Reza Gholami, Faculty Member at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies
At its core, the university is a project for expanding the borders of knowledge through falsifiability, testing hypotheses, and critical dialogue. The life of the institution of science depends on its constant ability to take apart earlier assumptions. Yet the history of thought shows that universities have always faced a basic danger: turning from a center of truth-seeking into a machine that reproduces “ideology.” The empirical research of Leor Zmigrod in the book The Ideological Brain raises this issue above a purely political-philosophical argument and reveals the neurological dimensions of this crisis. This note tries to test the findings of The Ideological Brain against the subject of free thinking in the university, this time from a neurological point of view.
- The Neurological Roots of Ideology: Flexibility versus Dogmatism
Zmigrod shows that ideology, before it is a set of intellectual statements, is a rigid architecture of cognitive processing (cognitive rigidity). Ideology is not “intellectual content”; it is the “form and architecture of information processing.” That is why it makes no difference whether this form appears in the clothing of the extreme left or the extreme right, religious or secular, nationalist or technocratic—all follow the same common pattern of reducing uncertainty and building a closed, predictable system. The ideological brain has features that stand in natural conflict with the scientific method:
- Impaired belief updating: the inability to change mental rules after meeting data that do not fit; a phenomenon known in cognitive psychology as perseveration (continuing ineffective behaviors).
- Intolerance of ambiguity: the nervous system’s terror of the unknown and its anxious desire to reduce the many-sided phenomena of the world to simple, certain, and impenetrable formulas.
- Seeing difference of opinion as a threat: linking beliefs to layers of identity and the survival instinct, so that doubt about beliefs is felt not as an intellectual act but as a physical and biological attack.
In contrast, “scientific research and academic freedom” need tolerance of uncertainty, flexibility of neural pathways, and psychological readiness to drop wrong assumptions. When ideology enters the university, it exactly damages this growth-oriented mechanism.
- The Anatomy of Ideology’s Destruction in the University
The dominance of ideological thinking over academic space leaves three paralyzing results:
- The decline of evidence-based methodology: the ideological brain actively censors, distorts, or discredits data that contradict its belief system. The cognitive system works like an impenetrable filter that absorbs confirming data and either labels contradicting data as conspiracy or treats them as ineffective exceptions. An ideological university wants research not as a tool for discovering the new, but as a decorative effort to prove sacred assumptions. This leads to pseudo-science, ordered research, and the university’s break from solving real problems.
- Blocking dialogue and creating cognitive fear: because the ideological mind understands the world in the fighting dualism of “righteous in-group” and “evil out-group,” it cannot accept difference of view. In such a space, criticism is read as “betrayal,” self-censorship becomes normal, and the dynamic flow of exchange of ideas among professors and researchers dries up.
- Academic authoritarianism: Zmigrod’s research shows a meaningful link between cognitive inflexibility and the tendency toward blind obedience to authority. An ideological university, instead of raising independent thinkers, produces obedient bureaucrats and technicians without a critical outlook.
At the biological level, this situation is not simply a passing cultural crisis. Zmigrod calls it a kind of “reverse neuroplasticity”: the longer a person stays inside an ideological framework, the neural circuits linked to flexibility and divergent thinking weaken, and dogmatic pathways strengthen, until the person’s cognitive capacity is spent not on creativity and problem-solving but on constant defense of beliefs and inventing justifications for contradictions.
- The Paradox of the Ideologist with Academic Form
Here Zmigrod’s analysis reaches a more sensitive point that is especially important in today’s university space: the most dangerous form of ideology is not the one that calls itself ideology, but the one that appears under the cover of scientific methodology, neutrality, or even defense of “freedom.” Because the ideological brain, as said before, is a processing architecture and not a specific intellectual content, it can put any language—including the language of science and the language of freedom—into its service without changing its rigid underlying structure. Some common forms of this phenomenon in today’s university are:
- Mutual accusations of politicization: many of the same people who accuse opposing positions of “politicization” or “ideologism” themselves show exactly the same features of the ideological brain—resistance to contradicting data, polarization of “us / them,” and intolerance of ambiguity. The difference between them and the other side is the content of the belief, not the cognitive structure; and from a neurological view, this difference of content is of secondary importance.
This is the same point Zmigrod shows by stressing the independence of ideology from political side: the language of criticizing ideology can itself become a tool for hiding another ideology. - Claimants of freedom with a closed structure: some of those who officially carry the flag of freedom of expression or pluralism, in practice—openly or secretly—are not ready for real dialogue with their intellectual opponents. The neurological sign of this situation is exactly what was said in the first section: seeing difference of opinion as a threat. When meeting an opposing view is felt not as a chance to revise a belief but as an identity attack, “freedom” becomes a decorative slogan that legitimizes the same blocking of dialogue described in section 2.
- Absolutism about temporary scientific data: one of the finest forms of academic ideologism is turning empirical findings that are still evolving—and by definition always open to revision—into unquestionable dogmas. The book The Ideological Brain itself is a good example of warning about this danger: findings of cognitive neuroscience are the product of a continuous process of testing, rejecting, and retesting, not final decrees. A university that treats these same findings as if they were certain revelation—and not hypotheses open to falsification—exactly reproduces the same defect of “belief updating” that these researches themselves criticize. Science becomes ideology when we separate its findings from the inherent fluidity of the scientific method.
The central point is that academic form—precise referencing, neutral language, appeal to “evidence” and “data”—gives no guarantee of real cognitive flexibility. One can hide the most dogmatic mind behind the most elegant scientific language. The real distinction between a scientist and an ideologist is not in the content of what is said, but in the person’s relation to contradicting evidence: when data appear that go against a firm belief, does the person revise the mental path, or suppress, reinterpret, or discredit that data?
- The Calming Function of Ideology and the University’s Need for Unrest
We must honestly admit one point: ideology, from a psychological and neurological view, can truly be “calming.” As said in the first section, the ideological brain seeks above all to reduce uncertainty and build a closed, predictable system; and there is no doubt that leaving the painful crossroads of doubt, overcoming hesitation, and reaching a certain and final answer lessens the anxiety load of facing ambiguity. This is what makes ideology attractive to the human mind—in any setting, not only the university: the promise of calm that comes by ending the search.
But exactly here a clear line must be drawn: the university is not an institution that needs this kind of calm; on the contrary, the functional essence of the university depends on the continuation of the same turbulence, intellectual chaos, and cognitive unrest that ideology tries to silence.
If scientific research, in the sense of section 1, needs tolerance of uncertainty and constant dynamism of neural pathways, this means the university must be a space in which the comfort of having a final answer is deliberately postponed. Ideological calm may have a legitimate function for someone active in a political party or a religious institution—because the goal of those institutions is mobilization and cohesion around a specific ideal—but when the same desire for calm enters the university, it empties from within the fundamental goal of the university, namely the production of new knowledge out of doubt. A university that seeks ideological calm is no longer a university; it is a safe space for fleeing from questions.
- Biological Rigidity, Trainability, and the Limits of Reform
Another point that Zmigrod’s research raises implicitly and that should be stated more clearly is this: cognitive inflexibility is not always only the product of conscious choice or cultural training; it may to some degree be rooted in structural differences of the brain. Some people, in terms of the neural architecture of information processing, are inherently closed—that is, even before meeting any particular ideological content, they have a lower capacity for tolerating ambiguity and updating beliefs. This fact is part of what explains the cycle of ideology reproduction at the level of society.
This rigidity can to some extent be repaired by continuous and conscious intellectual training: regular exposure to incompatible views, systematic practice of challenging one’s own assumptions, and cultivating the mental habit of “hypothesis-making instead of proof-seeking” can increase cognitive flexibility over time. But if this training does not succeed and the person remains in the same original rigidity, one must face the fact that such a person—regardless of the amount of specialized knowledge or academic title—practically becomes a structural obstacle to freedom of thought in the university environment. Functionally, such a person is more suited to activity in a political party or a religious organization, where rigidity of belief and ideological cohesion have functional value; by mistake, or through the outward academic form, the person has entered an institution whose mission is exactly the opposite of that rigidity. Recognizing this is not a moral judgment about the individual, but a functional evaluation of the person’s fit with the mission of the university; and the university, to protect itself, is forced to recognize this functional mismatch—even when it appears under a completely scientific cover.
- Guarding Freedom of Thought: The Cognitive Responsibility of the Academic
If ideology can appear in a completely academic form, then defending freedom of thought is no longer merely an institutional or legal position (such as defending the right to speak), but a continuous and personal exercise of cognitive self-awareness that every academic is obliged to guard within himself or herself. A few practical criteria for this guarding are:
- The test of unpleasant data: a free-thinking academic is someone whose first reaction to a finding or argument that challenges an established belief is curiosity, not defense; an ideologist is someone whose first reaction is justification or elimination.
- Readiness for real dialogue with the opponent: not a show dialogue whose goal is only to fix the previous position, but an encounter in which the possibility of changing one’s mind—at least in principle—is left open. Refusing to sit at the table with an intellectual opponent, even under the cover of “freedom-seeking,” is a sign of the same intolerance of ambiguity.
- Avoiding mutual accusations instead of argumentative confrontation: labeling the opponent “politicized” or “ideological” is by itself neither criticism nor answer; it often has a defensive function that comes from the mechanism of resistance to evidence. Real criticism must go to the content of the argument, not the identity of the speaker.
- Keeping epistemic fluidity about scientific findings: even the most reliable theories of neuroscience or the social sciences must be taught and researched as living hypotheses open to revision, not as new cults. Turning any scientific theory into an unchallengeable dogma is the reproduction of the same ideological pattern in a new covering.
- Freedom of Thought: The Condition for the Possibility of the University’s Life
Guarding freedom of thought is not an ethical gesture or a professional recommendation; it is an epistemological and biological necessity for the survival of science. Science grows only in a setting where the “right to be wrong,” “doubt about the obvious,” and “the right to express incompatible views” are guaranteed—even, and especially, when these views are raised by people who do not share our views.
Modern neuroscientific findings are a clear warning to the academic community: prejudice and ideologism shut down reason and blind decision-making structures; and this danger does not come from outside the university, but can creep into the very heart of scientific form, under the banner of neutrality and even under the flag of freedom.
Saving the university depends on returning to cognitive humility, stubbornly guarding academic freedom of expression, the continuous capacity for self-criticism about the border between scientific belief and ideological faith, and creating a safe space for the confrontation of views. The final responsibility for this guarding also rests not with the institution, but with each individual academic who must ask himself or herself every day: Am I still asking questions, or only proving?