What 2025 Holds for The Fight Against Corruption in Academia - Start Here
Why I’m devoting 2025 to reforming counselor education for good.
The Mission for Academic Reform
Since I started to research and write about the stunning level of corruption in university counselor training programs, I’ve felt more invigorated and in alignment with meaningful work than I have in a long time.
While it has been stressful and heartbreaking to read documents that laid out a plan to design education for therapists to instill a uniform identity and ideological homogeneity based in bigotry, I am overwhelmingly motivated to keep going and lead efforts to turn the profession around.
If I can find a way to make this work, I am ready to research, learn, and grow in whatever ways I need to, to see this through.
Reflections on Growth and Challenges
Despite my experience in counselor training, I believe in the value of therapy. For those who need it, I want people to be able to find therapists focused on improving individual mental health, not social justice advocacy.
In just the last 5 months, I have not only managed to initiate actions I hope will lead to reform here in Tennessee, but I have reached a small but dedicated group of readers with this blog project. That you! Yay! Subscribers!
This is incredible and something that has given me inspiration, even when I’ve felt overwhelmed, unsure, and afraid.
I am excited, and very hopeful for what 2025 will bring. I would love to leave it at that.
At the same time, the hitch is ‘to make this work’.
While I do have some paid subscriptions, which I am incredibly grateful for, I’m not in a sustainable position…yet.
I will need more paying subscribers, donations, regular sales, speaking gigs, or other ideas to make ends meet.
If there is one area I could use some personal growth it is learning how to comfortably value my efforts and find ways to advocate for myself to earn money. The reality is I can’t do this alone, either effecting change or on a personal financial level.
Since my divorce, I have been attempting to practice being more assertive in asking for the value of my work. But the truth is I am so lost here. I’m not even sure if my current efforts reflect growth I should find encouraging or concerning. I find the whole subject of pricing my labor and asking for money painfully awkward, even though it is essential.
Part of that awkwardness is that asking for payment is also an admission of need. Need that scratches the reality that I can’t currently offer the same support to others. That much vulnerability leaves me feeling exposed.
There is also fear.
It’s no secret that making a career out of writing is hard. How do you tell if your efforts will be enough? Should you just hang on a little bit longer or are you lying to yourself to justify sunk costs? Has AI made this a moot point for new writers? I can’t answer any of these questions and they are all scary.
While I have turned on paid subscriptions, started the GiveSendGo, and made a little merch shop, the fact is that I have to find a way to make this monetarily sustainable. I’m not there yet, and I don’t know exactly what it will entaill to get there.
I’m talking about this now because it is the start of the year. I need to practice this kind of assertive ask. I need the help, and I am a planner.
I can tolerate risk, hardship, or scrambling as long as I have a plan. And for me, a good plan includes some limits.
Right now, that means one year.
Plans for 2025
I am giving myself one year to both see just how much I can accomplish and also to see if I can generate enough support to:
See some success with efforts leading to reform.
Enough income to allow me to deal with some long-standing problems, and travel even if it’s just to Nashville to expand my efforts to create reform.
At the end of the year, I will evaluate my efforts. If needed repairs to my house and car are still out of reach, I’ll have to make some hard choices.
But.
It will be after a year so glorious with effort it will be a send-off worth remembering.
Over the holiday break, I researched textbooks and program materials from across the country. Over the course of the next year, I’m going to be sharing the results of that study, and addressing questions like:
Should professors be empowered to evaluate students on intangibles?
Should professors have the power to ‘fail’ a student for their ‘disposition’ despite good grades?
Do we have the necessary knowledge to warrant an educational ‘standard’?
Part 3+ of how the f*ck do research journals work?
How do we balance free speech and academic freedom vs bigoted indoctrination?
I also have plans for creative work that comes at these issues from narrative and satirical angles. I plan to revise and share some of the fairy tales inspired by my time in counselor training.
I have also been learning the ins and outs of adding a podcast, which I plan to experiment with in the months ahead.
When I’m not writing, I will be meeting with people and looking for ways to promote reform in counseling and Academia, here in Tennessee and across the country to whatever extent I’m able.
If you are in Tennessee, check out the FAIR Tennessee Chapter website. I built that over the holiday break too, and I’ll be using that, as well as Diogenes In Exile, to inform and provide tools to organize.
What time I take for myself will be to study how to do genealogical research and Japanese. Doing genealogical research is my backup plan (while also being something I enjoy on its own), and learning Japanese will mean that if I ever make it to Kyoto to see the cherry blossoms, I will be able to ask where to find the bathroom and order food. But maybe not in that order.
How You Can Help
To close, I want to thank my subscribers, especially my paying subscribers, for your support and interest. Nothing is possible without that investment in these efforts.
To anyone ready to be part of the solution, consider subscribing, becoming a paid subscriber (you can even tell me what perks you want in the paid subscriber chat), donating to my GiveSendgo, or buying Thought Criminal merch.
If you would like for me to give a presentation on accreditation or talk about the cliff counseling and psychology is marching toward to your group or organization, send me a private message. Let’s talk; I’m open to suggestions or other ideas.
How Amazing Can One Year Be?
The way I heard it, when Anthony Burgess was told that he had a brain tumor and only a year to live, he wrote nine books in that year. One of those was A Clockwork Orange.
I don’t purport to have the genius of Burgess, but if I can duplicate even half of his effort, if nothing else, 2025 will be a pivotal year for Academia. With your help, it will be a veritable reformation, just with better haircuts than 16th-century monks.
And maybe I’ll even get some things fixed around here.
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About
Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.
Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.
You can also find my work at Minding the Campus