RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/26/

Anyone can make an accusation. Me, too. I accuse American higher education of fostering an epidemic of unprovable and often unfounded accusations; accusations aimed not at seeking justice but at wounding real or imagined enemies; accusations that aim to shred reputations rather than uncover truth; accusations that give the accuser a sense of power unmoored from any sense of responsibility.

Accusation has become an art form in the academy. A really successful accusation unleashes a public furor that completely bypasses the question, “Is it true?” Instead it ignites instant outrage. It sweeps away everything in its path. It has its own logical whirlpools: If it weren’t true, why would she say it? Or: Even if there is no evidence, it is the sort of thing that might have happened. An effective accusation silences the doubts of those disposed to believe it. Then it attacks anyone who declines to endorse it. Those who doubt the validity of the accusation are part of the problem. They are allies of the accused and parties after the fact to the disgusting behavior of the accused.

This art form has been perfected over the last several decades in the crucible of campus victimology. The gold standard, of course, is the accusation of racism. As actual racism in American society has faded and die-hard racists have retreated to obscure corners and sparsely attended rallies, accusations of racism have only gained power. Accusing people of “implicit racism” or “unconscious privilege” is key. These formulations have the advantage of nullifying whatever the accused might say in his own defense.

That trick has been absorbed into the many other forms of accusation that are rife on campus: accusations of sexism, bigotry towards gays, Islamophobia, classism, etc., and has been adopted as a technique as well by proponents of various causes. If someone expresses doubt in the latest alternative energy scheme, surely it is because he is a hireling of Big Energy and wants to strip-mine the planet. If someone favors control of the nation’s borders and restrictions of immigration, surely it is because she is viciously opposed to human rights.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/feminism_in_the_schools.html

In a devastating put-down of the “academic racket,” Roger Kimball aptly quotes economist Herb Stein: what cannot go on forever won’t. But forever is a long time, a commodity we are fast running out of. The question is, which will collapse first: a grand civilization or a dismal academy?

What we have learned to call “social justice,” a movement that purports to correct all the supposed evils of Western capitalism and its so-called patriarchal underpinnings, has done seemingly irrevocable damage to the conduct of daily life; to the meritocratic basis of national success; and of course to the education establishment on which cultural, political, and economic flourishing is predicated. In particular, when the walls of education are breached, the decline of the nation is inevitable.

Among the most sinister influences in modern education is the feminist dogma, a major cornerstone of the “social justice” obsession, which has penetrated both K-12 and our universities via indoctrination and threat. Young boys in elementary and middle school are taught to distrust their masculinity, and young men at university are in constant jeopardy of summons and expulsion for approaching the fair sex. Even textbooks have been infected with the feminist bacillus. It may be instructive to look at a few cankered totems of the kind of thing I’m talking about. They are illustrations of a pervasive phenomenon in the world of education, from elementary school to graduate school – examples that attest to the nature and extent of our education cataclysm.

As a representative instance – there are a plethora to choose from – consider the Cambridge School’s Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, billed as “an active approach to classroom Shakespeare.” Under the heading “Sisterhood,” we read that “Hermia stands up for herself as a lone female figure, surrounded by squabbling men.” Under “Male dominance,” we are instructed to “[g]o through the play so far, finding any images, similes and metaphors that imply male dominance – for example – ‘your father should be as a god.’ Read the images about males, then those about females, and say which you find acceptable and which you find offensive – and why.” The major theme to be studied is “Gender and power.” And we know where the power will come to rest: with the distaff sex, those who survive the depredations of squabbling men and the authority of despotic fathers.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/researcher-kinky-people-should-be-protected-class/Should other groups, like people who curse, get special treatment, too?

A researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, recently argued that “kinky” should be a protected class of people.

Sam Hughes made the argument during an interview with City on a Phil Media. According to Hughes, “kinky” people deserve protection because they are often discriminated against in many of the same ways that people in the LGBT community are discriminated against. They therefore need the legal protection against employment or housing discrimination that comes with being a member of a protected class.

As evidence for his argument, Hughes referenced a study he had conducted on the subject, in which he had apparently found that kinky people were “terrified about losing their jobs over their boss finding out if they were kinky.”

“I want to be clear, if you show up to your job in a latex catsuit, you can be fired for that,” Hughes said. “Not because you’re kinky, but because it’s not the uniform of the job, because it’s disruptive, that sort of thing.”

“But your boss should not be able to go search online, find photos of you somewhere wearing a latex catsuit, and then fire you because they think you’re a pervert,” Hughes continued.

Sorry, but this is completely and totally ridiculous. What’s more, I think it’s actually a little offensive to compare the supposed adversity that someone who is kinky may have to face with the adversity that people do face in the LGBT community. If you’re gay, you have to worry that your normal, everyday public life choices might result in discrimination. For example, you might worry about someone judging you for bringing your same-sex spouse to a company Christmas party. Kinky people don’t have to face issues like that in their everyday lives, because there would never be a situation — at least in any reasonably normal job — where their sexual fetish would come to light in their work environment.

We have a lot of rights in this country, including the right to do anything sexually as long as it’s with other consenting adult(s). This, of course, includes kink. We also have the freedom to post about our lives on the Internet. Yes — if you want to post about your kinky sex life online, you’re totally free to do so. This doesn’t mean that people aren’t going to judge you for what you’re doing. Should you be fired over it? I personally don’t think so, because I personally couldn’t care less what anyone in the world does in his or her sex life. But that doesn’t mean that “kinky” should be a protected class. After all, there are a whole host of other things that you could post online that someone might choose to fire you over — such as tweeting things with offensive words in them. Are we going to make “people who curse” a protected class, too? And, as far as strange sexual preferences go, why is “kink” the only variation that would get to be a protected class? Hell, a boss could easily fire someone over a video of him or her having normal, non-kinky sex online, depending on what that person’s profession was. Why should “kink” get this kind of special treatment? The only reasonable answer is that it shouldn’t and that this is totally insane.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/i

John Cheney-Lippold, an associate professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan, has been the subject of withering criticism of late, but I’m grateful to him. Yes, he shouldn’t have refused to write a recommendation for a student merely because the semester abroad program she was applying to was in Israel. But at least he exposed what the boycott movement is about, aspects of which I suspect some of its blither endorsers are unaware.

We are routinely told, as we were by the American Studies Association, that boycott actions against Israel are “limited to institutions and their official representatives.” But Cheney-Lippold reminds us that the boycott, even if read in this narrow way, obligates professors to refuse to assist their own students when those students seek to participate in study abroad programs in Israel. Dan Avnon, an Israeli academic, learned years ago that the same goes for Israel faculty members seeking to participate in exchange programs sponsored by Israeli universities. They, too, must be turned away regardless of their position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When the American Studies Association boycott of Israel was announced, over two hundred college presidents or provosts properly and publicly rejected it. But even they might not have imagined that the boycott was more than a symbolic gesture. Thanks to Professor Cheney-Lippold, they now know that it involves actions that disserve their students. Yes, Cheney-Lippold now says he was mistaken when he wrote that “many university departments have pledged an academic boycott against Israel.” But he is hardly a lone wolf in hyper-politicized disciplines like American Studies, Asian-American Studies, and Women’s Studies, whose professional associations have taken stands in favor of boycotting Israel. Administrators looking at bids to expand such programs should take note of their admirably open opposition to the exchange of ideas.

https://www.thecollegefix.com/universities-spend-how-much

Ohio State employs 88 diversity-related staffers at a cost of $7.3M annually. The University of Michigan has 93 diversity-related staffers who make a total of $11 million per year. Meanwhile, high-priced diversity bureaucrats aren’t improving diversity on campus. What is going here on? Watch the latest episode of Campus Roundup to find out. SEE VIDEO ON DIVERSITY https://www.thecollegefix.com/universities-spend-how-much-on-diversity-campus-roundup-ep-24/

https://www.thecollegefix.com/columbia

As part of Columbia University’s New Student Orientation Program, first-year students participated in a mandatory activity called “Under1Roof.”

Columbia’s schedule book for orientation describes it as a dialogue that aims to “foster inclusive communities by engaging with the social identities we all bring to campus.”

Under1Roof took place in August, and is a “required program” that is “specifically created for all incoming first year students in Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Science,” according to its website.

An incoming Columbia student who attended the program this year told The College Fix that students were asked to write down and explain the categories of identity that they belong to and are most “aware of,” selecting from choices like race, class, gender and sexual orientation.

They were also asked to speak about how they felt their identities “limited their opportunities or access in coming to campus.”

During the experience, each student was given nine sticky notes and asked to write on each one how they identify themselves according to categories that make up “social identity,” including race, ethnicity, immigrant status, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious/spiritual identity, and “additional identities,” as well as anything people wanted to add, such as an athlete or artist, the student said.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-end-of-education/

The 19th century legacy of Horace Mann and his influence on public school education is still being debated. His intentions were noble and his argument for civics and citizen-making as a function of democratic schooling had much to recommend it. But opening the public schools to government control has proven to be a Pandora’s Box of incurable ills. There can be little doubt that its latest manifestation, Common Core, is nothing short of a recipe for the uniform and partisan dumbing down of the current generation.

A figure no less significant and undeniably harmful in his widespread influence on public education is the Leftist social thinker John Dewey, especially in Democracy and Education. It has taken a hundred years to ruin American education, dating from Dewey’s so-called child-centered and “progressive” revolution in American public pedagogy in the early 1920s, through the turbulent 1960s during which empowered student radicals took over the universities, on to the self-esteem movement that flattered the student into believing that self-love was more crucial than self-improvement, to the present moment in which both public and university education has traded honest teaching, academic rigor and merit-based instruction for social justice, politically correct groupthink, anti-white and anti-Western passions, feminist madness and left-wing partisanship.

In The End of Education, published some twenty years ago, Neil Postman mounts a multi-pronged attack on the failures of the education machine, dethroning the idols of “Economic Utility, Consumership, and Technology.” One may or may not agree with his argument, which appears somewhat dated in the present environment. But he is certainly on target in exploding the fetish of “Tribalism and Separatism” as gods in the pantheon of Multiculturalism. He cites Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s 1991 tour de force The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (a must-read), which partially skewers “our reversion to undiluted tribalism” and the ulcer of identity politics. Following Mann, Postman’s main point is that teachers and students need “a narrative to provide profound meaning to their lessons.” Unfortunately, the narrative currently in play is “a terrible story” advancing the “frightening” thesis that “evil inheres in white people … of European origin [and] Goodness inheres in nonwhites,” among many other reductions of our Judeo-Christian heritage. What is called “emancipatory knowledge” — an alias for Social Justice gospel — must replace “Eurocentric knowledge.”