[Disestablishmentarian]

Then I thought that Hawking had VERY LITTLE if any EXPERIENCE interacting with social settings and diverse people

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Academia in general has lost its way; determined that only the opinions of other isolated academics matter. (That's the essence of "Peer-reviewed" science or scholarship.)

Don't get me started on the stupidity that this approach engenders. I could attack Hawking's specific (stupid) cosmology, which has been refuted amongst others by Halton Arp (who had equally great credentials until he tried to buck the "Peer-review" process).

Then there is EXHIBIT A of STUPIDITY: The academic computer models used to support the Marxist social theory known as global warming.

Having sometimes worked side-by-side with academics in the course of my professional life, I have lost a tremendous amount of respect for the whole business of academia.

[little jeremiah]

I grew up in college towns with a professor father and mother who became one later in life. How it affected me:

I got kicked out of high school, was forced back later, then dropped out, ran far far away, and never looked back.