No Thanks, [Formerly Prestigious American University]. I Need to Go To School Elsewhere to Get a Real Education

John McWhorter has received many hundreds of emails from people who are dismayed with the Woke dismantling of American Education. Here is a recent communication he received, redacted to protect this person and published at It Bears Mentioning, McWhorter's Substack Website, part of an article titled, "If I like it, it's data; if I don't like it, it's "anecdata." No - whether you like it or not, it is neither dim nor racist to generalize on the basis of widespread and frequent events (i.e. both cop killings and Elect abuses)." McWhorter introduces this communicating by noting that this person had been "accepted into a graduate program at a prestigious institution."

It hurts so much that I have to decline your offer and several other great offers that I have received from elite universities and programs that used to be the dream schools for young people like me. I am simply very frustrated by ideology masquerading as objective science in today's higher ed. particularly humanity fields. Universities these days are trying to make young people like me feel guilty because we are white and because the whole system is filled with white racists, and me included. There is such strong moralization in the academy that is so certain that it has Science on its side in all of its proclamations. Frankly, today's academy’s ideological dogmatism is one of my major fear and hesitancies for entering it. I fear any work I do, especially in developmental or evolutionary psychology, would be evaluated not on its merit but instead on what is perceived as my politics based on how politically convenient my findings are. I have decided to move to [foreign country] to join a group of very creative and young [subject area redacted by me] on a [ibid.] research project. I want to spend the last 5 years in my 20s on something scientific, not political. But it seems that it is simply impossible to accomplish that goal in my own country.

Continue ReadingNo Thanks, [Formerly Prestigious American University]. I Need to Go To School Elsewhere to Get a Real Education

Camille Paglia: How Postmodernism (Woke ideology) is Destroying Education

I just finished reading Camille Paglia's essay, "Free Speech and the Modern Campus," from a collection of her prior writings, a book titled Provocations."  This essay takes aim at practices that were once called "Political Correctness," which now fall under the description of excesses of the Woke or Wokeness.  Paglia begins her essay by recounting how and why many colleges and universities founded niche studies departments, such as women's studies. Colleges made the mistake of allowing these departments to serve as singularities, unengaged with traditional core studies of, for example, history or psychology. These departments

were so hastily constructed in the 1970s, a process that not only compromised professional training in those fields over time but also isolated them in their own worlds and thus ultimately lessened their wider cultural impact.. . . Working on campus only with the like-minded, they treat dissent as a mortal offense that must be suppressed, because it threatens their entire career history and world-view. The ideology of those new programs and departments, predicated on victimology, has scarcely budged since the 1970s.

These new departments confused scholarship with ideology. They became like churches:

Teaching and research must strive to remain objective and detached. The teacher as an individual citizen may and should have strong political convictions and activities outside the classroom, but in the classroom, he or she should never take ideological positions without at the same time frankly acknowledging them as opinion to the students and emphasizing that all students are completely free to hold and express their own opinions on any issue, no matter how contested, from abortion, homosexuality, and global warming to the existence of God . . .

A familiar trio of Continental philosophers was carted into these niche curricula:

The Derrida and Lacan fad was followed by the cult of Michel Foucault, who remains a deity in the humanities but whom I regard as a derivative game-player whose theories make no sense whatever about any period preceding the Enlightenment. The first time I witnessed a continental theorist discoursing with professors at a Yale event, I said in exasperation to a fellow student, “They’re like high priests murmuring to each other.”

At p. 379, Paglia explains the main problem with poststructuralism:

Post-structuralism, in asserting that language forms reality, is a reactionary reversal of the authentic revolutionary spirit of the 1960s, when the arts had turned toward a radical liberation of the body and a reengagement with the sensory realm. By treating language as the definitive force in the world—a foolish thesis that could easily be refuted by the dance, music, or visual arts majors in my classes—poststructuralism set the groundwork for the present campus impasse where offensive language is conflated with material injury and alleged to have a magical power to create reality. Furthermore, poststructuralism treats history as a false narrative and encourages a random, fragmented, impressionistic approach that has given students a fancy technique but little actual knowledge of history itself.

Another problem with political correctness is the inability to interpret the significance of events in the context of the time period in which they occurred (see here for a recent example):

The problem of political correctness is intensified by the increasing fixation of humanities and even history departments on “presentism,”that is, a preoccupation with our own modem period.

What are the solutions? Paglia offers three:

[E]ducators must first turn away from the sprawling cafeteria menu of over-specialized electives and return to broad survey courses based in world history and culture, proceeding chronologically from antiquity to modernism. Students desperately need a historical framework to understand both past and present.

Second, universities should sponsor regular public colloquia on major topics where both sides of sensitive, hot-button controversies are frilly discussed. Any disruptions of free speech at such forums must be met with academic sanctions.

[C]olleges and universities must stay totally out of the private social lives of students.The intrusive paternalism o f American colleges in this area is an unacceptable infringement of student rights.If a crime is committed on campus, it must be reported to the police.There is no such thing as a perfectly “safe space” in real life. Risk and danger are intrinsic to human existence.

Continue ReadingCamille Paglia: How Postmodernism (Woke ideology) is Destroying Education

Yet Another Woke School Caught Misbehaving

Here are documents that pertain to yet another ill-behaved Woke school (this one located in Las Vegas), along with an attorney's well-drafted threat letter. Read them and weep for our children's future . . .

If you'd like to read the full thread, start with Colin Wright's Tweet:

Continue ReadingYet Another Woke School Caught Misbehaving

British High Court Rules in Favor of Keira Bell: Restricts Use of Puberty Blockers and Cross-Sex Hormones

I applaud this recent decision by the British High Court, reported by The Guardian:

Children under the age of 16 considering gender reassignment are unlikely to be mature enough to give informed consent to be prescribed puberty-blocking drugs, the high court has ruled.

Even in cases involving teenagers under 18 doctors may need to consult the courts for authorisation for medical intervention, three senior judges have ruled in an action brought against the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust, which runs the UK’s main gender identity development service for children.

An NHS spokesperson welcomed the “clarity” the decision had brought, adding: “The Tavistock have immediately suspended new referrals for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the under 16s, which in future will only be permitted where a court specifically authorises it. Dr Hilary Cass is conducting a wider review on the future of gender identity services.”

Now it's time to stop this mass child abuse on this side of the pond too, given that most girls move from "puberty blockers" to taking 10 to 40 times the natural female amount of testosterone, usually leading to infertility. How did it get to the point where the once-vocal anti-clitoridectomy crowd got so quiet when something comparable comes to our own communities? 12, 13, 14 and 15 year old girls have been allowed to make permanent "decisions" of this sort, without the need for any official medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

Instead of getting real diagnoses, they are cheer-led into drugs, hormones and surgery through social media, peer pressure and even Planned Parenthood (which supplies testosterone to many of these girls. All of this under the guise of "civil rights." The "decisions" of these girls to use "puberty blockers" are being made without the benefit of long-term studies as to dangers, physical and psychological. It's about time we got real adults into this conversation. There is a LOT of buyer's remorse out there, but it's being suppressed by left-leaning news media (you can find hundreds of cases on Reddit/detransition), It makes me wonder when the lawsuits will start flying over here. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingBritish High Court Rules in Favor of Keira Bell: Restricts Use of Puberty Blockers and Cross-Sex Hormones