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November 23, 2014

Horror Story: American Academia

Powerline has a terrifying article about the pustulous cancer known as liberal education:
I am an inveterate optimist, but the more I learn about what goes on in our universities, the more I conclude that our civilization has a death wish. Heather Mac Donald’s article in City Journal on “micro-aggression” at UCLA prompted this particular bout of despondency. What goes on in our universities is scarcely believable. Mac Donald’s article is lengthy and should be read in its entirety, but here are a few excerpts with my comments.
In November 2013, two dozen graduate students at the University of California at Los Angeles marched into an education class and announced a protest against its “hostile and unsafe climate for Scholars of Color.”
Scholars of Color? Sadly, this is not a parody. And these are graduate students–i.e., presumably adults.
[UCLA], which trumpets its “social-justice” mission at every opportunity, is a cauldron of simmering racial tensions. Students specializing in “critical race theory”—an intellectually vacuous import from law schools—play the race card incessantly against their fellow students and their professors, leading to an atmosphere of nervous self-censorship. Foreign students are particularly shell-shocked by the school’s climate. “The Asians are just terrified,” says a recent graduate. “They walk into this hyper-racialized environment and have no idea what’s going on. Their attitude in class is: ‘I don’t want to talk. Please don’t make me talk!’”
The article cited in Powerline can be found in City Journal.
The pattern would repeat itself twice more at UCLA that fall: students would allege that they were victimized by racism, and the administration, rather than correcting the students’ misapprehension, penitently acceded to it. Colleges across the country behave no differently. As student claims of racial and gender mistreatment grow ever more unmoored from reality, campus grown-ups have abdicated their responsibility to cultivate an adult sense of perspective and common sense in their students. Instead, they are creating what tort law calls “eggshell plaintiffs”—preternaturally fragile individuals injured by the slightest collisions with life. The consequences will affect us for years to come.
These blockheads are here to stay. They are nothing but ticks burrowing their heads underneath the skin of America's ass and sucking for everything it's worth. And they are being prepared for this ignoble occupation in America's universities.

5 comments:

LL said...

I'm sure that the "scholars of color" will find high paying jobs in government.

Doom said...

I do believe the era of color has come and gone. They don't realize it yet, but the fallout from zero in chief means that, in short order, all such talk will be put in it's place. I do think that is why some voted that way... short term pain for the tic bath it is.

Government, and academic, jobs are about to go the way of the dodo bird. Changes are coming that will be crushing. Even if political and social order doesn't change of it's own accord, the truth of the financial collapses about to hit will not allow for... excesses. Politically correct hires will be the first to go, then the lame, lazy, and crazy. It won't just hit the typical minority, but women too. They honestly can't keep up with serious demands of a lean, hard, working and fighting for survival machine.

Oh, I could be wrong. I just don't think so. Honestly, it would be easier to continue as is, with complaints and grumps, then go through what is coming, and most likely rather soon. It will require a complete restructuring of our public and private systems, not a shuffling of chair. Who, indeed, will get a seat on those lifeboats?

IanH said...

Doom is pretty close in his prediction. I have seen it happen in Canada. I few years ago I voiced an opinion that the Postal Service was a Dodo and due for extinction. It hasn't quite happened yet, but e-mail etc has caused a dramatic drop in letters, and resulted in layoffs of postal delivery men. and a radical change in how they do business. Time will tell about government.

Fredd said...

Perhaps Doom is right. To see Harvard proudly boast of their hires such as Elizabeth Warren (D-Wounded Knee) as a 'woman of color,' when she obviously is as white as Caspar the Friendly Ghost to everyone who lays eyes on her, the end of such foolishness can't be all that far away.

sig94 said...

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire.

Ferguson is just a taste of what is to come. Beware the entitled masses once they're denied their EBT bread and circuses. Their race pimp masters will lead from behind as the ensuing riots shape the American political scene.

Much like the Roman Republic, Americans are being manipulated to vote away their freedom in exchange for security. They will have neither.