I've quoted this Roger Scruton piece a couple of times before.

. . . intellectuals value their oppositional and transgressive stance far more than they value truth, and have a vested interested in undermining the practices — such as rational argument, genuine scholarship and open-minded discussion — which have truth as their goal. They will seize on the relativist arguments — even if they are as shoddy as Foucault’s or as empty as Rorty’s — as they will seize on any kind of mumbo-jumbo that silences the critic and furthers their subversive aims. And when they take hold of institutions they form a “confederacy of dunces” whose first aim is to exclude anyone who thinks out of line.

That is why university departments in the humanities and social sciences are now such grim, bigoted places . . .

There's another explanation for this sort of counter-productive behavior.

Faculty positions and grant money are scarce commodities, and universities and funding agencies are naturally risk-averse. Under the current system, a typical researcher might spend five years in graduate school, three to six as a postdoc, and another six or seven as an assistant professor before getting tenure – with an expectation that they will write several competent papers in every one of those years. Nobody should be surprised that, apart from a few singular geniuses, the people who survive this gauntlet are more likely to be those who show technical competence within a dominant paradigm, rather than those who will take risks and pursue their idiosyncratic visions.

Though the conflict in this case is in physics and involves string theorists and their (exceedingly scarce) opponents, it seems relevant to the tragedy that has taken place in humanities departments. Aaron Clauset at Structure & Strangeness says more:

Although he's talking about theoretical physicists, the same applies just as much to other disciplines (perhaps with shorter postdoc periods) and their relationship to upstart ideas. Of course, finding the right balance between "normal science" and "paradigm-shifting science" is not easy, and there is a big difference between supporting interesting new ideas and supporting crackpots. Sometimes, that distinction can be hard to see at first, but all good new ideas ultimately lead to really excellent science. Fortunately, there are places that actively encourage both both excellent work and thinking about crazy ideas.

It is risky to support crazy ideas since it isn't obvious which will turn out to be the fever dreams of crackpots, and which will lead to new and valuable knowledge - whatever the discipline. There's no easy and obvious answers here. Institutions will tend to slide into an easy rigidity and irrelevance, becoming merely a sort of civil service jobs program for the intellectually timid and ethically challenged, but they risk their very existence if they are bolder. Perhaps it would help to reflect on an old saying that classrooms are not supposed to be safe places, that students are supposed to be rocked out of their childhood insularity and provincialism to become mature thinkers capable of creative advances.

Neither should they be safe places for instructors. It should be a risky business.