Sophist

1. One skilled in elaborate and devious argumentation.
2. A scholar or thinker.
3. Any of a group of professional fifth-century BC Greek philosophers and teachers who speculated on theology, metaphysics, and the sciences, and who were later characterized by Plato as superficial manipulators of rhetoric and dialectic.

Today's "top" university minds, at least in the gender studies departments, are sophists. Plato had it right, and paying them to educate our kids is a worse ROI than if we just set fire to the money.