Craven and Pusillanimous at the Chronicle
As I say, Riley’s brief column only highlights what we all know to be true about the pseudo-discipline of Black Studies. And what was the upshot of her foray into the forbidden territory of truth about this embarrassing subject? A cataract of outrage from readers of the Chronicle’s blog — almost all of whom are academics — and, in an exhibition of academic editorial independence and courage, a craven apology and dismissal notice from Liz McMillen, the editor of the Chronicle.
Why is it that more and more editors these days seem to respond to any controversial piece — controversial in challenging the reigning political pieties, that is — by public rituals of ostracism? Their first response to speech they or some of their readers don’t like is to rusticate the offender while loudly assuring the public of their own spotless virtue. Ms. McMillen’s “Note to Readers” is an especially emetic example of the genre. Riley’s column did not, she began, “did not conform to the journalistic standards and civil tone that you expect from us.” Really? In what ways was it deficient, either in substance or tone? Read what Riley says above: her chief sin seems to have been to shine a bit of daylight on the shadowy academic racket.
“We heard you,” Ms. McMillen pleadingly cries to her mob. We heard you and “We now agree that Ms. Riley’s blog posting did not meet The Chronicle’s basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles. As a result, we have asked Ms. Riley to leave the Brainstorm blog.” “Now.” What a world of smarmy evasiveness is contained in the little adverb. Now that the mob is baying for blood, I am happy to chuck the ideal of robust journalism and throw Naomi Riley under the bus. Back when she published it, all was well. (Though I never reviewed it! It was not my fault!) It was only when there was public criticism that my politically correct antennae began to twitch and I found that craven capitulation was the best route to editorial high-mindedness.
Disgusting. Even more craven is Ms. McMillen’s concluding apology “for the distress these incidents have caused our readers.” Are the Chronicle’s readers really such delicate plants? Well, as I say, almost all of them are academics, so the answer is undoubtedly Yes.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has long been receding into semi-senescent irrelevance. This latest episode underscores its moral bankruptcy as well. What a pathetic showing.
[UPDATE: see Riley's splendid op-ed in the WSJ today: "The Academic Mob Rules."]
See also Ron Radosh: How the Academic Establishment has Silenced a Major Critic of the Field of “Black Studies”
“Why is it that more and more editors these days seem to respond to any controversial piece—controversial in challenging the reigning political pieties, that is—by public rituals of ostracism?”
Maybe this is a rhetorical question from Mr. Kimball, but I’ll still suggest an answer. Most of those editors probably acquired their high positions by accepting Political Correctnes, and by using it on their own behalf. While such people might have ambition, they are usually cowardly, and they despise anyone who isn’t sufficiently of the Left. Independent thinkers also threaten their privileged positions. These are the kind of scoundrels who dominate faculty departments, public schools, bureacracies, and corporate and non-profit PR.
Its getting awfully late, America. We’ve let too many of these people run the show.
Bravo my friend.When ever someone tells me that the “lefties” are going to get voted out of office, I tell them and if we do, isn’t just the lefty politcians we have to worry about. They are the easy part. How to wrerstle the control that the left has on academia, our schools, our entertainment, our media? That is the hard part!
At least half of America staggers around in a mental zombie mode, never questioning their Liberal party line. Eyes wide shut all the time, looking for brains….Braaiinnns!!!
Yes, if only these mental zombies were as sensible as the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. But they’ve fallen for liberal platitudes and government dependency, and they’ve got TV, movies, “pop music,” sex, drugs and the rest of our horrible pop culture to keep them in a state of self-satisfied servility and conformity. The serfs of medieval Europe were paragons of virtue compared to the Left-wing sheep of today.
Today the real independent and “transgressive” thinkers are those who go against PC. But the media constantly tells us the opposite.
I disagree. They are not looking for brains. They scorn brains.
They want us all to just feeeeel.
The publication should be renamed The Chronicle of Higher Indoctrination.
And Roger Kimball is being far too generous in calling them “craven and pusillanimous.” They are hired propagandists whose job it is to help their subscribers feather their own nests at the expense of the society that supports them.
Lets put this in a bit of a different perspective because there is something a bit more ugly about this than Roger alludes to.
If an academic were to dismiss art history and criticism based on the titles of volumes authored by Mr. Kimball and presented for thoughtful purchase to the right. The titles mind you, not the contents. It would be no doubt be a hatchet job, but moreover one that doesn’t pass any sort of academic muster.
It’s the rhetorical equivalent of sticking one’s tongue out.
Ms. Riley is taken to task for having unpopular opinions no doubt, but also for simply being lazy and dismissive. How seriously do you take someone who says they judge books by their covers.
And how many doctoral dissertations in any discipline have any general relevance. Why single out African American midwifery as something especially irrelevant. I wouldn’t choose to read a dissertation on this topic but I avoid dissertations altogether as do almost all readers.
It’s quite simple really.
[Child birth literature is racist because it does not explicitly reference black people births]
The science of childbirth is no different based on your skin color. It is completely outside and independent of the issue. Therefore the absence of it is due to a lack of relevancy to the subject at hand, and not because some evil white people, conciseness or unconsciously, are trying to pretend that black people don’t give birth. Or that black people have a different method of birth that they are attempting to squelch.
At this risk of offending creationists on this website, if I stumble across a book or paper titled “why evolution is impossible and creative design is the only explanation” or something to that effect, then it is perfectly possible, and even likely that it contains some interesting tidbits of inconsistencies in the current evolution theory that should be thought about. However I can tell just by its cover that it will spend most of its time denouncing scientific evidence the writer does not understand, like geological timescales, radio-carbon dating, or continental drift, and will cherry pick around the mountains of evidence, from the graded changes in DNA as species branch out, to the quasi-identical bone structure in water born mammals (yes, dolphins and whales have fingers), to the demonstrated micro-evolution (which is not disputed, but is no different than macro evolution, which will be deemed ‘impossible’) to the self-catalyzing reaction of RNA and the presence of spontaneous amino-acids in an early earth environment.
It may include some nuggets of truth, but the overall premise is flawed; and I can tell that from the title. Perhaps these thesis’s are cherry-picked from a selection of more moderate and plausible topics, but neither you nor I have evidence of that. If we take these to be a representative sample, then I would agree with the premise that black studies is a pointless “study” whose goal is to invent and broadcast the existence of racism and similarly how this imagined slight keeps the black man down.
It’s kind of sad how closed minded you are. I haven’t read it either but I would assume that her dissertation talks about the history and role of African American midwives.
How they served local communities, how they were seen in the slave hierarchy, their relations with slave owners etc. I’d say there is ample material for a dissertation.
Overall, if the dissertation questions the destruction of this midwife role at the hands of progress or even worse government policy, it seems oddly familiar territory for conservatives to draw common ground with.
I don’t seriously think you’d see eye to eye with the author, but it be an interesting point when discussing conservative’s attitudes toward say gay marriage.
I would like to pose two questions to these young Ph.D. students:
Was your graduate degree in _______ (black studies, queer studies, women’s studies etc.etc, and the resultant load of student debt worth the cost?
What marketable skills have you acquired as the result of your ‘studies’?
These students are being sold a worthless education, and they don’t even seem to realize it.
Yet.
You seem to be implying that there is some great glut of PhD candidates in these departments. You know how many African American Studies candidates admitted in 2011 at Northwestern? Four.
If anything what I see is a glut of Business degrees which make up the largest block of grads at over 20%. Of “Studies” majors undergrad, there are probably less than ten thousand per year out of I think 8 million students. It’s hard to discuss anything seriously with someone so far out of touch with reality.
Useless to society perhaps, but not to them. They will do quite well in the not-for-profit sector.
Chris, in case you havent noticed the Diversity Industry is booming and the pay is top notch. Of course its another massive drain on society and contributing to its collapse, but who cares….suck those White European Christians dry! Ride their racist society to the ground!
Who cares about black midwifery? Black studies is not a major that will help you get a job, and it is shameful that taxpayer-supported colleges waste money supporting this kind of moronic drivel.
Studying this kind of idiotic subject will harm you in your adult life because you will be totally devoid of useful life skills after living in a sheltered academic environment.
If you want to do a dissertation on gay midget poetry or experimental black disabled lesbian jazz, at least have the decency to do it at a private non-tax supported university. I resent having my tax dollars supporting this giant pile of stupidity.
“Who cares about black midwifery? Black studies is not a major that will help you get a job, and it is shameful that taxpayer-supported colleges waste money supporting this kind of moronic drivel.”
– - – -
My Geology/Econ BA didn’t turn out to be the best monetary investment in the world, either.
Just sayin . . . .
>>>>>>>How they served local communities, how they were seen in the slave hierarchy, their relations with slave owners etc. I’d say there is ample material for a dissertation.
Indeed it is. But such kind of dissertation is done nowadays, and indeed had been done for decades, in the *history* or perhaps *sociology* departments. How much do you want to bet that, when done in the “Black Studies” department, it will be 10% actual historical research, and 90% “discussion” and “thesis” that amounts to, “evil white people were racists and didn’t appareciate how wonderful black midwifes were”?
“Black Studies” folks don’t do research. They know, from experience, that searching in dusty archives for obscure books of memories or statistics concerning actual black midwives is hard work, as is, say, going down to the deep south to interview the last few remaining traditional black midwives. Worse, nobody in their department cares about such work — all that matters is to blame whitey.
THAT is the real problem. It’s not that studying black midwivery is not practical or lucrative. It’s that it’s 99% certain this “black studies” dissertation (I would feel differently if it were a history dept. dissertation) does’t actually study black midwivery at all, but just uses it as an excuse to add the standard-issue “whitey is evil” schtick, which is why all these dissertation feel the same — they are actually all the SAME (worthless) dissertation, only under different guises.
I invite you to read the sidebar – never mind the article to which the side-bar is (well) a sidebar – which profiles each of these dissertations and their writers.
Naomi Shaefer Riley presents the sidebar (which is intended to introduce all readers of CoHE to these Ph.D. candidates) fairly, and with extensive quotation.
Tell me, is it unfair of the side-bar’s writer not to have read these dissertations before writing the profiles? Frankly, these positive presentations are (as Roger Kimball notes) cringe-inducing.
Still Voting For ‘Mitt Romney’?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQwrB1vu74c&feature=related
I’ll be voting for Romney against Obama. Elmer Fudd would be better than Obama.
Nice use of Final Cut Pro. They have one of obummer too…but I suppose context doesn’t mean squat to you.
Still Voting For ‘Mitt Romney’?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQwrB1vu74c&feature=related
Black Studies is no more farcical and asinine than its twin Black History Month. Both were invented to provide a public bullhorn for a continuous decades’ long slap-the-crap-out-of-whitey tirade. If you only need a month to study your history, best keep it quiet.
Betina,
“If you only need a month to study your history, best keep it quiet”
Indeed. My two favorites are the 54th Massachusetts Regiment from the movie “Glory”
and the more recent love affair with the WW-2 Tuskegee Airmen.
Both are always presented today with the indignant, angry pride of an “untold” story,
one repressed by a jealous white society “until now”….
Even though I was quite familiar with both as a child growing up in the 60′s – 70′s…
Simply because I was a history fanatic who went ahead and read “lie-berry” books all on my own,
for the simple pleasure of doing so, way back in elementary school.
Both of these units were the subject of quite a bit of curious notoriety in their day, and are by no means “unknown” to anyone who possessed even the slightest interest in the historical time frames of their respective service.
I did not have to dig very far at all to find them, it was in fact virtually impossible NOT to discover who they were, when reading up on The Civil War and WW-2 in the 5-8th grade.
So, as an adult, whenever I detect the “untold story” crutch/cudgel grievance opinion from a grievance studies major, I simply say the following:
“Untold story? Really? Youre saying, the 54th Mass. is the LEAST known unit from the Civil War?
Then name for me please one OTHER Civil War Regiment you’ve ever heard of”
And the response is always a blank stare.
Same thing with the Tuskegee Airmen
“Untold story? Really? Then name ANOTHER fighter squadron from WW-2… Name one single TYPE of allied aircraft…how about ANY famous army unit, or the name of one single battle?”
And they sputter with rage.
I’d settle for “F-troop” for chrissake, or the Flying Tigers….Maybe Baa Baa Black Sheep, or the Battle of the Bulge, even D-day…but 99% of the time, they know nothing, absolutely NOTHING about those two crucial time frames…
Except of course, that the 54th Massachusetts and The Tuskegee Airmen’s heroism has been denied by White America, forever.
It must be true, because BOTH movies say so….
And this of course typically represents 100% of their “research” on the subject.
How many of these Black Studies morons who think knowledge of black midwifery was “suppressed”, also don’t know much other history, either?
I’ll bet that few Americans (and none of these doctoral candidates) even know about, say, the Battle of Kasserine Pass, or the Battle of Sunda Strait, which were very important battles from the view of political and institutional governmental incompetence during the lull between the wars. It certainly would inform us today of the folly of leaving yourself unprotected, and being forced to sacrifice young men to buy enough time to fight back. That’s called education: learning something which has some use in your life.
To be a professional baby and whiner is all that seems to be taught to these dolts. That and how to steal from others by pretending to do work and get paid for it.
Although I’m feeling rather lazy and dismissive today, I’d like to say that the academic world knows that it cannot bear close scrutiny. I think professors and administrators know, or at least sense, that some sort of reckoning in headed their way.
Also the Chronicle is a union publication, an organ of the American Association of University Professors.
More on how the Chronicle of Higher Education supports pseudo-scholars….
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/299473/parsing-ichronicle-higher-educationis-real-scholars-benjamin-plotinsky
A wonderfully hilarious episode highlighting the vacuousness of academia. The grievance studies industry is emblematic of the decline of American liberal education. Sadly, those wasting four years inhabiting these sham intellectual exercises are totally unprepared to face the real world upon graduation. They are unemployable. The country can only use so many community organizers. Leaving the ivied halls with a worthless piece of paper, and thousands of dollars in debt, it’s back to mommy and daddys’ place. They’re pissed. I’d be pissed too, but at the institutions that conned me.
“I hasten to add, it resembles many other pseudo-disciplines invented since the late 1960s to provide a home for intellectually challenged but politically fermenting denizens of our universities: Women’s Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Transgender Studies, etc. etc.”
And then the kids who major in this junk wonder why they can’t find a job. Well, I hope they enjoy spending the rest of their lives paying back those huge college loans while flipping burgers at Wendy’s. I wonder if anyone at these colleges ever told these kids that if you want to work you actually need a major somebody can use. Na, the college “professors” who push this refuse must be thinking, “Why spoil a good thing?”
I don’t know what Mr. Kimball is getting all excited about — nobody read the “Chronicles of Higher Education” seriously for a long time anyway, since they publish virtually nothing but politically-correct puff pieces and have published virtually nothing but politically-correct puff pieces for at least the last decade that I know of, probably much longer.
The latest issue, for instance, has a front-page article bemoaning the “bias” of American students who think the “safe and beautiful” campuses in Mexican universities are dangerous. Well, they might be just as safe and beautiful as the “Chronicle” claims, for all I know, but of course the real point of the piece is to highlight yet another bit of “racist” views by American students which, no doubt, must now be eliminated as soon as possible by a proper dose of reeducation.
Of course, the mere fact that it’s the “Chronicle” virtually assures us that no politically incorrect information about Mexican campuses is to be allowed, lest it contaminate the minds of the young with heretical anti-hispanic thoughts, which is why nobody can trust their reassuring report about Mexican campus safety in the first place, which means reading the article gives you no information about what is really the situation in Mexican campuses (whether safe or not), so nobody bothers to read it.
Mr. Kimball’s outrage at the “Chronicle” publishing politically-correct pablum on everty page is equivalent to being outraged that “Chess Life” magazine publishes chess games on virtually every page. I mean, what did you expect?
(H’m — by the way, now that I think about it, how’s this for a black studies dissertation? How chess is an evil racist colonialist act because it has white pieces fighting black pieces. How such a racist game is still legal is beyond me.)
The fact is that Ms. Schaefer Riley was arrogant and sloppy wih her column. you do not dismiss an entire academic field of inquiry or dismiss a discipline as “claptrap” based on the titles of a few dissertations.
By her logic do people who puruse Women’s Studies, Irish Studies, Jewish Studies or other specific based studies suffer from “academic claptrap?” In fact dissertatiioon topics like “A History of Black Midwifery” (one of the dissertation titles Ms. Riley attacked) sound very interesting and insightful.
It’s a blog post of some 500 words.
Get a grip.
BTW, if there is such a t’ing as Irish Studies, I want in. I can brew poteen and bake whiskey bread, and I’d be willing to learn a county accent purely for the charm of the thing!
“The fact is that Ms. Schaefer Riley was arrogant and sloppy wih her column”
Actually, the fact is that you don’t know the meaning of the word “fact”.
“academic field of inquiry”, “discipline” ????? Are you serious???
Most of those dissetations remind me of the “postmodern generator”:
http://dev.null.org/postmodern/
Every time you refresh the page you get a different po-mo “essay”. All are nonsense, but all are indistinguishable from the kind of stuff that really is published in postmodern journals…
>>>>.By her logic do people who puruse Women’s Studies, Irish Studies, Jewish Studies or other specific based studies suffer from “academic claptrap?
Yes.
Because they are.
Mind you, I’m not talking about someone doing a Ph.D. in history and deciding to focus on, say, women in Ireland. We’re talking about “women’s studies” departments.
From the first person you might get a dissertation which actually tells you something about women in Ireland. From the second person, you’ll get something like, “In Ireland in 1824, a woman couldn’t join the preisthood. Come and see the violence inhereited in the patriarchial Catholic system! Help, help, I’m being opressed!”
“do people who puruse Women’s Studies, Irish Studies, Jewish Studies or other specific based studies suffer from “academic claptrap?””
Yes.
I’d say rather they suffer from academic “clap”.
The left is entertaining. Far be it from me to solve the nature versus nurture mystery when it comes to human behavior, but California is on the cusp of outlawing teenage gay conversion therapy, and in probably the most theraputic state in the union, next to New York. Apparently the politicians, if not the social philosophers, can solve the mystery. In other words, once upon a time, in the early seventies of the last century, the left argued being gay was just another alternate lifestyle–nothing in nature to see here, it’s not genetic. Remember, philosophical arguments from nature is in bad taste for progressives. This was mainly to get the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders modified in the interest of gay rights, because being gay would then be a choice rather than a psychiatric diagnosis, with implications for therapy. In other words, it’s now alright to “become gay” in California, it’s normal, but with the new anticipated state law you can’t go back to being abnormal, namely straight. It’s sort of like once you’re a racist you’re always a racist, it’s in your genes, no therapy for you. Apparently Attorney General Holder’s demands for more adult communication on race is an exorcise in futility. Of course, if being gay (and or racist) is now going to be viewed as genetic, fixed, that could stimulate revisiting the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, much to the gay left’s chagrin at being viewed as abnormal again. Life is complicated in the world of black and gay studies.
Well, if she didn’t read them, she didn’t read them, and saying the piece was only 500 words long precludes sourcing is a cop out. She is guilty of a bit of wishful thinking no matter how much she “knows” what she says is true. It so happens I agree with her but I use quotes to take people down, like Cornel West, a blatant race obsessed and black advocate who demonizes whites for even a hint of the exact same thing and which he can’t actually show in reality as any kind of a trend in America, except by shadow statistics like, black people are poor. My fault, my racist fault.
Today The Chronicle links to an article about West that is very friendly for such a committed, blatant and unapologetic, not to say unwitting, racist and advocate of handing out morality by skin. West is moving to Union Theological Seminary from Princeton to reside alongside another vicious racist, the James Cone who largely inspired the black theology at Obama’s Trinity United Church. Were I to write about these two in a blog, what I “know” wouldn’t be good enough. I’d source it and with their own damning words. Riley could’ve picked articles from The Root on any day of the week and done more damage without the slightest hint of speculation – not smart on her part. The will seems to have gone ahead of the proof, no matter how much we “know” what she says is true – she had it half-right – not enough to defend.
It’s probably unfair to relate that I’ve been laughing my head off about this.
I have to read The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Chronicle Review, and The Chronicle of Philanthropy. This has made clear to me precisely why academia (and portions of non-profit world, though, to be kind, you don’t go into non-profit world without more philanthropic intent than hard sense anyway) is so far removed from the realm of reality. Seriously, I defy you to read even one issue of the Chronicle Review without screaming in outrage and starting to tear your hair out in clumps.
Naomi Riley, being an academic, ought to have known that one is only allowed to snark and skewer pretensions if one is writing from the left. Just read the review of Mark Levin’s latest book from a couple weeks ago, and you’re clued in.
“”an article that did not conform to the journalistic standards and civil tone that you expect from us …”
Nothing uncivil in the original article. I can’t speak to the Chronicle’s canons of “journalistic standards” but they seem to include craven surrender to the mob and scrupulous avoidance of any of the Left’s sacred cows — the hollowing out of education in the name of political correctness being among them.
Incidentally, if anyone is looking for a dissertation topic, the marginalization and economic hobbling of African-American university students through pseudo-disciplines like Black Studies — which more or less guarantee a future of unemployment, under-employment or worse a lifetime of make-work in some university or other government store-front — might be a good one.
The Chronicle can hire or fire whomever they want. That said, I can also peruse whatever websites I want. I think Ms Riley is better off writing somewhere else.
Kimball’s piece is superb. Of course, it would be unfair to tar all of higher education with the charge that its institutions, including The Chronicle, regularly commit acts of intellectual cowardice when they silence dissent. But all too many do precisely that. When the very institution that should be the champion of free speech and unfettered inquiry is the first to censor those whose viewpoints it finds disagreeable, we are witnessing an inner rot within our colleges and universities that is ominous. It is not the purpose of free speech to avoid giving offense. To the contrary, spirited debate often ruffles feathers. If you disagree with Ms. Riley’s analysis, argue with it. But instead, those daring minds and courageous guardians of our intellectual heritage simply ban her from the discussion! It’s not surprising, since for more than a generation, both administrators and faculty have stood spinelessly by and watched speaker after speaker shouted down by thugs and brown shirts whenever the content of their speech was deemed “inappropriate.” And so it goes. Sad. And contemptible.
You’re Fired
Federal Inmate Beating Obama in 8 WV Counties Posted on: May 9, 2012, by Ted Achladis
http://fox8.com/2012/05/09/federal-inmate-beating-obama-in-8-wv-counties/
This article seems to signal a disturbing trend on Pj Media, attacks on “Black Studies”. As if this tiny area of study is somehow a threat to the American Way of Life. There are bigger fish to fry, attacks on a fringe curriculum are unseemly and unnecessary.
It’s not a question of black studies but of the larger picture. While the Left takes the phrase/word “blah,” the phrase “food stamp President,” isolated racist emails from someone high in the Tea Party and the fact that a lot more black folks are in prison than should be and tries to make that a case for racism, it isn’t – not even close.
What does make a case is a way of thinking and ignoring or gerrymandering facts the Left consistently does. In fact, you put all the senseless rhetoric of the Left together, of which Black Studies is only one, and you have a pretty rock-hard case that the Dem Party simply ignores reality in favor of what they “know.” There is not a doubt in my mind that, contrary to what the Left says about the “right” side of history, is that people will look back at the Dem Party veered so close to the principles of the Nazi Party and were not even aware of it.
Ever wonder how an entire society went nuts in Germany in the ’30s? I give you Exhibit A – the Dem Party. They are the biggest whiners about race and by far the greatest racists this country has ever known, because they have this race-based nonsense inside of every American institution.
Science,Engineering, Mathematics, Medicine, Technology/IT disciplines and some sections of the Business Faculty – Accounting/Finance/Logistics that provide “value add” in the real world are legitimate areas of college education… all the rest range from marginal to utterly worthless (anything with studies/humanities).
Of those Medicine will give you the best chance of gainful employment due to demographics and the inability to outsource sick people (open borders actually encourages/rewards the importation of illness).
The Left USES words to alter thought processes just like in 1984 George Orwells. Rush encapsulated Left Wing moonbat thought processes when he said :-
“So when Obama flip-flops, it’s called “evolving.” When Romney evolves, it’s called “flip-flopping.”
They call Romney a flip-flopper.
“Hey, he used to be believe this and now he believes this!”
“Well, he evolved.”
“No, Romney’s a flip-flopper!”
“Well, Obama believed this but now he believes that. He’s a flip-flopper.”
“No, no! Obama is ‘evolving.’”
You’d be surprised how many titles in postmodern “studies” are a dead giveaway of the dreck inside: “The Speculum of the Other Woman,” “What is an Author?” “Male Bodies and the White Terror,” etc. etc. The mathematician / physicist Alan Sokal did a brilliant parody that was accepted for publication in a trendy journal called “Social Text,” a b.s. title itself. A friend of mine who worked with Sokal at NYU sent me a copy of the working proof. I started laughing right from the start, while the editors of the journal were so completely blinded by Pomo-Speak that they could not spot the hoax either from the essay, the fabricated footnotes, which were truly ridiculous, or the title alone, “Towards a Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.”
‘Black studies’ has been studied to death and, yet nothing changes.It brings about more reason for ‘grievances or reparations’, always finding utopias for more racism in America where it does not exist.
Nothing is ever enough, no amount of money is never enough, no amount of ‘favortism’ or affirmative actions are never enough. No amount of special programs regarding housing, grants or other is ever enough.
I’d say enough is enough; we don’t have ‘white studies’ and, although whites are more affected by reverse discrimination, not only since obamas election, affirmative actions is a disadvantage towards white and asians.
The grave train for blacks needs to end; let them stand on their own merit, like everyone else.
As whites and asians don’t ask for handouts, blacks need to stop asking for handouts either.
Every race need to stand on their own merit – period!
I thought it was sort of low-class the way she lit into some of the students’ programs, not really on any overarching message about the vapidity of the genre, but rather because she thought there was no merit to the positions the students chose to defend.
So, she’s trashing the student who argues that some successful black conservatives work against AA. She makes fun of the woman studying the traditions of black midwifery. She dismisses as simple the student who believes blacks were unfairly taken advantage of in the urban housing market “crisis” of the early 1990′s.
I suspect that her opinion about the merits of these positions is correct, but that’s not the point. If she wants to pull down a salary writing regularly for that magazine, she probably ought not be engaging in what I thought to be poorly written opinionated diatribes denigrating the magazine’s audience.
The initial focus of her piece was “these four people are Sofa King Stoopid!” She then went on, on the strength of those four examples, to completely trash Black Studies. That’s just poor advocacy. Her main thesis is one I can agree with, but she failed to support it, and writing was supposed to be her area of expertise.
If presented with a stack of CVs for a job application, a simple selection strategy helps to cut the workload. Any applicant whose degree title contains the word ‘studies’ is rejected out of hand. No appeal, no further examination. After that, anyone without a 1st or 2:1 Hons is out (equivalent to summa or magna cum laude in the States). This isn’t even sorting the wheat from the chaff. It’s fishing the turds out of the punchbowl.
Frankly the Chronicle situation just highlights the absurdity of the John Derbyshire firing a little while ago. Its a bit silly to read the horror stories on NRO about how the Chronicle is a bunch of anti-free speech liberals when it dumped one of its one it seems minuted ago and also on trumped up accusations of racism.
The typical american university, ca. 1970.
Society demands more black and female professors be hired. Well, OK — not society itself, but other donnish academics in other universities, which for most donnish academics are the only people who really matter. But still, something must be done.
However, how do you satify this demand, without hiring platoons of second- and third-rate opportunists whose “research” would ruin the department, and whose sole claim to academic fame is skin color or two X chromosomes?
Simple solution: create pseudo-departments like “Black studies” and “women studies”. There, the third-rate frauds can sit around and pretend to be scholars and professors (they go to conferences and everything!), while the actual departments, from archeology to zoology, are left in peace.
…and that, folks, is how the fields of “women studies”, “black studies”, “queer studies”, etc., etc., were created.
Wow. First time reading this blog and the level of ignorance is astounding. Cultural ignorance, cultural intolerance, and shear racism run rampant here. Mr. Kimball–does it really stroke your ego to have followers who are trapped in such mind-numbing provincialism? Are you really that unsure of yourself, that insecure? Your own post was nothing but a half-witted smear–don’t pretend that it had any intellectual rigor or thought behind it. It was simply the equivalent of throwing out some red meat and turning the dogs loose. You are nothing more than a provocateur, and not even a mentally stimulating one.
“Cultural ignorance, cultural intolerance, and sheer racism.” One wonders what exactly you’re talking about. The phrase “mind-numbing provincialism” is the best, I think: the author’s too sophisticated to have any time for such provincial attitudes. Is it “cultural ignorance” or “cultural intolerance” to note how ridiculous the “Studies” departments at universities have become? This sort of snobbish, arrogant, elitist foolishness just boggles the mind. Does any of the individuals cited in this report have any idea what they look like, to the outside world, when they write this silliness? It’s not racist to say this (or at least I don’t think it is), it’s just common sense. When *anyone* does it, on *any* subject, I think it’s obnoxious, arrogant, and essentially a circle-jerk.
And the point of his post wasn’t the content of the dissertations (though that drew much comment) but the fact that this woman criticized them and was essentially blacklisted for doing so. Last I looked, blacklisting was bad to liberals, especially when they are the targets of said blacklisting. I guess when a “culturally ignorant” conservative is blacklisted, it’s OK?
The mind boggles.
Ms Saggia, does it really stroke your ego to posture as if you are some sort of superior intellect? Your response to those with whom you disagree: schoolyard namecalling. How desperate are you to shore up your fragile politically-correct self- esteem? “Mind-numbing provincialism,” no “intellectual rigor or thought,” “ignorance”, and of course that sad threadbare oldie, “racism.”
The joke’s on you, Ms Supercilious: while Black Studies prances in its BVDs to the hoots of the people, you make yourself an equal butt of mockery by insisting that the Emperor’s finery is splendid, if only we proles could see it. By attempting to defend that academic fraud you have demonstrated yourself to be beyond cavil an ignorant provincial of the first order.
Congrats, you’re famous:
http://www.newcriterion.com/blogs.cfm#Favorite-trash-talking-comment-of-this-week
Anyway, if someone needs a Leftish-to-English translator:
“RACIST!” = “I disagree with you about that”.
“It lacks intellectual rigor” = “Bush is stupid — how smart can a fighter pilot be, anyway? Nyah nyah nyah nyah.”
“Here are facts that prove you are wrong” = TRANSLTOR ERROR. Sorry, no such expression exists in Leftish. Note how the post above, like all the other Leftish-written posts in this thread, contain no such expression.