There is a reason that many Professor are silent to this insanity that is affecting US Universities. They are not ones in charge of their Universities, but are mere employees (tenured but still employees). University administrations runs schools and they call the shots. Sadly administrations are fully affected by woke virus, and any resi…
There is a reason that many Professor are silent to this insanity that is affecting US Universities. They are not ones in charge of their Universities, but are mere employees (tenured but still employees). University administrations runs schools and they call the shots. Sadly administrations are fully affected by woke virus, and any resistance is to be crushed with upmost brutality. They will not just fire you, but will make sure that you are unemployable, rendering your entire career dead end.
This sadly reminds me of times of "red scare", when people were black listed even with no evidence of wrong doing. But those times were different, it was work of journalist that brought that insanity to the end. But wokeness is different beast entirely, it has spread from Universities to newspapers and other media also to our biggest companies, to such extent that many companies are ready to run them self to ground, just to ponder to woke crowd.
Personally, I thing that there is only one way to fix this issue at Universities, and that is to introduce only merit based admissions and stop forsing students to take woke subjects as mandatory courses. This would mean that we would lose many "quality" woke tenures that literally don't benefit students except increasing tuition fees.
Second thing stop giving student loans for everything. US doesn't need any more bachelors of gender/art studies and similar subjects that guarantee unemployment but only settle people with debt. Student loans should be only given for subjects that have earnings potential such is STEM or Medicine. This would finally put stop this gravy train where collages use endless supply of cash brought by irresponsible student loans.
If something is not done soon, one of the greatest American achievements, our higher education system, will be irreparably damaged, as it drifts from its goal of education to indoctrination.
They don't say with out reason, go woke go broke. If it was any other country doing this to it self, i might have laugh and thought they are crazy, but this is hitting close to home.
A lot of schools are just mega bucks financial institutions in and of themselves. Billionaire alumni donate billions. Then the institution is corrupted by all those administrators and Dept heads etc who see $$$. I don’t necessarily believe these individuals are all misguided bad people but their collectively fulfilled visions raise costs and add to confusion and studies in “non-binary, pansexual, Islamic, finger-painting.” The institution of the future might place limits on endowment size, budget, number of administrators, tuition, number of sports, number of departments etc. Maybe we will come to view imperfect campuses and facilities etc as a more perfect place for kids to grow.
Raziel, you’re such an astute woke culture warrior to see all this venomous social justice spreading like a virus through the colleges. Think of America without social injustice. The great replacement would fall to the wayside, destroy your caste system with its hereditary transmission of lifestyle, and destroy capitalism as we know it!
Are you still confused regarding “social justice” scholarship = justice as an ideal?
If I come up with a group of ideas and label them “the ideas for goodness” does this mean all those who criticize these ideas must be for badness? If the “ideas for goodness” cannot be scrutinized, how do we know they actually yield goodness?
“There are large partisan divides on the magnitude of the threat posed by inequality. Nearly three-quarters of Democrats (73%) say that racial inequality is a critical threat to the country, on par with climate change (75%) and just below the threat they find most critical, the coronavirus pandemic (87%). Eight in ten say the US government is doing an ineffective job on the issue of racial inequality.”
“By contrast, just 23 percent of Republicans say that racial inequality is a critical threat. For GOP supporters, racial inequality, climate change (21%) and economic inequality (21%) are the three items rated the least critical of the 15 items presented. Half (49%) say the US government is doing an effective job in addressing racial inequality.”
Raziel...you post are always thoughtful, so i do not disagree, thanks. Who wields the Power, gov., boss, judge whomever, Only with the consent of the Governed.
Once again, I will recommend Lyell Asher’s series on the topic of Ed schools for Peter Boghossian’s substack. He goes into detail about school administrators and their crucial role in propagating this ideology.
One idea that has been on my mind lately. Regarding the youngsters who have been brainwashed and who are in many ways victims of the circumstances; is this it for them? What percentage of them are “true believers” ? For those who have brought the ideology with them beyond the university, will the hold these ideas ever taper? I think we must come to grips with the possibility that—if the ideology functions as a secular religion—a percentage of these individuals will carry on through life as fervent believers.
I read M. Asher's series on Your advice, M. Alejandra. It sure *was* great. Read eye-opener. Explained how we got here.
I have no crystal ball. There's a percentage of Millennials and Gen-Zers who will just hafta be written off. *Too* big=a percentage. I'm sorry that's my belief. 'Course, ICBW.
Another reason many professors stay silent is that many (not all) of them have good paying jobs with good benefits. To speak out or stand up against all this is to take a very real chance of losing your job even if you have tenure. Now, where does an English or Philosophy professor go in the "real world" to get a job? If you teach Finance or Engineering you have a chance but many others have zero. Even going to another school is virtually impossible in these times of shrinking enrollment and budgets. Many are bullied into submission simply for self preservation.
ZSF...nice post, but i can not stand your conclusions, just me. What good is choice, freedom, if not executed? These days, we do have 101 choices. otherwise...
Exactly. An addendum to my anecdote: No evidence of racism was found in my case, however the director of my department was tasked with speaking with me about my "judgment." In a lengthy discussion with the director, I relayed how being in faculty meetings with people saying things like "my whiteness causes harm" is extremely disturbing to me, because, well, HISTORY. And there's my own experience at a school some twenty years ago when a black student threatened to knife me for giving him a C, and the POC administration refused to do anything about it because, well, I'm white so I must be racist. They only relented when a black student came forward. So I tell her this as if to say, is this the climate we want to be working in? She gave me a blank, Stepford Wives look and said: The STUDENTS need to feel SAFE.
I can not imagine how to live and work in situation like you ve just described…. When I encountered similar stupidity in power at workplaces in my younger years I just left. Point blank left the workplace and I did it several times. But I was in my 20s… single, w/o kids. Then I arranged my life not to work for anybody. What would I do if I were in this situation like yours in my 40s, with kids and all… I don’t know. I would seek some way out. I feel for you. Hope the opportunity presents itself and you don’t need to live and work in this humiliating environment.
Well, most professors are not tenured anymore, that's why. One false move and you're out. I was recently accused of 'racial discrimination' for retaining a student in a course. The student's work was not passing by all objective measures. The student screamed at me for retaining her in the course, shouting that I don't know how to do my job, blah blah blah..." When in Kangaroo Court, I asked the Title IX Administrator what evidence the student provided of racial discrimination (the quality of writing in the grievance was proof enough that the student needed a writing course), she responded: "The student doesn't have to provide evidence. All that matters is the way you made her feel." Therefore, nothing should occur that would risk making a student FEEL in any way that would bring them to label you "racist" or what have you. THEY have to feel "SAFE." The professors' safety is only ensured if they -- well -- I don't know what. It's clearly a Kafka Trap. So that's why they stay silent.
Interesting you should say this. That's what I told the Title IX robot. And my union rep. Their response implied that I'm just being insensitive. Never mind how it made ME feel to waste hours on this ridiculous accusation, lose sleep over it, etc etc, when I was JUST DOING MY JOB.
And, as if that weren't enough, when I informed the director of our department (who had to have a "talk" with me about my behavior) that the anti-white talk in faculty meetings -- millennial faculty stating that their "whiteness causes harm" and other such nonsense makes me extremely uncomfortable because it's so racist -- and because it justifies a student threatening to knife me over a grade two decades ago (and the mostly POC admin at that school refused to do anything about it because hey, only white people were complaining about this student -- it took a black student to complain before they would do anything!)...the director looked at me blankly and said: BUT THE STUDENTS NEED TO FEEL SAFE.
Yet another report of kangaroo court student derangement and the Title IX commissariat breaking foul wind in the face of reason. Of course the violation of reason ("..how many fingers am I holding up?...") is the point. It's crazy making. It creates emotional unreality and in the best totalitarian tradition installs fear and confusion in the environment while making the victim an object lesson for those who might question the lie it represents.
Substack after Substack article, across the entire spectrum of writers, reveals worthy lives and careers destroyed by an ideologically driven shadow bureaucracy that crosses the entirety of private, public and political life. It has co.opted, at a profit, the American national dialogue and every issue of vital social, economic and political concern for its own purposes. It is well funded and it isn't there by mistake. I'm personally tired of hearing me shout that Marxist "woke" is the lipstick on a pig named totalitarian finance.
Is it just mercenary ideologues continuing the exploitation of youth crippled by the pay to play political machine that robbed them of their economic and cultural future? Or, is it an across the board American "loss of Soul" that has created a disconnect between our lives and the founding principals of our Republic.
Over fifty years ago those of us in the much maligned "mens movement" spoke of the emergence of the "puer aeternus" in America. The eternal half adult. The Peter Pan "flying boy" unable to touch the ground of actual reality. Perpetual emotional childhood. Robert Bly wrote a book on it: THE SIBLING SOCIETY. Of course the MSM feminist press attacked us relentlessly. Today young men and women (think Taylor Lorenz) live lives forever trapped in the narcissism of emotional childhood, forever victims of, well, everything.
Fatherhood, motherhood and family were destroyed. The living bond of blood and bone. The story of human struggle and experience, the direct connection to the living history of all mankind through the arts, literature and history replaced by a Soul crippling pathological financial/ political/cyber reality. The kindergarten to the grave manufacture of an eternal electronic highchair where the eternal infant is spoon fed a victimhood reality by well paid sterile bureaucratic ideologues.
They're playing for keeps. We sleep at our own peril.
As an external observer (I live in Colombia), I still cannot believe how things are so messed up in some places of the US. You were threatened with a knife but your "whiteness causes harm". It's racism when you call out the violent actions of a black student. Go figure.
Good points. Except for what's happening at law and med schools, where woke is all the rage and med schools teach nonsense such as racism is a public health menace. Allow borrowing for science, engineering and useful skills such as accounting. Nothing more.
This was true in the past, not anymore. Now one wrong though and you are out. You will be sent in front of Kangaroo Court with little to no possibility to defend your self. Check following article "He Was a World-Renowned Cancer Researcher. Now He's Collecting Unemployment." on this Substack
There is a reason that many Professor are silent to this insanity that is affecting US Universities. They are not ones in charge of their Universities, but are mere employees (tenured but still employees). University administrations runs schools and they call the shots. Sadly administrations are fully affected by woke virus, and any resistance is to be crushed with upmost brutality. They will not just fire you, but will make sure that you are unemployable, rendering your entire career dead end.
This sadly reminds me of times of "red scare", when people were black listed even with no evidence of wrong doing. But those times were different, it was work of journalist that brought that insanity to the end. But wokeness is different beast entirely, it has spread from Universities to newspapers and other media also to our biggest companies, to such extent that many companies are ready to run them self to ground, just to ponder to woke crowd.
Personally, I thing that there is only one way to fix this issue at Universities, and that is to introduce only merit based admissions and stop forsing students to take woke subjects as mandatory courses. This would mean that we would lose many "quality" woke tenures that literally don't benefit students except increasing tuition fees.
Second thing stop giving student loans for everything. US doesn't need any more bachelors of gender/art studies and similar subjects that guarantee unemployment but only settle people with debt. Student loans should be only given for subjects that have earnings potential such is STEM or Medicine. This would finally put stop this gravy train where collages use endless supply of cash brought by irresponsible student loans.
If something is not done soon, one of the greatest American achievements, our higher education system, will be irreparably damaged, as it drifts from its goal of education to indoctrination.
They don't say with out reason, go woke go broke. If it was any other country doing this to it self, i might have laugh and thought they are crazy, but this is hitting close to home.
A lot of schools are just mega bucks financial institutions in and of themselves. Billionaire alumni donate billions. Then the institution is corrupted by all those administrators and Dept heads etc who see $$$. I don’t necessarily believe these individuals are all misguided bad people but their collectively fulfilled visions raise costs and add to confusion and studies in “non-binary, pansexual, Islamic, finger-painting.” The institution of the future might place limits on endowment size, budget, number of administrators, tuition, number of sports, number of departments etc. Maybe we will come to view imperfect campuses and facilities etc as a more perfect place for kids to grow.
Raziel, you’re such an astute woke culture warrior to see all this venomous social justice spreading like a virus through the colleges. Think of America without social injustice. The great replacement would fall to the wayside, destroy your caste system with its hereditary transmission of lifestyle, and destroy capitalism as we know it!
My friend!
Are you still confused regarding “social justice” scholarship = justice as an ideal?
If I come up with a group of ideas and label them “the ideas for goodness” does this mean all those who criticize these ideas must be for badness? If the “ideas for goodness” cannot be scrutinized, how do we know they actually yield goodness?
“There are large partisan divides on the magnitude of the threat posed by inequality. Nearly three-quarters of Democrats (73%) say that racial inequality is a critical threat to the country, on par with climate change (75%) and just below the threat they find most critical, the coronavirus pandemic (87%). Eight in ten say the US government is doing an ineffective job on the issue of racial inequality.”
“By contrast, just 23 percent of Republicans say that racial inequality is a critical threat. For GOP supporters, racial inequality, climate change (21%) and economic inequality (21%) are the three items rated the least critical of the 15 items presented. Half (49%) say the US government is doing an effective job in addressing racial inequality.”
https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/research/public-opinion-survey/republican-views-racial-inequality-starkly-contrast-those-democrats
Yet another troll comes up to bat. Strike three called. Step aside, fool.
Still thinking in terms of standard political paradigms?
Raziel...you post are always thoughtful, so i do not disagree, thanks. Who wields the Power, gov., boss, judge whomever, Only with the consent of the Governed.
Once again, I will recommend Lyell Asher’s series on the topic of Ed schools for Peter Boghossian’s substack. He goes into detail about school administrators and their crucial role in propagating this ideology.
One idea that has been on my mind lately. Regarding the youngsters who have been brainwashed and who are in many ways victims of the circumstances; is this it for them? What percentage of them are “true believers” ? For those who have brought the ideology with them beyond the university, will the hold these ideas ever taper? I think we must come to grips with the possibility that—if the ideology functions as a secular religion—a percentage of these individuals will carry on through life as fervent believers.
I read M. Asher's series on Your advice, M. Alejandra. It sure *was* great. Read eye-opener. Explained how we got here.
I have no crystal ball. There's a percentage of Millennials and Gen-Zers who will just hafta be written off. *Too* big=a percentage. I'm sorry that's my belief. 'Course, ICBW.
Another reason many professors stay silent is that many (not all) of them have good paying jobs with good benefits. To speak out or stand up against all this is to take a very real chance of losing your job even if you have tenure. Now, where does an English or Philosophy professor go in the "real world" to get a job? If you teach Finance or Engineering you have a chance but many others have zero. Even going to another school is virtually impossible in these times of shrinking enrollment and budgets. Many are bullied into submission simply for self preservation.
But this is an illustration of the down side of the saying "[T]hose that can do; those that can't teach."
ZSF...nice post, but i can not stand your conclusions, just me. What good is choice, freedom, if not executed? These days, we do have 101 choices. otherwise...
It is sounding more and more like Nazi Germany who would have believed this in 2022 especially of America
Exactly. An addendum to my anecdote: No evidence of racism was found in my case, however the director of my department was tasked with speaking with me about my "judgment." In a lengthy discussion with the director, I relayed how being in faculty meetings with people saying things like "my whiteness causes harm" is extremely disturbing to me, because, well, HISTORY. And there's my own experience at a school some twenty years ago when a black student threatened to knife me for giving him a C, and the POC administration refused to do anything about it because, well, I'm white so I must be racist. They only relented when a black student came forward. So I tell her this as if to say, is this the climate we want to be working in? She gave me a blank, Stepford Wives look and said: The STUDENTS need to feel SAFE.
Dog...so funny, thanks.
I can not imagine how to live and work in situation like you ve just described…. When I encountered similar stupidity in power at workplaces in my younger years I just left. Point blank left the workplace and I did it several times. But I was in my 20s… single, w/o kids. Then I arranged my life not to work for anybody. What would I do if I were in this situation like yours in my 40s, with kids and all… I don’t know. I would seek some way out. I feel for you. Hope the opportunity presents itself and you don’t need to live and work in this humiliating environment.
Natalia...that's it, thanks for your post. When things get noisome, i'm out, it is that fork in the road, "Take It".
Well, most professors are not tenured anymore, that's why. One false move and you're out. I was recently accused of 'racial discrimination' for retaining a student in a course. The student's work was not passing by all objective measures. The student screamed at me for retaining her in the course, shouting that I don't know how to do my job, blah blah blah..." When in Kangaroo Court, I asked the Title IX Administrator what evidence the student provided of racial discrimination (the quality of writing in the grievance was proof enough that the student needed a writing course), she responded: "The student doesn't have to provide evidence. All that matters is the way you made her feel." Therefore, nothing should occur that would risk making a student FEEL in any way that would bring them to label you "racist" or what have you. THEY have to feel "SAFE." The professors' safety is only ensured if they -- well -- I don't know what. It's clearly a Kafka Trap. So that's why they stay silent.
I am so very sorry this happened to you. Thank you for the comment. Higher education my arse. Toddlers have feelings and express them admirably.
What a chilling story…
It’s an unimaginable story but it’s the truth and it’s not the first and won’t be the last sadly
No one can make someone else feel anything. The only person responsible for my feelings is me.
If we push back consistently on this one point, the whole subjectivist structure will collapse.
Interesting you should say this. That's what I told the Title IX robot. And my union rep. Their response implied that I'm just being insensitive. Never mind how it made ME feel to waste hours on this ridiculous accusation, lose sleep over it, etc etc, when I was JUST DOING MY JOB.
Dog...can't stop from laughing, thanks.
This sounds like One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest I shiver when I read the above how are we letting this go on
Michele...xactly, nice connection
And, as if that weren't enough, when I informed the director of our department (who had to have a "talk" with me about my behavior) that the anti-white talk in faculty meetings -- millennial faculty stating that their "whiteness causes harm" and other such nonsense makes me extremely uncomfortable because it's so racist -- and because it justifies a student threatening to knife me over a grade two decades ago (and the mostly POC admin at that school refused to do anything about it because hey, only white people were complaining about this student -- it took a black student to complain before they would do anything!)...the director looked at me blankly and said: BUT THE STUDENTS NEED TO FEEL SAFE.
Yet another report of kangaroo court student derangement and the Title IX commissariat breaking foul wind in the face of reason. Of course the violation of reason ("..how many fingers am I holding up?...") is the point. It's crazy making. It creates emotional unreality and in the best totalitarian tradition installs fear and confusion in the environment while making the victim an object lesson for those who might question the lie it represents.
Substack after Substack article, across the entire spectrum of writers, reveals worthy lives and careers destroyed by an ideologically driven shadow bureaucracy that crosses the entirety of private, public and political life. It has co.opted, at a profit, the American national dialogue and every issue of vital social, economic and political concern for its own purposes. It is well funded and it isn't there by mistake. I'm personally tired of hearing me shout that Marxist "woke" is the lipstick on a pig named totalitarian finance.
Is it just mercenary ideologues continuing the exploitation of youth crippled by the pay to play political machine that robbed them of their economic and cultural future? Or, is it an across the board American "loss of Soul" that has created a disconnect between our lives and the founding principals of our Republic.
Over fifty years ago those of us in the much maligned "mens movement" spoke of the emergence of the "puer aeternus" in America. The eternal half adult. The Peter Pan "flying boy" unable to touch the ground of actual reality. Perpetual emotional childhood. Robert Bly wrote a book on it: THE SIBLING SOCIETY. Of course the MSM feminist press attacked us relentlessly. Today young men and women (think Taylor Lorenz) live lives forever trapped in the narcissism of emotional childhood, forever victims of, well, everything.
Fatherhood, motherhood and family were destroyed. The living bond of blood and bone. The story of human struggle and experience, the direct connection to the living history of all mankind through the arts, literature and history replaced by a Soul crippling pathological financial/ political/cyber reality. The kindergarten to the grave manufacture of an eternal electronic highchair where the eternal infant is spoon fed a victimhood reality by well paid sterile bureaucratic ideologues.
They're playing for keeps. We sleep at our own peril.
Stay strong Sir.
"I'm personally tired of hearing me shout that Marxist "woke" is the lipstick on a pig named totalitarian finance."
I can see where You would be. But the lesson hasn't been lost on all of us. You should know how much *I* like what You write. And You do it so well.
IOW, even if You're tired, I hope You keep 'em coming.
Chilling commentary- its truth is moving.
Well said.
As an external observer (I live in Colombia), I still cannot believe how things are so messed up in some places of the US. You were threatened with a knife but your "whiteness causes harm". It's racism when you call out the violent actions of a black student. Go figure.
objective truth has fallen by the wayside. Feelings surpass facts. How can we go on as a civilization.
This is so true! "This would not happen here" mantra failed completely.
Good points. Except for what's happening at law and med schools, where woke is all the rage and med schools teach nonsense such as racism is a public health menace. Allow borrowing for science, engineering and useful skills such as accounting. Nothing more.
Any scientist worth his or her salt should resign at the first sign of "systemic" bullshit infecting a medical school curriculum.
ok fine, systemic bull is not the same for everyone. What would the bull be? thanks.
Racism is a "public health" concern. Women have penises. Stay indoors for two weeks to "Stop the Spread" and "Save our Hospitals"
This was true in the past, not anymore. Now one wrong though and you are out. You will be sent in front of Kangaroo Court with little to no possibility to defend your self. Check following article "He Was a World-Renowned Cancer Researcher. Now He's Collecting Unemployment." on this Substack