RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quillette.com/2018/11/27/the-problem

A group of academics recently announced plans to launch a new journal focused on research that its authors fear could lead to a backlash, putting their careers and perhaps even their physical safety in danger. With these concerns in mind, the journal will allow authors to publish their work anonymously, subject to peer review. Some are applauding the launch of what will be titled The Journal of Controversial Ideas.

They view it as a needed response to an academic and potentially broader culture that is increasingly afraid to grapple with sensitive topics and seeks to suppress ideas that may have merit but are socially unpopular. However, we think the creation of a journal like this, while serving as a prophetic warning about the new moral culture taking hold of academia and the future of our institutions of higher learning, may be a counterproductive way of dealing with the problems it addresses.

First, it is worth asking whether the concerns prompting the creation of this journal are warranted. Some writers and academics claim that stories of campus censorship, groupthink, and ideological bias are overblown, if not outright fantasy. We believe that these concerns are, in fact, justified. One need not look very hard to find cases of professors facing serious backlash, even threats, from students, faculty, and administrators because of ideas they have expressed in academic journals, opinion pieces, media interviews, and public lectures.

Just weeks ago Professor Samuel Abrams of Sarah Lawrence University published an op-ed in The New York Times documenting that among college administrators who are on the front lines interacting with students, liberals outnumber conservatives 12 to 1. He discussed how this imbalance can dramatically bias the campus social and educational agendas in favor of progressive viewpoints. In response to this article, campus activists vandalized his office and called for him to be fired. The student senate held an emergency meeting. The college president responded not with a forceful and unambiguous defense of free speech and academic freedom but by signaling support to campus activists and suggesting Professor Abrams had created a hostile work environment.

The lack of viewpoint diversity among college and university faculty gives further reason for scholars to be concerned about pursuing and attempting to publish “controversial” ideas.

University faculty, particularly in the social sciences and humanities, are overwhelmingly on the political left, and this may lead to social and professional consequences for academics whose ideas or research are perceived as at odds with a progressive worldview. For instance, in a survey of academics in the field of social psychology, researchers observed that conservative and moderate scholars reported experiencing a significantly more hostile work climate than liberals. The survey also found that the majority of respondents indicated some willingness to discriminate against colleagues who are conservative or whose research takes a conservative perspective. Surveys of faculty in other disciplines paint a similar picture of an academy populated by professors willing to block colleagues with divergent views from getting academic appointments, publishing their work, and receiving research funding.

Even while we recognize these and other threats to scholars who do work viewed as controversial, we believe the creation of The Journal of Controversial Ideas is ultimately a capitulation to the academic culture that motivated scholars to feel the need to establish such a journal.

One of us (Bradley) is a sociologist who has spent the last several years studying the rise of a new moral culture among progressive activists on college campuses. In The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars, Bradley and his coauthor Jason Manning point out that campus activists increasingly reject many widely held moral concepts and ideals—the injunction to have thick skin and ignore insults, for example, or the distinction between speech and violence. Those who embrace the new morality use a framework of oppression and victimhood to interpret even mundane human interaction as hostile or malignant. In this way, victimhood confers a kind of moral status as the adherents of this new ideology create new kinds of protections for oppressed groups.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/19/five-takeaways-from-mike-rowes-speech-about-work-in-america/

The former host of the Discovery channel’s “Dirty Jobs” received the Independent Women’s Forum “Distinguished Gentleman” award over the weekend. MikeRowe inspired the audience with tales demonstrating both the commonplace and the extraordinary in his acceptance speech, including on the role of moms, taking risks, perception, and work ethic.

Whether you’re a pediatrician or a plumber, an avid fan of the show or not, the speech is well worth your time.
1. Never underestimate the power of motivation and humble beginnings.

While most of America might recognize Rowe’s tanned face and rugged good looks from “Dirty Jobs,” which ran for eight seasons, few know of the show’s humble beginnings. During his speech, Rowe described how it all started.

He was “impersonating a host” for a local network’s show called “Evening Magazine” in 2001. It was an entertainment segment that ran after the news. Rowe went to wineries, restaurants and swanky events, profiling the glitz and glamour of San Francisco. Hardly satisfied with his work, but unsure of what to do about it, his mother — whom he referenced positively at least a dozen times in his speech — phoned him and reminded him of his grandfather, who was aging.

Rowe’s grandfather wasn’t anyone famous, wealthy, or reputable by any means, but the kind of man many of us who have any kind of blue collar roots can recognize. Even though he had the education of a 7th grader, he had learned valuables trades and could do the work, at any given time, of an electrical contractor, plumber, steamfitter, welder, and more. Rowe said he could build a house without a blueprint and could repair almost anything.

“He was heroic in his day,” he said. “Today, sadly, he would be overlooked.”

When his mother called, she simply said, “Wouldn’t it be terrific if your grandfather turned on the television and saw you doing something that looked like work?” That was all the motivation Rowe needed.
2. Risk taking and persistence will pay off.

In that phone call, Rowe said he had “what the Greeks called a peripeteia” — a reversal of fortune or a sudden change in circumstances. “I realized everything I thought I knew about my job was wrong.” Rowe went to his boss and said, “Why do we always have to film ‘Evening Magazine’ at wineries? Why not the sewer?”

The boss didn’t think enough people were even tuning in to care, so he gave Rowe the green light. While Rowe was in the sewer, threatening to get eaten by cockroaches and overcome by the stench, he determined this kind of gruesome and gross, yet vital, work would be the focus of his show.

“I put together a segment that I knew would get me fired. It’s okay, it got me here,” he said to applause. Without risk and focused insight, Rowe’s idea never would have seen a television channel.

After he got fired, Rowe pitched his idea to everyone in the news industry. “Everyone said no except Discovery,” he said. In 2003, they took him on, tweaked the title, and when the show wrapped in 2012, he had done 300 dirty jobs over the course of ten years, filming half a dozen times in every state.

“In my role as a quasi-host I really functioned as an apprentice doing the kind of jobs that make civilized life possible,” he said, quoting the show’s tagline. The show enjoyed tremendous success. So many Americans loved it that in 2008, it was the number one show on cable.