Talk:Ivory tower

Needs cleanup
This passage is a joke, right? I don't think Wikipedia is the right place for this.

I see the tag has been applied again. Can a more experienced editor give some pointers about what exactly needs to be cleaned up? (Personally, I'm not keen on the "adamantine unworldliness"... but I don't know if that's just me!) RichardJFoster 15:40, 10 May 2005 (UTC)


 * It's badly formated for a start. Joe D (t) 17:31, 10 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Again, can you be a bit more specific? I did try to conform to the Manual of Style (i.e. I added the first section, and headings where they seemed appropriate). Obviously you believe I did a poor job doing so (which I am quite happy to accept). Unfortunately your comment gets me no closer to understanding what I should have done. I'm going to change some things that bother me... let me know if I've made things better or worse! RichardJFoster 20:12, 10 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I have cleaned up the main problems and removed the tag. Joe D (t) 20:59, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Added Cleanup Tag
Latest revision is complete nonsense. If someone wants to rewrite this that's fine, otherwise I'll restore the redirect in a couple of days. Isotope23 19:52, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

==Real ivory tower?

If the Song of Solomon (7,4) says "Your neck is like an ivory tower", then it was a metaphore already at that time. Like what? What was the real ivory tower like? --LA2 18:44, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, it's obviously a tower and it's made of ivory. That's as much as I can guess... I'm not an expert on the subject, I just translated the article. :) --Koveras [[Image:Flag of Russia.svg|25px]] 22:12, 10 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for translating! But the question remains. Ivory was brought to Israel on King Solomon's ship (1 Kings 10:22) and he had a throne decorated with ivory (1 Kings 10:18) that he had to climb up. Maybe that was the original ivory tower? Palaces of ivory are mentioned in 1 Kings 22:39, Psalms 45:9, Amos 3:15, says my old biblical dictionary. Many kinds of towers are also mentioned, but none of ivory. --LA2 12:07, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Propose merge
is, apart from the occasional bit of soapboxing, essentially about the same concept. Almost all the references in that article use the term "ivory tower", and that article is essentially a discussion of one half of the ivory tower concept. This is a better and more complete article, so I propose a merge to this, the more common term. Guy (Help!) 23:15, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment: I disagree. These two important concepts are related but far from identical. Whereas the ivory-tower core of academia holds itself apart from the outside world, pursuing its internal whims and fancies in blissful, self-absorbed contempt of its social and cultural environments, academic elitism is a pervasive socioeconomic phenomenon wherein certifications dispensed for profit by the keepers of the Ivory Tower are increasingly demanded of the public at large for purposes of employment, advancement, and arguably, economic survival. They exist in two largely separate realms and refer to two very distinct aspects of the relationship between academia and society. It appears at first glance that they could both be incorporated in the Academia article under separate headings, but the Academia article is already quite long. Given the importance of these topics, this implies that separate articles are appropriate after all. Asmodeus 00:08, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * For the context of Asmodeus' view seeRequests for arbitration/ScienceApologist/Proposed decision. Guy (Help!) 13:11, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I support Asmodeus, and want to add that this article covers not only the academic elitism per se, but also the religious origins of the term which would likely go lost if the articles were merged. --Koveras ☭ 06:42, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd agree with Asmodeus and Koveras. --Wetman 12:05, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I too agree with Asmodeus et al. that the words are different concepts, but I do not agree with him about the distinction. "Ivory tower" can refer to any intellectual as viewed from someone involved in active policy affairs. eg ''Banning all CO2 emissions completely is just ivory tower thinking; in the real world we have to go by stages." People using it are often making an appeal to popular prejudice against a true analysis of the situation, but it is not a personal attack, and can be used in a joking manner.


 * "Academic elitism" is the the term for the opinion that academics have a viewpoint that those academically unqualified have no right to an independent judgment. "To only discuss peer-reviewed articles about CO2 emissions is academic elitism." This can be a personal attack,in which a person's opinions are disregarded because he is assumed to have (or does have) a low opinion of those without his formal qualifications.

It also has a second meaning, as a near-synonym of "academic snobbery", the view that those affiliated with academic institutions of great prestige are necessarily more expert than those at less well-thought-of institutions. It is only classism incidentally, because the institutions of great prestige are associated with the upper classes. "academic snobbery is meant to imply that both are true."


 * In view of the possible differences in opinion shown above, it might be wiser to keep the articles separate. DGG 03:47, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

A precursor to the modern sense of "Ivory Tower"?
Admittedly, this may be original research, but has any published study pointed out the possible relationship of this stock image to this well-known passage from John Milton's Areopagitica?
 * As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. ... That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness...

(emphasis mine) To labor the obvious, ivory is often associated with whiteness and purity. -- llywrch 18:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It's is a good observation but I honestly can't think of a way to incorporate that into the article without getting accused of OR, as you already mentioned. :( --Koveras ☭ 21:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * (Milton makes clear that the whiteness is an excremental whiteness, not the whiteness of ivory, which he does not mention. A cloistered virtue is not in a tower.)--Wetman (talk) 20:04, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Forgetting Lucretius
If this is in any way helpful, I would like to point out that in the classics discipline it is generally agreed that the original conception of the 'Ivory Tower' comes from Lucretius's De Rerum Natura (II.7-19), published in 55 BCE. I'm not sure what the policy is regarding citing from the Loeb text, so I'll make a loose (read: my Latin is rusty) translation for this discussion:

"there is no happier thing than to possess a sanctuary, lofty and serene - fortified mightily by teachings of the wise - and to look down on others beneath you, wandering aimless, struggling day and night for ascendancy, matching wits, sparing no effort in scrabbling their way to the heights of wealth and power"

Apologies for the gratuitous "look down on others beneath you," but it was the easiest way for me to convey the sense of the passage, which has a highly detached, elitist reading in the original. Lsdazrael 03:30, 13 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, I wish you'd just edit that right into the article. --Wetman 06:01, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Biblical ref
I request the return of the "Biblical ref" since both sources provided in the article are naming Bible as the origin of the expression. Also, since the article title does not narrow the topic to modern use only, the "Biblical ref" should be returned for the sake of completeness. :) --Koveras ☭ 17:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Errr, it's contradictory. See here:
 * "The image is Biblical, but its subtext of delusions in common usage derive from a separate source"
 * Either the article is about the Biblical ref or it isn't. If the term is unrelated, as that line suggests, the Biblical ref should be placed in disambig, or in its own article. If that line is wrong, I'm happy for the reference to be re-added minus the contradiction. Chris Cunningham 17:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The source (World Wide Words) claims that the Bible influenced Sainte-Beauve: "The origin is the Bible, specifically Chapter 7, Verse 4 of the Song of Solomon, in which Solomon is extolling the beauty of his beloved: ... Not quite the thing today ... but it struck a chord with Charles-Augustin Saint-Beuve." So I'd say that sentence has to be reworded and restored. For example, "Although the term is rarely used in religious sense, it is credited with inspiring the modern meaning" plus an inline citation. --Koveras ☭ 17:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Cool. In that case, I'm happy for it to go back in. (And it gives us back a pretty picture as well.) Chris Cunningham 17:46, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

References in fiction
Reverting all your additions makes me feel like a wikinazi or something, and just so that you know, I'm not one. But we still need to differentiate between a passing reference to the words "tower" and "ivory" and a real homage to the concept in notable works of fiction. I therefore propose that starting today, everyone should suggest their additions here, on the talk page, first. If there are no unaddressed objections after a week, feel free to add it to the main article. Otherwise, talk it out. Direct edits to the article section (unless it's a totally clear case) will be reverted like before. Thank you.

PS: "A totally clear case" would, for example, be the Childlike Empress' palace in The Neverending Story: it matches the meaning and it's used countless times throughout a famous book (and movie). --Koveras ☭ 13:31, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The "This Is England" reference is legitimate because it is referring specifically to the concept described in this article and it provides a real world example of someone sitting in an Ivory Tower.--GaalDornick
 * How often is it used in the film? --Koveras ☭ 06:39, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Just once, but what difference does it make? Your argument about why all references to an ivory tower shouldn't be used is because many of them are just those two words put together and don't have anything to do with the concept explained in this article, which is a legitimate argument. However, I'm explaining that the reference in this film has everything to do with this concept, and even refers to a real world example of someone sitting in an ivory tower. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GaalDornick (talk • contribs) 03:33, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh for crying out loud, whatever. :) --Koveras ☭ 09:52, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Alan Turing bio reference
In Andrew Hodge's bio of Alan Turing, he mentions in passing that "Ivory Tower" was used at Princeton to refer to the building/tower housing the graduate school, and that this reference was made because Proctor (of Proctor and Gamble, the manufacturers of Ivory Soap), was a significant benefactor of the institution. Proctor and Gamble's research facility has also carried the moniker "Ivory Tower." Turing was in residence at Princeton for a year or so about 1933, as many of the European scientists/refugees were establishing Princeton (and the Institute for Advanced Study, housed at the graduate school) as a world-class research center. It makes sense that the common usage grew out of the Princeton reference, given that institution's central role in defining the modern research university in the U.S. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.206.22.53 (talk) 18:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Hm, that's an interesting information, indeed. Do you, perhaps, happen to know the ISBN of the said book? --Koveras ☭ 20:17, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The ISBN of the Turing bio is 0-671-49207-1. The reference (in the hardbound 1983 Simon & Schuster version) is on p. 117: "The tower of the Graduate College was an exact replica of Madgalen College Oxford, and it was popularly called the Ivory Tower, because of that benefactor of Princeon, the Proctor who manufactured Ivory Soap." I apologize for adding this in the "references in fiction" portion of this page; I had not intended to. -- Michael Pearson (pearson@jmichaelpearson.net)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.156.34.248 (talk) 11:46, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * That's a very good reference indeed. However, I can't find a book where I live so would you please add this information to the "Modern usage" section of the main article? I'll copyedit it then, if necessary. :) --Koveras ☭ 14:26, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I moved the reference to the Hodges book to where it should be, just after the quotation from that book. Also I added a citation needed tag after the supposed Hodges quotation, which I don't think is in the book. If someone doesn't specify where this came from soon, I'll delete it; I suspect original research. Eflatmajor7th (talk) 05:33, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Ivy Tower?
I've heard that the academic connotations come from the similar-sounding phrase "Ivy Tower," referring to the old ivy-covered buildings in some old European universitie/s. Is there any truth to this? --Howdybob (talk) 14:30, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * None whatsoever, although it must have helped the metaphor that they have so many towers. Johnbod (talk) 19:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Intellectuals?
I've never heard this phrase being used in this manner, usually the kind of people who sit in their ivory towers and those who are pious and/or rich. rarely solely meant to apply to intellectuals. I have cite-needed this. 90.214.234.37 (talk) 15:31, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Did you try reading the article? Johnbod (talk) 19:32, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Whenever I overhear that familiar "I've never heard..." of this or that cultural commonplace, I try to imagine the tone of dinner-table conversation and the range of its subjects that is being reflected, but I always seem to fail.--Wetman (talk) 18:32, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

While it's clearly established here that the term originally referred to those lost in academia...
It's just as clearly established in the real world that the term has another meaning.

"The unbridled pursuit of wealth for wealth's sake creates a risk that in the world the rich will live in an ivory tower surrounded by a desert of poverty and degradation..."

- The Pope.

So long as this article fails to address this, it becomes guilty of the crime it seeks to describe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.98.140.16 (talk) 10:55, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Be bold and expand the article, then. ;) --Koveras ☭ 14:16, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

A remark
A suggestion for an experienced editor to add: In his 1922 critique of American Higher Education "The Goose Step", Upton Sinclair writes:  "This Dean (Andrew) West had a vision of....an ivory tower of classical culture, and he got Mr. (William) Proctor, who owns a tower of ivory soap, to offer half a million dollars for this purpose." page 113. MCJohnson415 (talk) 02:21, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Why is "Ivory Tower" capitalized?
I did not think "ivory tower" was a proper noun. Why is it capitalized here? Joja lozzo  20:10, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

The Neverending Story
I'm reverting again because it really doesn't seem that any arbitrary usage of the phrase, appearing in fiction for instance, deserves a mention in an encyclopedia. Everything else in this section talks about the relevant evolution of the real-world usage of the phrase and its real-world meaning. Let's talk here if anyone can make an argument for this paragraph. Eflatmajor7th (talk) 22:20, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

The article is entitled the Ivory Tower. The paragraph I added simply makes a short description of the Ivory Tower as it appears in the book, The NeverEnding Story. This is a very famous book. In the article itself the term Ivory Tower is a phrase used to describe imagination. In the book the Ivory Tower is the capital city of Fantasia, the land of human imagination. Other articles allow for sections that describe items as they appear in popular culture, why would this reference not be allowed? --Preator1 (talk) 22:03, 12 June 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Preator1 (talk • contribs)


 * It's not really about imagination. It's about the usage of the phrase, how it has changed over centuries, and its real-world connotations. Its modern connotations, you may have noticed, are mostly negative, another reason your paragraph doesn't fit. But the main reason is that your paragraph is about a fictional place that is coincidentally called the same thing as the title of the article. And what other articles have doesn't matter, see WP:IAPD. Eflatmajor7th (talk) 23:41, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

The fact that other most if not all articles on wikipedia have sections of articles entitles "Usage in Popular Culture" is a reason to continue that. Why would this one article be an acception? Can you prove that the author of the NeverEnding Story, Michaele Ende, did not intend to reference the Ivory Tower discussed within this article? Besides that, the NeverEnding story is not just some random little fictional story. It is an extremely popular novel that has been translated into dozens of languages, and adapted into several movies and television shows. Your refusal to allow a minor addition to this article makes no sense. --Preator1 (talk) 19:48, 13 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I know about the neverending story, and the extent to which it is well-known does not matter at all for this article. Even if your claim that most WP articles have a Popular Culture section were true, which it is not, it would not matter, because of WP:IAPD, like I said. You have to make an argument for this specific article. Also you were not trying to add a new, helpful section, you were trying to tack on a paragraph at the end of the already-existing Modern Usage section. What the author of a story "intended" in their usage of a term, even if that were discernible, also does not matter, because this is an encyclopedia article about the term itself, in real life, not its arbitrary usage in fantasy. I still maintain that the paragraph makes no sense in this article. If you think it is important enough to write about, then you can create a separate article, linked from the Neverending Story article, about the capital of Fantastica (not "Fantasia", as you have been saying, if you're indeed referring to the book and not the movies, which you appear not to be, as evidenced also by your capitalization convention). The fact that the book was written in German also presents a problem for its inclusion in this article, as you would have to prove that whatever Ende's German phrase was was the same as the German version of the English phrase "ivory tower" as described in this article. Eflatmajor7th (talk) 04:26, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Bad redirect
The academic elitism internal link on the Ivory Tower article redirects back to Ivory Tower. This serves no purpose. I have no idea how to fix redirects.


 * Good point. I think that when the article's protection expires, we should just delete the "Main article: Academic elitism" tag and the double brackets around the phrase. Eflatmajor7th (talk) 01:07, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Full protection
Is there some reason that edits to this page are closed even to regular users? I don't see why it even should be to IPs. Tezero (talk) 17:16, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * If you look at the history of the page you'll see a brief edit war initiated against me by another user. I complained about the user's behavior and an admin made the decision to do full protection. Only then did the user engage me here on the talk page. I think it expires later this month. Eflatmajor7th (talk) 00:24, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It'd better. Good riddance; just temp-block that user, semi-protect the page, and move on... Tezero (talk) 00:41, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

This page defines Ivory tower as academic elitism which is redirected to this page
The page defines itself with itself. That makes no sense.Monopoly31121993 (talk) 19:44, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Can someone explain this?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.45.126.148 (talk) 21:47, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

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University photographs are misleading?
Since I gather that actual ivory has never been used to build real-life towers, and the "ivory tower" metaphor for lofty intellectual isolation in academe specifically is a relatively recent (mid-20th c.) application of the phrase, it seems misleading to feature photographs of old British university buildings that happen to have whitish towers and label them as "ivory towers" as though that's literally what they are are and as though that's the basis for the expression. If any of these buildings are commonly described as "ivory towers" then this should be documented (and the phrase should be presented in quotation marks, unless Ivory Tower is a building's official name); at present the association strikes me as tenuous and confusing, given that the idea of the university as an "ivory tower" seems to have derived from metaphorical ivory towers in other domains (religious imagery, artistic isolation) and not directly through the existence of whitish towers on university campuses. Jcejhay (talk) 21:17, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Recent revisions back and forth
It seems to me (and a glance through the talk page suggests that maybe this has been discussed before, in one way or another) that the problem here is that three things are being conflated:

1. The "ivory tower" as a metaphorical milieu of "lofty" pursuits apart from the "real world." This concept, its history and its various connotations and interpretations (to be discussed, as always, from a neutral point of view) is ostensibly the article topic.

2. The concept of "academic elitism" as a social problem, or a perceived social problem. This concept is not without relevance to the article topic, but the two concepts are not equivalent, and the "academic elitism" tangent seems to attract edits that (a) pull the article away from its main theme, and (b) depart from a neutral point of view.

3. A discussion of "elite institutions," e.g., the Ivy League schools. This is yet a further distance removed from the article topic. The connection between these institutions in particular and concerns about "academic elitism" in general is arguably a tenuous one, while the connection to the article topic seems pretty remote.

Jcejhay (talk) 14:35, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that typical usage of the term does indeed combine all these ideas, but the table was going too far, which is why I removed it. The sections above from 2006 and 2009 are indeed worth reading. A google "news" search on the term shows pretty clearly the typical context of modern usage. Johnbod (talk) 14:46, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 April 14 § AcademicElitism
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 April 14 § AcademicElitism. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 07:52, 16 April 2021 (UTC)