Never before have I been so proud to be an alum. Just as a year or so ago I was never more proud to be a graduate student alum of Johns Hopkins, and, more recently, a former English, argument, and creative writing teacher at the University of Denver.
I did two summers at the School of Theory at Cornell, who I’m sure has made me equally as proud. But I just don’t feel like looking it up, because frankly, the whole thing is just too damned depressing to take.
Universities have become breeding grounds for enforced groupthink, politically correct bullying, and victim politics. They are, with few exceptions, hotbeds of leftwing propaganda, anti-semitism, and a decisive (and repugnant) anti-intellectualism.
I was fortunate enough to witness this first hand, which is one of the reasons I decided to opt out of a career in the academy. And why my wife and I are at odds over my declaration that I’d rather we just give each of our sons $100K to start their own lives than send them off to indoctrination camps.
When I left the English program at the University of Denver, or when I finished up the two tours at Cornell, I was convinced that the bulk of Humanities studies had been so thoroughly polluted with incoherence and identity politics that it would be a mistake to stay and have constant “debates” with the cookie-cutter postmodernists/poststructuralists/queer theorists/feminist theorists who were being routinely churned out by these grievance mills.
So instead, I started a blog.
Oops.
Their loss is our gain.
I think it was Yeats who asked “But was ever dog that praised his fleas?”. With these awards we have his answer: “Yes, and here it is.”
And I am glad you did.
Do people actually engage in debating teams post high school? (Hell, in retrospect, it was an utter waste of time *then* too, although I did get an early introduction into leftist garbage like Marcuse and Chumpsky, so perhaps it was an innoculation).
That said, I tell youngsters that unless it is a specific trade emphasis, or at least a major of that nature, avoid most colleges like the plague.
As Kate over at SmallDeadAnimals always says: “What’s the opposite of diversity? University!”
While I think the STEM hype is a little overblown, I could still recommend attending a college or university for engineering, mathematics, or one of the hard sciences.
While I think the STEM hype is a little overblown, I could still recommend attending a college or university for engineering, mathematics, or one of the hard sciences.
I count that in the “specific trade” category.
Anyway, reading the PJ Media link, I couldn’t help but think “deportation”. If a 5th column of people have been raised to hate this country and pine for a mythical African Motherland that never existed, time to send them there. Or some other “Worker’s paradise” of their choice.
-What Charles and RI Red said – squared. You’re needed here, providing us with the ammo to use against the Fifth Columnists.
-Speaking of Fifth Columnists: I think Curmudgeon has come up with a crackerjack of an idea. Hell, I wouldn’t mind at all my tax money going to pay for their moving expenses.
Anyway…I take satisfaction in knowing that, when the shite does indeed hit the fan, we will excluding these types from our redoubts – excluding with extreme prejudice in some cases. –I have a dream…
You got it, Bob. They want “reparations”? Give them Repatriations. The new South Africa might just be the perfect place for them.
Charles Murray: An open letter to the students of Azusa Pacific University
*** I was scheduled to speak to you tomorrow. I was going to talk about my new book, “The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead,” and was looking forward to it. But it has been “postponed.” Why? An email from your president, Jon Wallace, to my employer, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), said “Given the lateness of the semester and the full record of Dr. Murray’s scholarship, I realized we needed more time to prepare for a visit and postponed Wednesday’s conversation.” This, about an appearance that has been planned for months. I also understand from another faculty member that he and the provost were afraid of “hurting our faculty and students of color.” ***
How pathetic has America become? This pathetic.
Indeed. Mr. Murray even wrote “Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010” in order to avoid all those race issues and just focus on one race of people and how government policy was failing them.
But to the Commiecrats, that is “racist” too. In fact, anything opposing the Commiecrat agenda is.
I agree with Charles Austin about STEM. It doesn’t make sense to have a bunch of STEM-educated young people who can only get jobs at McDonald’s, or on a factory assembly line.
Encouraging enrollment in STEM fields really only makes sense if there’s a huge shortage of people with that kind of education. And if that was the case, you’d want to encourage enrollment in the specific majors that are needed.
Consider this as maybe a test of a method to deal/threaten departments into toeing the administrator’s party line.
I’m all for getting rid of one size fits all university educations. Engineering schools, teachers colleges and the like used to be all the rage. If you are training for a field, be field specific. If you want a rounded education, go for the liberal arts. Persons wishing to sing, dance or play music may attend Academies of the Performing Arts. Same deal with law and medicine.
This will never be adopted of course, since there is a tremendous amount of deadwood in academia that would have to be pruned.
Jeffrey Lord: The New American Fascism
Writes Lord: *** In his classic Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises notes this of the Left. They are:
Von Mises is short and sweet about all of this. This is fascism. The “principle of dictatorial oppression of all dissenters.”
Every single person on the list above has, in his or her own life — American lives one and all — been made a target of what is in fact the New Fascism. The direct intent of their opponents — whether groups like Color of Change or GLAAD or CAIR or CredoMobilize is not to disagree or debate. It isn’t to convince. It is about, in Von Mises’s words, “the dictatorial oppression of all dissenters.” ***