Every university claims to serve truth. It places the word on its crest, its mission statements, its accreditation documents. But what happens when an institution worships truth while no longer allowing it to rule?

In this episode, I examine the theological core of the modern university through its most unsettling metaphor: a god kept alive but silenced. Drawing on Chapter 1 of The Emperor Is a Hostage, this episode explores the distinction between what is sacred and what is sovereign, and why that difference explains so much of academic frustration, burnout, and disillusionment.

Truth, Lucey argues, has not been abandoned. It has been enthroned. Preserved symbolically, invoked constantly, but stripped of the power to override budgets, rankings, reputational risk, and strategic alignment. Like a god on life support, truth legitimises the system while being prevented from intervening in what is done in its name.

This episode unpacks the myth of a past “golden age,” the role of scale in silencing inquiry, and the rise of proxy questions that quietly replace “Is this true?” with safer, bureaucratic substitutes like “Is it fundable?” or “Is it compliant?”

At its emotional core, this is an episode about grief rather than anger. About why academic compromise hurts in a way ordinary workplace compromise does not. And about what it means to serve an ideal you still believe in, even as the system built around it no longer can.

Read more in the book, available here https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GCFWD29C

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