Most studies of academic inbreeding have focused on assessing its impact on scholarly practices, outputs, and outcomes. Few studies have concentrated on the other possible effects of academic inbreeding. This paper draws on a large number of studies on academic inbreeding to explore how the practice has been conceptualized, how it has emerged, and how it has been rationalized in the creation and development of higher education systems. Within this framework, the paper also explores how academic inbreeding shapes and maintains a powerful academic oligarchy, leading to the stonewalling of both knowledge and institutional change to maintain social and political structures somewhat akin to those of medieval societies. The paper shows that the key to mitigating academic inbreeding practices lies in ensuring that academic recruitment processes are open, meritocratic, and transparent. However, a more difficult task is to change longstanding mentalities and disrupt a system that serves the interests of certain groups but not the advancement of knowledge or the fulfillment of universities’ social mandates.

大多数关于学术近亲繁殖的研究都集中在评估其对学术实践、产出和成果的影响。很少有研究关注学术近亲繁殖的其他可能影响。本文利用大量关于学术近亲繁殖的研究来探讨这种实践是如何被概念化的，它是如何出现的，以及它是如何在高等教育系统的创建和发展中被合理化的。在这个框架内，本文还探讨了学术近亲繁殖如何塑造和维持强大的学术寡头统治，从而阻碍知识和制度变革，以维持类似于中世纪社会的社会和政治结构。该论文表明，减轻学术近亲繁殖的关键在于确保学术招聘流程是开放的，精英化、透明化。然而，更艰巨的任务是改变长期存在的心态，破坏一个为某些群体的利益服务而不是为知识进步或履行大学社会使命服务的体系。