Why Some Colleges Have Increasingly Become Cults

Here is an excerpt from an article Dr. Lyell Asher, posting on Peter Boghossian's Beyond Woke Website. Title of the article: "Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults."

[I]n the last twenty years, and in the last decade especially, higher education has gone from listing to the political left, to a full-on capsize into something that, at many institutions, more closely resembles a cult. Different institutions hit this tipping point at different times. But it was back in 2010, when I began hearing adults in positions of authority say “intentions don’t matter,” that I realized that something very different—and very stupid—was afoot. This mantra wasn’t shorthand for intellectually respectable arguments about the limits of authorial intention in literature, or about “intentionality” in philosophy. Rather, it was a dismissal of the “I-didn’t-mean-to-break-the-lamp” kind of intention—that basic component of moral evaluation understood by people everywhere, usually by the time they’re potty-trained.

This wasn’t coming from faculty either, at least not back then. It was coming from student-facing administrators whose increasing numbers and expanding roles on college campuses had been accompanied by—and accomplished by means of—subtle shifts in language. Students were no longer in a college; they were in a “community.” One began to hear in official pronouncements that “we’re all educators.” The word “collegial” began to mean little more than “compliant.” Something was “inclusive” if it coincided with that week’s political positions of the (mostly white) urban elite sporting advanced degrees. In a little over a decade this administrative class helped turbocharge a process that had been underway for several decades: transforming four-year colleges and universities from being among the best places to critically evaluate ideas, into being among the worst.

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Peter Boghossian Diagnoses the Problem with Modern College Administrators

Peter Boghossian writes:

To understand the intolerant, anti-intellectual attitudes held by many college administrators, it helps to know that most of the ones who worked directly with students got their graduate training from education schools, or “ed schools” as they're called. These are the schools that have been training and licensing teachers and administrators in the K through 12 school system for the better part of a century.

Unfortunately, ed schools are notorious for their low academic standards and woke politics. Among their many dysfunctional programs, the ones that train school administrators are the very worst. They're so bad that in 1987, a report by the National Commission on Excellent and Educational Administration recommended that out of the 500 programs in administration 300 of them should be closed—not reformed, but closed . . .

It's an understatement to say that ed schools ignored this recommendation. Instead of closing programs during the next 20 years, they opened over 100 more and they did absolutely nothing to fix their low quality. Why not? Low-quality programs bring in tuition dollars and they don't require much in the way of investment.

Here is the mission statement of Boghossian's Substack, Beyond Woke:

This Substack gives you a front row seat in the culture war. I’m executing a blueprint to push back illiberalism and I'd like you to be directly involved. The blueprint has a two-fold aim: first, reveal the implications of far-left ideological takeover; and second, restore free speech and open inquiry as non-partisan values.

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How the Far Left Sees Masculine Men

Andrew Sullivan discusses men like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson who don't shy away from being masculine. They are commonly derided by the political Left, including the Woke Left. The title to his article: "Between The World And Men Truckers, Rogan, Peterson and the revolt of masculinity." Here's an excerpt:

No, the left is not calling all masculinity toxic. But they get pretty quiet when you ask for a definition of non-toxic masculinity that doesn’t end up sounding like being a woman. And, no, they’re not explicitly denying that there are biological differences between men and women — they just speak and act on the premise that there aren’t, that boys do not need a different kind of education than girls, that all-male groups are problematic, and that finding a way to direct masculinity to noble ends is somehow enabling the oppression of women, or gay people. The result is that men are subject to left derision, right machismo, and complete cultural derailment.

And that’s where Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson come in. They too, of course, are mocked constantly, demeaned as chauvinists or white supremacists, etc. But what Rogan does is speak and talk the way men do with each other in private, which, in this media era, is a revelation. He doesn’t entertain the woke bromides of gender theory because he’s lived a life, clearly loves being a man as much as Adele says she loves being a woman, and believes, as he once put it, that “bad men are just bad human beings who happen to be men.”

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What to Say When You are Asked for your Pronouns

For those of us who understand that sex is a biological term that applies to possums, wolves, elephants and humans, what should we say when asked for our "pronouns"? Colin Wright says we should refuse to answer the question. I think a bare refusal is a bit rude. People asking for pronouns often don't mean any harm, even though they are implicitly asking you to buy into an ideology that conflicts with biology, often without awareness that they are doing this. I agree with Wright that a request for pronouns constitutes stereotyping.

What would I do next time I'm asked? I might respond by saying something like: “Sign me up as a human being who doesn't believe in stereotyping." If that triggers an awkward silence, perhaps I would follow up: "But by all means, I'm not telling anyone else how to respond . . ."

Wright's article appears in the Wall Street Journal. The title is "When Asked ‘What Are Your Pronouns,’ Don’t AnswerA seemingly innocuous question masks a demand for conformity with a regressive set of ideas." Here's an excerpt:

Gender activists believe that being a man or a woman requires embracing stereotypes of masculinity or femininity, respectively, or the different social roles and expectations society imposes on people because of their sex. Planned Parenthood explicitly states that gender identity is “how you feel inside,” defines “gender” as a “a social and legal status, a set of expectations from society, about behaviors, characteristics, and thoughts,” and asserts that “it’s more about how you’re expected to act, because of your sex.” . . .

So when someone asks for your pronouns, and you respond with “she/her,” even though you may be communicating the simple fact that you’re female, a gender ideologue would interpret this as an admission that you embrace femininity and the social roles and expectations associated with being female. While women’s-rights movements fought for decades to decouple womanhood from rigid stereotypes and social roles, modern gender ideology has melded them back together. . . .

Let me offer an analogy. [Imagine a] request from the American Federation of Astrologers encouraging everyone to begin conversations with, “Hi, I’m a Sagittarius. What’s your sign?” To respond with your own star sign would be to operate within and signal your tacit agreement with the belief system of astrology.

Here is a free pdf of Colin Wright's article.

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The Moment of Institutional Capture: ADL

Andrew Sullivan points out ADL's decision to take a reasonably clear and understandable definition of racism, replacing it with Woke mush that invites eternal confusion and strife:

I spotted Sullivan's tweet the day after Joe Biden promised that his nominee for the next Justice of the Supreme Court would be a black women. Hmmm. That's the equivalent of telling all highly qualified Asian-American, Latina-Americans and many other highly qualified potential candidates that they will categorically not be considered for this upcoming job opening because of their race, color . . . sex, or national origin.

Oh, one more thing. In this country it is

an unlawful employment practice for an employer -(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
42 U.S. Code § 2000e–2 - Unlawful employment practices. In my opinion, it would be a wonderful thing to have a black woman Justice on SCOTUS. That person should be appointed for only one reason, however: Because they would make an excellent judge. Their skin color is irrelevant to me and it should be irrelevant to any person filling any job in the United States.

It is sad and destructive that so many people in the U.S. are working so hard to roll back the clock to earlier destructive times when we should pay attention to a person's skin color. I look forward to the day when a person's skin color is arguably the least interesting thing about them.

Looking forward, it will be crystal clear that the person who gets Biden's appointment was chosen because she was a woman and because she was black. Colin Wright is spot on:

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