Boston University is in Denial that it is Paying the Price for Choosing to Impose an Ideology Rather than Seeking Truth

David Decosimo, an associate professor of theology and ethics at Boston University, writing at Wall Street Journal, "How Ibram X. Kendi Broke Boston University: The university totally committed itself to his ideology. It hasn’t backed off despite the scandal."

I wrote a letter to BU’s president that afternoon, stressing that beyond the problems with Mr. Kendi’s vision, the more fundamental issue concerned betraying the university’s research and teaching mission by making any ideology institutional orthodoxy. Nothing changed. Even now, BU is insisting it will “absolutely not” step back from its commitment to Mr. Kendi’s antiracism.

Mr. Kendi deserves some blame for the scandal, but the real culprit is institutional and cultural. It’s still unfolding and is far bigger than BU. In 2020, countless universities behaved as BU did. And to this day at universities everywhere, activist faculty and administrators are still quietly working to institutionalize Mr. Kendi’s vision. They have made embracing “diversity, equity and inclusion” a criterion for hiring and tenure, have rewritten disciplinary standards to privilege antiracist ideology, and are discerning ways to circumvent the Supreme Court’s affirmative-action ruling.

Most of those now attacking Mr. Kendi at BU don’t object to his vision. They embrace it. They don’t oppose its establishment in universities. That’s their goal. Their anger isn’t with his ideology’s intellectual and ethical poverty but with his personal failure to use the money and power given to him to institutionalize their vision across American universities, politics and culture.

Whether driven by moral hysteria, cynical careerism or fear of being labeled racist, this violation of scholarly ideals and liberal principles betrays the norms necessary for intellectual life and human flourishing. It courts disaster, at this moment especially, that universities can’t afford.

Consider also, Jonathan Haidt's argues "Why Universities Must Choose One Telos: Truth or Social Justice." An Excerpt:

What is the telos of university? The most obvious answer is “truth” — the word appears on so many university crests. But increasingly, many of America’s top universities are embracing social justice as their telos, or as a second and equal telos. But can any institution or profession have two teloses (or teloi)? What happens if they conflict? ...

I am not saying that an individual student cannot pursue both goals. In the talk below I urge students to embrace truth as the only way that they can pursue activism that will effectively enhance social justice. But an institution such as a university must have one and only one highest and inviolable good. I am also not denying that many students encounter indignities, insults, and systemic obstacles because of their race, gender, or sexual identity. They do, and I favor some sort of norm setting or preparation for diversity for incoming students and faculty. But as I have argued elsewhere, many of the most common demands the protesters have made are likely to backfire and make experiences of marginalization more frequent and painful, not less. Why? Because they are not based on evidence of effectiveness; the demands are not constrained by an absolute commitment to truth.

Continue ReadingBoston University is in Denial that it is Paying the Price for Choosing to Impose an Ideology Rather than Seeking Truth

TED Shadow Bans Coleman Hughes’ Talk on the Issue of Color Blindness

Coleman Hughes gave a thoughtful talk on color blindness at TED, but TED has been reluctant to let its viewers see the talk. Coleman describes the problem at The Free Press. Here's an excerpt:

Like any young writer, I am well aware that an invitation to speak at TED can be a career-changing opportunity. So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I was invited to appear at this year’s annual conference. What I could not have imagined from an organization whose tagline is “ideas worth spreading” is that it would attempt to suppress my own.

As an independent podcaster and author, I count myself among the lucky few who can make a living doing what they truly love to do. Nothing about my experience with TED could change that. The reason this story matters is not because I was treated poorly, but because it helps explain how organizations can be captured by an ideological minority that bends even the people at the very top to its will. In that, the story of TED is the story of so many crucial and once-trustworthy institutions in American life.

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Progress Report Regarding the Ibram X. Kendi Antiracism Center

How are things going at the generously funded antiracism center? The National Review reports, in an article titled "Is Ibram X. Kendi a Racist?":

By taking millions of dollars designated for the fight against racism and doing nothing useful with it, does this not describe Kendi? He was in charge of this project — a project that he promised would “solve” the “intractable racial problems of our time” — and the result of his conduct was a failure to “maintain the nation’s largest online database of racial inequity data in the United States”; accusations of professional “mismanagement” that led to an “exploitative” environment that caused “employment violence” and “trauma”; and mass layoffs that left one staff member accusing Kendi of having engaged in “theatre, therapy, and marketing masquerading as institutional commitment,” and having “let down, betrayed, abused and neglected” his employees. It sounds to me like the man has some self-reflecting to do.

Coleman Hughes sums it up with more than a hint of sarcasm:

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It’s Not About the Crime. It’s About the News Coverage

I completely John Lefevre and Wilbert Reilly. The biggest story about this murder of a man riding a bicycle is not about this particular (horrific) crime. It's about the "news" media working nonstop overtime to find racism, but only in one direction. There is no corporate news coverage of this story. Reverse the "races" in this story, however, and this story would dominate the news cycle.

The "news" media are dividing us from each other in numerous ways, trying to make us suspicious of each other, to make a dollar. When a "racial" minority is the victim, they pursue a narrative that divides hundreds of millions of complex human beings into two--count 'em--two colors. As a race abolitionist, I oppose this practice. News stories about crime should point out dangerous people who should be removed from the street, regardless of their "color."

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Corporate Media Racecraft

This is a common tactic of the corporate media: Ignore crime statistics to drum up race-based panic. Wilfred Reilly knows his stats and brings sanity to the conversation, sanity that is inconvenient to many progressives:

https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm/dataonline/content/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6686

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