If you paint with a broad brush and use capital letters, the Grand Institutions of our society seem Beyond Hope, especially Academia.
But here on the ground, in the classrooms and offices of lower-case academia - my own stomping grounds - the situation is much more complex, and there are more opportunities to restore what is best about es…
If you paint with a broad brush and use capital letters, the Grand Institutions of our society seem Beyond Hope, especially Academia.
But here on the ground, in the classrooms and offices of lower-case academia - my own stomping grounds - the situation is much more complex, and there are more opportunities to restore what is best about essential institutions than stories like this might suggest.
Yes, the Cult of True Victimhood has made serious inroads in many places, and many of the most elite colleges and universities may be all but lost, at this point. But it's important to pay attention to where precisely the problem is coming from, and where the points of resistance are . . . and note well a lot of us are all but immune to the enticements and inducements of the Cult, even in the humanities.
While stories from Harvard and Yale and Oberlin and Hamline might feed the narrative of Institutional Decay, giving us all a most gratifying sense of Impending Doom, it might be worth looking at your own nearest public college or university, to see what's actually going on there. Or look at the Chronicle of Higher Education. or Inside Higher Ed, or the FIRE report on campus free speech for a more nuanced view.
Or, if you want something really bracing and encouraging, check out Heterodox Academy.
Bob, Just want to say "thank you" for your mention of Heterodox Academy, someplace I have never heard of, but am quite happy to now know about. I'm deeply committed to the pluralistic vision, and it's encouraging to discover that there's a small army out there fighting the good fight.
Thanks for the post, Bob. I wish it were so, but I have attended two public universities in the past few years and they both are all in for far left indoctrination. It is prevalent in every class and there is no escaping it. That is the real reason that Republicans keep losing. The mail in voting and decades of leftist indoctrination has caught up with us.
I base my post on more than 35 years of studying at and then working in public universities in the Midwest, the Northeast and the Southeast. In that time I have spoken and collaborated with colleagues across disciplines and across institutions. I’ve followed news from elsewhere in academia, and grappled with the meaning of liberal education in the present day.
Seems as though you had a bad experience at a couple of schools, and that doesn’t surprise me. There is bad stuff happening out there; I won’t deny it. I’d be interested to know where those schools are and which courses were involved.
I’m just trying to keep a larger and more nuanced perspective on the whole thing.
To give you a sense of how weird things can be in the fine grain of lower-case academia, consider two things I saw while walking onto campus, just now.
First, I walked past one of the Christian ministries for students, which has two flagpoles projecting from the front of the building. On one hangs a Black Lives Matter flag, from the other a pride flag stylized to resemble the Palestinian flag, with rainbow stripes and the blue-white-pink of the transgender flag arranged in a wedge.
A sign in front of the ministry declares it to be an "inclusive space" for "safe inquiry."
(I need to see my colleagues over in the literature department about stepping up their game in teaching students what 'irony' is.)
Second, I walked past one of the larger fraternity houses, which is draped with an Israeli flag and a bedsheet-banner painted with the slogan, "We Stand With Israel".
Most of the other fraternity and sorority houses were decked out with slogans against my institution's big football rival, in preparation for an upcoming game . . .
A thousand times yes, nuance is very important here. While I'm angry at some other bad choice my college is making, I'm glad they haven't had any pubic celebrations of terrorist. In fact, I also got a list of 100 colleges that haven't caved to any pro Hamas narratives. Some of them are actually pretty big, like Notre Dame and West Virginia! https://universitiesunitedagainstterrorism.org/
For some, foretelling doom brings with it an odd kind of satisfaction. Partly it’s a matter of pretending to have some inside line on the Truth that others don’t have, and partly it’s the secret, shameful hope that a good apocalypse would finally teach those stubborn fools a lesson. I see this on the left - among climate doomsayers, for example - as much as on the right.
I mean “apocalypse” does literally mean “out of hiding”, and it’s gratifying to be among the elect who already know what is hidden!
If a lot of people resist the appeal of an instructive apocalypse, then so much the better.
My son (23 yr old) and his friends all reject the victim hood identity nonsense and seem to have mostly conservative values. I credit their families and upbringing in a close knit community- but also- they all went to schools that weren’t the big names but a good value. I doubt any of them become a tech billionaire or cure cancer, but I’m proud of all of them and they give me hope!
I would settle for my own kids rejecting the victimhood nonsense and embracing old-school liberal values!
My younger one (almost 21) may be tending that way, a little, and has fled a small liberal-arts school that is awash in the Cult for a large state university. My older one (just 24) has been attending a large public university and is a True Believer in the Cult, but more, I think, from spending too much time online than from the university.
I do have some friends whose children’s minds are infected by the virus and it is causing relationship issues. One friend was showing us videos of his 3 yr old grandson who loves to play with trucks (his take) but is wearing a rainbow tutu, had purple streaks in his long hair and painted fingernails…he says it’s all his daughters doing. I’m not sure that there’s any one prescribed path for these kids!
Well, I think old school liberal values are more like todays “conservative” values. They aren’t a bunch of bible bangers, that’s for sure. In regards to the internet, I was shocked when my son started talking about Ben Shapiro one day. Shapiro is brilliant for getting on tic tok!
If you paint with a broad brush and use capital letters, the Grand Institutions of our society seem Beyond Hope, especially Academia.
But here on the ground, in the classrooms and offices of lower-case academia - my own stomping grounds - the situation is much more complex, and there are more opportunities to restore what is best about essential institutions than stories like this might suggest.
Yes, the Cult of True Victimhood has made serious inroads in many places, and many of the most elite colleges and universities may be all but lost, at this point. But it's important to pay attention to where precisely the problem is coming from, and where the points of resistance are . . . and note well a lot of us are all but immune to the enticements and inducements of the Cult, even in the humanities.
While stories from Harvard and Yale and Oberlin and Hamline might feed the narrative of Institutional Decay, giving us all a most gratifying sense of Impending Doom, it might be worth looking at your own nearest public college or university, to see what's actually going on there. Or look at the Chronicle of Higher Education. or Inside Higher Ed, or the FIRE report on campus free speech for a more nuanced view.
Or, if you want something really bracing and encouraging, check out Heterodox Academy.
Bob, Just want to say "thank you" for your mention of Heterodox Academy, someplace I have never heard of, but am quite happy to now know about. I'm deeply committed to the pluralistic vision, and it's encouraging to discover that there's a small army out there fighting the good fight.
Thanks for the post, Bob. I wish it were so, but I have attended two public universities in the past few years and they both are all in for far left indoctrination. It is prevalent in every class and there is no escaping it. That is the real reason that Republicans keep losing. The mail in voting and decades of leftist indoctrination has caught up with us.
I base my post on more than 35 years of studying at and then working in public universities in the Midwest, the Northeast and the Southeast. In that time I have spoken and collaborated with colleagues across disciplines and across institutions. I’ve followed news from elsewhere in academia, and grappled with the meaning of liberal education in the present day.
Seems as though you had a bad experience at a couple of schools, and that doesn’t surprise me. There is bad stuff happening out there; I won’t deny it. I’d be interested to know where those schools are and which courses were involved.
I’m just trying to keep a larger and more nuanced perspective on the whole thing.
To give you a sense of how weird things can be in the fine grain of lower-case academia, consider two things I saw while walking onto campus, just now.
First, I walked past one of the Christian ministries for students, which has two flagpoles projecting from the front of the building. On one hangs a Black Lives Matter flag, from the other a pride flag stylized to resemble the Palestinian flag, with rainbow stripes and the blue-white-pink of the transgender flag arranged in a wedge.
A sign in front of the ministry declares it to be an "inclusive space" for "safe inquiry."
(I need to see my colleagues over in the literature department about stepping up their game in teaching students what 'irony' is.)
Second, I walked past one of the larger fraternity houses, which is draped with an Israeli flag and a bedsheet-banner painted with the slogan, "We Stand With Israel".
Most of the other fraternity and sorority houses were decked out with slogans against my institution's big football rival, in preparation for an upcoming game . . .
A thousand times yes, nuance is very important here. While I'm angry at some other bad choice my college is making, I'm glad they haven't had any pubic celebrations of terrorist. In fact, I also got a list of 100 colleges that haven't caved to any pro Hamas narratives. Some of them are actually pretty big, like Notre Dame and West Virginia! https://universitiesunitedagainstterrorism.org/
“Gratifying sense of impending doom?” Not gratifying for me and I suggest many others as well.
For some, foretelling doom brings with it an odd kind of satisfaction. Partly it’s a matter of pretending to have some inside line on the Truth that others don’t have, and partly it’s the secret, shameful hope that a good apocalypse would finally teach those stubborn fools a lesson. I see this on the left - among climate doomsayers, for example - as much as on the right.
I mean “apocalypse” does literally mean “out of hiding”, and it’s gratifying to be among the elect who already know what is hidden!
If a lot of people resist the appeal of an instructive apocalypse, then so much the better.
My son (23 yr old) and his friends all reject the victim hood identity nonsense and seem to have mostly conservative values. I credit their families and upbringing in a close knit community- but also- they all went to schools that weren’t the big names but a good value. I doubt any of them become a tech billionaire or cure cancer, but I’m proud of all of them and they give me hope!
I would settle for my own kids rejecting the victimhood nonsense and embracing old-school liberal values!
My younger one (almost 21) may be tending that way, a little, and has fled a small liberal-arts school that is awash in the Cult for a large state university. My older one (just 24) has been attending a large public university and is a True Believer in the Cult, but more, I think, from spending too much time online than from the university.
So, results may vary . . .
I do have some friends whose children’s minds are infected by the virus and it is causing relationship issues. One friend was showing us videos of his 3 yr old grandson who loves to play with trucks (his take) but is wearing a rainbow tutu, had purple streaks in his long hair and painted fingernails…he says it’s all his daughters doing. I’m not sure that there’s any one prescribed path for these kids!
Well, I think old school liberal values are more like todays “conservative” values. They aren’t a bunch of bible bangers, that’s for sure. In regards to the internet, I was shocked when my son started talking about Ben Shapiro one day. Shapiro is brilliant for getting on tic tok!
Thank you. It takes courage to see clearly in these times. Any fool can say the end is near...