogy to be utterly without foundation, but yet presented as if it was full of insight.
My point is that there is foundation in the public mind (which is almost certainly what the above poster was referring to).,
We are off-topic, in the way my original reply tried to bring out.
But let's pursue this line of thinking. Your claim is that significant elements of the public scorn professors because they are perceived as, and act as, an elitist caste. I call BS on this as well. A large segment of academia is very devoted to public outreach, including by pop science TV/youtube, press releases, free in-person and video lectures, public outreach, blogging, and posting papers on arxiv. This is the best of academic culture.
A sensible person can take advantage of this wealth of free knowledge. A bigoted person can invent some kind of culture war and play out stick figures in their head.
I come from people who had greatly varying degrees of education. Many didn't go to college, some failed out. A couple are (or were, RIP) sometimes bigoted towards people who have specialized expertise and training, but aside from those very few, the vast majority have respect for specialized knowledge in general, and academia in particular.
I think it does a great disservice to the common sense of that vast majority of non-academics, to suppose they are bigoted towards academia because of some kind of culture war stereotype.
