Academic Snobbery

I had an awful situation yesterday with someone who teaches on the course with me and I just have to get it off my chest. The experience has made me realise how arrogant and snobbish academia is. The issue that we clashed on was a basic point-that the new EU treaty is a failed constitution text. This was something that the person was telling to a student which annoyed me no end. Considering all the hoo-ha that is around the media with the EU lately you would think that someone in that position wouldn’t say such a thing. This didn’t annoy me too much, it was more to do with that this person had to use the fact that he was doing a PhD and that I wasn’t to prove that he was right. It didn’t stop there either. Instead of giving me a reason why the new treaty is a ‘failed constitution’ treaty the said person continued to drop names and use PhD-related banter to alienate me. I cant handle arrogance and I cant handle snobbery (which unsurprisingly go hand in hand) in any walk of life. I just feel that this is something that is rife throughout the whole of academia. I know it cannot be stopped, as academia is an elitist field, however I have always felt that people would respect each other more than in the non-academic world (or is that a snobbish idea?). I guess my point is simple: academia has pockets of snobbery. I cant articulate this well enough as it is of course not all of academia-just parts of it. Its fine to have disagreements as that leads to debate-which is exactly what is required and desired-but snobbery for the sake of snobbery is disgusting and I don’t want to tarred with the same brush.