RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/soft-bigotry-low-expectations-rutgers-richard-l-cravatts/

A stunning letter written by Rebecca L. Walkowitz, the chair of Rutgers’ English Department, “Department actions in solidarity with Black Lives Matter,” affirms how deeply academia is now in the thrall of racism hysteria, and particularly after the death of George Floyd under the knee of a brutal police officer in Minneapolis. The letter is steeped in the language of social justice, racial equity, white supremacy, and racial oppression, leading one to wonder why an English department—whose function is, nominally, the study of literature and the teaching of techniques of writing and composition—would craft its entire mission and curriculum around an slavish affection with an anti-racist, Black Lives Matter-inspired ideology.

When did it become the role or purpose of an English department—and especially in a public university—to make as a central feature of its teaching social issues which are only tangentially related to the subject matter? This is not a social justice department, or black studies department, or an institute or program that focuses on race, social issues, and activism. So the letter’s stated intention that the English Department will “stand with and respond to the Black Lives Matter movement . . . create and promote an anti-racist environment . . . and . . . contribute to the eradication of the violence and systemic inequities facing black, indigenous, and people of color members of our community,” seems wildly inconsistent with what is, and should be, the role of an English department.

Not content with making a course in African-American literature a requirement in the English curriculum, every aspect of the pedagogy and instruction is suffused with layers of obsessive victimology and racism, including sponsorship of workshops that seek to “cultivate critical conversations for Writing Program instructors around the disproportionate impacts of covid-19; state power; racism; violence; white supremacy; protest and resistance; and justice.” 

What is the theory here? That familiarity with and concern for racial justice is the single topic on which students should focus their writing. That knowledge of these highly-charged, political issues is necessary for clear and cogent writing? What if students who enroll in courses taught by these indoctrinated professors have alternate views about race, or Black Lives Matter, or the existence of white supremacy, or the legitimacy of protests, violent or otherwise? Are they allowed to express those views? Can they vocalize and write about a different view of race? Clearly not.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-survived-cancellation-at-princeton-11595787211?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Now is the time to debate with renewed vigor existential questions of what counts as justice and how to fashion an equitable society. But the stifling of dissent is impeding the search for answers and driving people who disagree still further apart. Because students like to push boundaries and professors like to argue, colleges and universities are a crucible.

Take the university where I teach, Princeton. The campus—or at least the online campus, in the age of the coronavirus—has been in uproar since early July over a letter of demands to the administration signed by hundreds of my faculty colleagues, and especially over my response to that letter. I was immediately denounced on social media and condemned publicly by my department and the university president. At the same time, the university spokesman announced ominously that the administration would be “looking into the matter further.” On July 14, the Journal’s editorial board commented: “Princeton is demonstrating how a lack of leadership enables the cancel culture.”

It is therefore gratifying to report that Princeton’s leadership has done the right thing. I learned recently that I am not under investigation. The story of how I survived cancellation should be of interest to others, since I have no doubt that many more people, from once-obscure professors to public figures, will be vilified and in some cases materially punished for thought crimes.