I’m going to post the whole thing because … because … I’m in awe (and not in a good way) …
Remember now, this is the nation’s number one ranked public university:
We are calling for an occupation of syllabi in the social sciences and humanities. This call to action was instigated by our experience last semester as students in an upper-division course on classical social theory. Grades were based primarily on multiple-choice quizzes on assigned readings. The course syllabus employed a standardized canon of theory that began with Plato and Aristotle, then jumped to modern philosophers: Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, Marx, Weber and Foucault, all of whom are white men. The syllabus did not include a single woman or person of color.
We have major concerns about social theory courses in which white men are the only authors assigned. These courses pretend that a minuscule fraction of humanity — economically privileged white males from five imperial countries (England, France, Germany, Italy and the United States) — are the only people to produce valid knowledge about the world. This is absurd. The white male syllabus excludes all knowledge produced outside this standardized canon, silencing the perspectives of the other 99 percent of humanity.
The white male canon is not sufficient for theorizing the lives of marginalized people. None of the thinkers we studied in this course had a robust analysis of gender or racial oppression. They did not even engage with the enduring legacies of European colonial expansion, the enslavement of black people and the genocide of indigenous people in the Americas. Mentions of race and gender in the white male canon are at best incomplete and at worst racist and sexist. We were required to read Hegel on the “Oriental realm” and Marx on the “Asiatic mode of production,” but not a single author from Asia. We were required to read Weber on the patriarchy, but not a single feminist author. The standardized canon is obsolete: Any introduction to social theory that aims to be relevant to today’s problems must, at the very least, address gender and racial oppression.
The exclusions on the syllabus were mirrored in the classroom. Although the professor said he wanted to make the theory relevant to present issues, the class was out of touch with the majority of students’ lives. The lectures often incorporated current events, yet none of the examples engaged critically with gender or race. The professor even failed to mention the Ferguson events, even though he lectured about prisons, normalizing discourse and the carceral archipelago in Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish” the day after the grand jury decision on the murder of Michael Brown.
Furthermore, the classroom environment felt so hostile to women, people of color, queer folks and other marginalized subjects that it was difficult for us to focus on the course material. Sometimes, we were so uncomfortable that we had to leave the classroom in the middle of lecture. For example, when lecturing on Marx’s idea of the “natural division of labor between men and women,” the professor attributed some intellectual merit to this idea because men and women are biologically distinct from each other, because women give birth while men do not. One student asked, “What about trans* people?” to which the professor retorted, “There will always be exceptions.” Then, laughing, the professor teased, “We may all be transgender in the future.” Although one might be tempted to dismiss these remarks as a harmless attempt at humor, mocking trans* people and calling them “exceptions” is unacceptable.
This was not an isolated incident. In another lecture, the professor cited the highly racialized case of the Hurricane Katrina fallout as an example of people in a poor, brutish, Hobbesian “state of nature.” Moreover, he talked about Native American traditions and beliefs as examples of illogical and irrational superstition. All of these incidents are connected to a larger systemic problem with inclusion in classroom spaces at UC Berkeley. In the 2013 campus climate survey, 26 percent of respondents reported that they had personally experienced exclusionary, intimidating, offensive and/or hostile conduct. The survey also found that marginalized students, such as trans* and black students, had experienced exclusionary conduct at rates much higher than average.
We need to create classroom spaces where everyone can feel welcome. We recommend that instructors attend workshops on inclusivity in the classroom, such as those offered by the Gender Equity Resource Center. Beyond that, we must restructure the way social theory is taught. We must dismantle the tyranny of the white male syllabus. We must demand the inclusion of women, people of color and LGBTQ* authors on our curricula. We must break, systematically and explicitly, the epistemological assumptions on which this exclusionary education rests.
So, if you have taken classes in the social sciences and humanities, we challenge you: Count the readings authored by white males and those authored by the majority of humanity. Then ask yourself: Are your identities and the identities of people you love reflected on these syllabi? Whose perspectives and life experiences are excluded? Is it really worth it to accumulate debt for such an epistemically poor education?
Rodrigo Kazuo and Meg Perret are students at UC Berkeley. Perret is also an intern at the Gender Equity Resource Center.
Just another example that colleges and universities are not about education but are indoctrination centers.
Until the Holy Victim Studies Departments of the UC system are closed, taxpayer money should be withdrawn. And the parents of such precious hothouse flowers need to be publicly shamed.
(h/t Glenn Reynolds)
eff the hysterical warming thumpers. go away little grrl
Until The Whole World Hears
Jesus, Friend of Sinners
Casting Crowns – Jesus, Friend Of Sinners (with lyrics)
Perfect fodder to be in the 6 week immersion course at Midwest Academy. Get their vo-ed activist certificate and then they’re ready for the exciting, high flying world of Campaign Strategist – Internationale Central Committee Gopher – Jr. Grade.
Praise You In The Storm
Shelter From the Storm
Steely Dan – Your Gold Teeth II
Any Major Dude Will Tell You
Self-centered little bastards.
Tired of hearing squirming Muslims and vacuous leftists telling you “the majority of Muslims are peaceful”?
Introduce them to the concept of active relevancy.
even if they get rid of the icky whiteness you still wouldn’t want to go to a hyper-violent failshit American university
not unless you wanna get raped silly by penises and such
These courses pretend that a minuscule fraction of humanity — economically privileged white males from five imperial countries (England, France, Germany, Italy and the United States) — are the only people to produce valid knowledge about the world
Those great Italian-Americans, Plato and Aristotle.
Call them stupid publicly along with their supporters. Stigmatize them for the remainder of their lives and careers as being too clueless to teach and consider sending them back for remedial high school courses before they can take further classes.
This is ridiculous so ridicule them and make it painful and long lasting.
Seriously we don’t know how “white” Aristotle was much less have any “non white” equivalent of any value to offer in his place.
The answer to this is not compromise, it is “No. Fuck you, you idiot.” a door slamming in a face, a phone hung up and a poster of “this guy is an idiot listen to what the idiot said and thinks” hung up in the class room and on the college web pages.
“Yes, there are dumb questions.”
BTW, it’s funny we never seem to see these sorts of open letters from students studying math, chemistry, physics or engineering. I wonder why that is?
Although, to be fair, when I was in grad school studying German literature, I recall being troubled by the lack of WOC authors in my Middle High German Literature class.
Boche bastards.
I saw this yesterday and assumed it was bad satire. If these sophomores turn out to be in earnest, then they need to go back to high school.
I thought it was bad satire because way back in college I wrote a particularly bad satiric op-ed advocating for the expansion of the smoking section in one of the cafeterias. You know, smokers eat less, people don’t like to eat in smoky places, college saves money on food. Ha. Ha. It didn’t go over, and since that day I’ve realized that if you have to publish a note explaining that your previous op-ed was a satire, you’re not a good satirist. Nowadays I amuse myself by trying to draw a penis in every whiteboard presentation I do, it’s more intellectually rewarding.
[…] Protein Wisdom: “We must dismantle the tyranny of the white male syllabus.” […]
It’s California where you can surf the amber waves of stupid emanating from Berkley.
I thought it had to be satire too…
I mean, the supposed tyranny of a white male syllabus, one that’s “hostile” to people of color and the LGBTQ community, that includes Michael Foucault? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that…
Or the utter surprise that college students in a classical social theory course would study…classical social theorists? As for their demands of inclusion, their ignorance notwithstanding, these will most certainly be realized in courses on post-modern social theorists, or other graduate level coursework and seminars.
As a humble aerospace engineer, I can recall courses where the semester would begin with a hundred or more in a class, and if all went well maybe-just maybe-have 30 or so by the end of that same term. And the professor would inform the body that such a result was a foregone conclusion at the beginning of the term! So if you want to talk about a class where one didn’t feel welcomed, well, I can’t think of many less welcoming scenarios than that.
If what one’s studying is worthwhile, it usually isn’t easy. Having also studied a great deal of philosophy myself, as sort of an intellectual respite from the cold logic of numbers, I recognize the difficulty in wrapping one’s brain around some of the writings of the scholars named. I might suggest not making one’s chosen field any more difficult by the intellectual obstacle of a self-imposed negativity due to some perceived, contrived multi-cultural slight.
And one more bit of advice for these multi-culti-heroes. If you’re going to embrace an academic discipline, then you should do so wholeheartedly and seriously. None of the classical scholars mentioned were from either the US or Italy, though some may have sojourned in the latter during parts of their lives. Knowing the subject matters; especially if you’re writing an editorial for a widely read publication.
Over the years since the 1968 coup by the New Left the dessicated skin of “liberal” which they donned then as cover has grown tattered and thin. The gibbering monster within is showing. Now is the time that the argument must be made that the monster is the aberration and that the skin is not just a cloak but the real Party and always has been.
That argument is as frayed and tattered as the paper thin skin it is proclaiming as the healthy whole of the Party.
Morons love and appreciate morons, for in morons they recognize themselves: nothing characterizes human eros better than love of one’s own.
What an Italian had to say about it: Machiavelli to Vettori, Dec. 10, 1513
*** […] When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study. At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for. There I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I forget every pain, I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me. I deliver myself entirely to them. And because Dante says that to have understood without retaining does not make knowledge, I have noted what capital I have made from their conversation and have composed a little work De Principatibus [On Principalities], where I delve as deeply as I can into reflections on this subject, debating what a principality is, of what kinds they are, how they are acquired, how they are maintained, why they are lost. And if you have ever been pleased by any of my whimsies, this one should not displease you; and to a prince, and especially to a new prince, it should be welcome. So I am addressing it to his Magnificence, Giuliano. Filippo Casavecchia has seen it; he can give you an account in part both of the thing in itself and of the discussions I had with him, although I am all the time fattening and polishing it. […] ***
They’re not really serious. The whole thing is just an attempt to gin up enough outrage such that the administration feels compelled to offer mandatory sensitivity training to students and faculty. Training that — coincidentally enough — will be supervised by members of the complainants’ fellow travelers.
It’s really nothing more than a ham-handed attempt to bring prestige and additional do-nothing jobs to the Angry Studies group, and to try to show that they have the power to force everyone else to bend to their will. It should be called out for what it is, and held up for derision for its clumsiness.
Honestly, if it weren’t part of a truly toxic larger campaign, one could almost find it charming in its naivety.
I’ve gotten to the point where every time I hear the word “empowered”, I throw up a little in the back of my mouth.
Is it just me?
From about 15 months ago at Belmont Club which relates to the students at Berkley and the Chait piece I linked above.
I would say, “open up your own damn university if you do not like the curriculum”.
I am sure lots of people would take out loans to be educated at Dumb Ass University.
DAU Handing out useless degrees since 2015.
Thus, you can never convince a liberal by logical argument; one can only convert them by religious counter-experience.
I’ll go along with Fernandez and Horowitz as far as characterizing the Left as a cult, but I think they really exaggerate the depth with which most of the cultists hold their beliefs. It’s hardly necessary to present an alternative religion to them, in hopes of converting them. Far easier — and, I suspect, more effective — to just laugh at them. Half the shit that comes out of their mouths is ridiculous, and yet they are hardly ever ridiculed for it. This needs to change.
The lo-info cattle and the trendy hipster douches will jump ship in an eyeblink, once they’ve gotten a whiff of uncoolness. They fear uncoolness more than they fear death itself.
Depth might reflect on another trait. Namely, consistency. But consistency internalized would mean the political left would hold itself to the suppositions and aims it declares to make. It would look carefully in the mirror. William Voegeli has recently published a book (The Pity Party) taking the political left to task for precisely this failure. So for instance, claims to “care” deeply about the plight of the poor, say, are not accompanied by concerns regarding the abject failure of policies purportedly implemented to ease that plight, but which in practice turn out to merely increase it. Turns out the object isn’t the plight of the poor at all, but of power acquisition and power retention on the political left.
So depth would be a kind of distraction from what actually counts.
This ain’t America no more.
There are three ways that you can get someone to work on your side.
The carrot, you buy their “loyalty” which works until your money or other thing of value runs out or they get a better offer.
The stick, where you coerce them to obey you which works until they figure out a way to run away or kill you. This one can over time cause those who live under the thumb to come to love their jailers and change into true believers.
Lastly there are those who have learned, been taught, to love you, believe in your cause. They are yours as long as you are seen as a true believer yourself, by them.
The Left uses all three methods but their leaders, whatever their real motivation, must be seen as believers themselves. A Caesar’s wife like thing.
The students are getting both the stick and the carrot in the hope that they will become believers by the time they leave the University nest. Only then will it become clearer which are believers-true. Inside they will, almost, all parrot what gains group approval and avoids the shunning/shaming that are the main stick used.
Turns out the object isn’t the plight of the poor at all, but of power acquisition and power retention on the political left.
Among the leaders, sure. Among the useful idiot foot soldiers, I think it’s more accurate to say that they’re more motivated by feeling good than by doing good. The whole enterprise has been set up to make the shallow thinkers believe that simply mouthing the right words makes them “good” people, and so they get to enjoy the warm glow of righteousness without ever doing anything useful. The whipped cream on this little sundae is that they get to excoriate all the “bad” people whom they force to fund their idiot schemes, because the “bad” people aren’t cheerful enough about turning over their hard-earned pay. The cherry on the whipped cream on the sundae is that they get to point and laugh at all the religious types who actually volunteer their time and treasure to serve the less fortunate. Honestly — when was the last time you saw a hipster volunteering at a soup kitchen?
In the end, the con men become the saints because they mean well, and the suckers they fleece are painted as the sinners. Can’t tell you how happy that makes me every day.
At Berkley the insanity continues.
Apparently the feminization of the (para)Psychology Department at Columbia University has begun.
Yeah, this is a top university, surely.
A thirty-page paper this ain’t. What sad losers.
Upper-division course on classical social theory, they say. In the form we all remember as a “pop quiz”.
In what part of a multiple choice quiz do you form an interesting thesis and then defend such through intensive research presented in a persuasive manner?
Yeah, top university.
[Insert fart noise.]
It took a while, but I just dismantled the white male syllabus . What’s next? Cut the blue wire or the green???
Boom!
commie news
Raul Castro: U.S. must return Guantanamo for normal relations
Holy Moly
Some one 5150 this woman NOW!
What was the blogger coined term for the bias where for instance a Doctor mistrusts the press ability to report accurately on medicine and tangential issues to that, but still assumes they do a good job reporting in other fields like law, history, crime astronomy, etc?
I used to know it but have forgotten it. Google has been no help in finding it. I think it was a syndrome like Stockholm syndrome named for the guy who brought the tendency up as a topic at lunch.
Michael Crichton, “The Gell-Mann Effect.”
Entire speech in pdf form.
In the spirit of bh above. The rot starts at the “K.”
From geoffb’s link:
No, they are being indoctrinated to live by feelings, not thinkings. Cattle what think are nothin’ but trouble.
Students sign up for a class on Aristotle and are shocked that they will be taught about Aristotle.
You know, I used to read the class descriptions in detail BEFORE I signed up. I guess that that’s just more of my cisheternormative patriarchy talking.
Oh, they knew they were going to be taught about Aristotle. They’re just pissed he wasn’t given hemlock. They’re also pissed Socrates’s ideas couldn’t have been given hemlock along with him.
Didn’t Jesse Jackson dismantle the white male syllabus at Stanford back in the 80s? Jesus, is everything old new again?
You’re recalling Lorena Bobbitt, Ernst. Brought on no doubt by that giant kitty Katy Perry was riding at halftime.
Beating on a corpse isn’t the strongest argument that the corpse is a vicious threat, eh?