RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fake-news-comes-to-academia-1538520950

The existence of a monthly journal focused on “feminist geography” is a sign of something gone awry in academia. The journal in question—Gender, Place & Culture—published a paper online in May whose author claimed to have spent a year observing canine sexual misconduct in Portland, Ore., parks.

The author admits that “my own anthropocentric frame” makes it difficult to judge animal consent. Still, the paper claims dog parks are “petri dishes for canine ‘rape culture’ ” and issues “a call for awareness into the different ways dogs are treated on the basis of their gender and queering behaviors, and the chronic and perennial rape emergency dog parks pose to female dogs.”

The paper was ridiculous enough to pique my interest—and rouse my skepticism, which grew in July with a report in Campus Reform by Toni Airaksinen. Author Helen Wilson had claimed to have a doctorate in feminist studies, but “none of the institutions that offers such a degree could confirm that she had graduated from their program,” Ms. Airaksinen wrote. In August Gender, Place & Culture issued an “expression of concern” admitting it couldn’t verify Ms. Wilson’s identity, though it kept the paper on its website.

All of this prompted me to ask my own questions. My email to “Helen Wilson” was answered by James Lindsay, a math doctorate and one of the real co-authors of the dog-park study. Gender, Place & Culture had been duped, he admitted. So had half a dozen other prominent journals that accepted fake papers by Mr. Lindsay and his collaborators—Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University, and Helen Pluckrose, a London-based scholar of English literature and history and editor of AreoMagazine.com.

The three academics call themselves “left-leaning liberals.” Yet they’re dismayed by what they describe as a “grievance studies” takeover of academia, especially its encroachment into the sciences. “I think that certain aspects of knowledge production in the United States have been corrupted,” Mr. Boghossian says. Anyone who questions research on identity, privilege and oppression risks accusations of bigotry.

Beginning in August 2017, the trio wrote 20 hoax papers, submitting them to peer-reviewed journals under a variety of pseudonyms, as well as the name of their friend Richard Baldwin, a professor emeritus at Florida’s Gulf Coast State College. Mr. Baldwin confirms he gave them permission use his name. Journals accepted seven hoax papers. Four have been published.

This isn’t the first time scholars have used a hoax paper to make a point. In 1996 Duke University Press’s journal Social Text published a hoax submission by Alan Sokal, a mathematical physicist at New York University. Mr. Sokal, who faced no punishment for the hoax, told me he was “not oblivious to the ethical issues involved in my rather unorthodox experiment,” adding that “professional communities operate largely on trust; deception undercuts that trust.”

But he also said he was criticizing an academic subculture “that typically ignores (or disdains) reasoned criticism from the outside.” He concluded: “How can one show that the emperor has no clothes? Satire is by far the best weapon; and the blow that can’t be brushed off is the one that’s self-inflicted.” Messrs. Lindsay and Boghossian were already known for a hoax paper titled “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct,” which they published in the journal Cogent Social Sciences last year under the names Jamie Lindsay and Peter Boyle. CONTINUE AT SITE

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/