Academia is not to blame. Your example is a classic case of the 'availability heuristic'. You are assuming your friends was a good paper, when it might simply have been a weak one, and the reviewer (likely a PhD student on a zero hours contract) was being polite. Actually, there are many good ideas and theories and analysis out there, but most are crowded out by Whig or Tory intellectual dominance in the press and politics. And you not being aware of them does not mean they don't exist (not everything is on SSRN!) Cummings is an example of such arch bullshit and sophistry; he says and knows very little yet people who also say and know very little thing he is knowledgeable or 'intellectual'. He was not calling for intellectual diversity, he was calling for the classic Oxbridge BS; say unoriginal and reactionary things in an 'original' fashion. Therefore, a mirror of Cummings himself, a chancer that is in line with current dominant ideology. Sabisky's appointment was not intellectual diversity in the slightest, he was another bullshitter hiding his racism and authoritarianism behind sophistry. The question you should be asking yourself - if you value intellectual diversity - is why there is zero chance of a Marxist, Critical Theorist or Post-Colonial theorist ever getting anywhere near the government. Answer that question and you might better understand what is going on.