The conformity gauntlet is most similar to the Red Guard struggle sessions of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Commissars are groomed from a young age to become the sunrise movement antifa blm protestors blocking roads and tearing down statues. Millions of teachers are doing what Mao and his red book used to do: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/sunrise-movement-maos-red-greta-green-guards
That was my reaction to some stuff that went on at a boarding school I worked at. But not just students. Faculty reeducation as well. And the most like the struggle sessions was when you had to have those meetings with the students as the inquisitors. Never had to wear a dunce cap though. I would have resigned first.
It's not just teachers who encourage a new red guard. Today's internet culture entices students to become online moderators. Students, or anyone else, can then shadow ban anyone with whom they disagree: https://www.removednews.com/p/hate-online-censorship-its-way-worse
This is different from transparent content moderation, which notifies users of removals. With shadow banning, your comment is removed, you won't be notified, and the comment still appears to you as if it is not removed. Most people never notice when it happens which is what makes it so pernicious and, unfortunately, widespread.
DEI statements functioned as litmus tests in my current English PhD at Virginia Tech...and appear on most English/writing professor job flyers. It’s discouraging to say the least. Despite all of my efforts to understand social justice paradigm and attempt believing it, to question my possible role perpetuating r/Racism, to honestly question the limits of DEI ideology and antiracism since 2015 at chaffey college (when I was a member of the multicultural committee and underwent my first American struggle session), my open inquiry was regularly labeled as whiteness, as privilege, and made me start questioning my intelligence and ability to apprehend reality. Such demanded orthodoxy has decreased my motivation to research and complete my PhD. I have 2 MAs and desperately wish to teach viewpoint diversity and FIRE’s mission full time as a writing instructor...but I think my discipline has killed that dream for me. All cuz I refuse to conform to their flawed, essentializing, reductivist, Othering identity-based roles for me. When will English professors acknowledge the limitations of DEI paradigm, of social justice ideology, of antiracism to resolve racial or gendered injustices? Or realize these paradigms distort reality into mistakenly defining the problems in the first place?
I am so sorry to hear that, but I hear things like it a lot. I am not sure some departments have any interest in saving themselves from dogma and unwarranted certainty.
Seems you’re right, that most research and hiring and teaching incentives align to maintain dogma and unwarranted certainty. Since you hear similar anecdotes to my own, how do those individuals find the will to continue working? Or do they find ennobling work on the other side of education? Have any educators you know successfully promoted FIRE and HxA viewpoint diversity principles in classrooms, departments, and colleges?
To reform this orthodox seminary-style predicament, I would recommend directing federal funding for RAD initiatives because that could prevent research and tenure from being based on non-generalizable case studies as my discipline is now, make RAD part of tenure if tenure remains in tact, hell require a professor to actually reproduce another person’s study in their field (not their original research), so that even if it fails, they can confidently articulate why via a form of scientific methodological process and logic. Verify research results to weed out bad data, bad use of data, to focus on what data does for otherwise theoretical scholarship.
It’s not only the crisis of modern science and quantum mechanics but rhetoric and writing scholarship: too much theory gives place for and normalizes dogma and orthodoxy.
That's pretty sad. We are seeing the same in healthcare. The give-away to their devious plan is that DEI ONLY focuses on diversity in powerful, male dominated fields. They never evaluate female dominated fields like nursing, counseling and HR. I pointed this out in a public forum and it elicited a vicious fire storm. Mostly from young college aged women.
The institution trained medical professionals. For the last three years I've seen maybe 1 white male intern out 10 interns. I questioned the selection office about this & was met with astonishment that I would ask. I would note that the head of the selection committee was a black women.
The vicious firestorm is unwarranted but is so because every gender and race other than white male occupies the numerator of the new liberatory binary. Good on your for having the courage to comment then and later inquire about internship demographics. Since 2018, every question I ask that could be perceived to lessen faith in DEI or antiracism or social justice is met with similar vitriol from grad students and professors. My experience has shown me that the going academic narrative is that the male (white male) must be removed or at least subordinated. Not only do past white people occupy the denominator of this racially bigoted binary, but I am made to act like it in my coursework and scholarship to this day.
For example, English scholarship practices citation justice, which encourages scholars to only cite people of color and not white males, or even white females, as an equitable racial and gender corrective to millenia of oppression (from Aristotle to Kenneth Burke). Prof. Sano-Franchini, program chair and my former professor, wrote the CFP theme for the 2024 Conference on College Composition and Communication that calls in part for citation justice of all submissions. She also equates predominantly white presence in places like conference host city Spokane as therefore white supremacist. How reductivist and essentializing? It is because no one challenges this viewpoint in my discipline and white people in my field promote this crap. https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/call-2024.
One would think they could promote native Spokane populations without demeaning white people in such a generalizing way. But, they have refuted their postmodern skepticism of meta-narratives in favor of a new totalizing, universalizing meta-narrative that sloppily skewers normal white people as white supremacists. Keep sharing your healthcare experiences with us!
I thought healthcare was difficult but it sounds like its nothing compared to academia.. Maybe the difference is that the doctor or nurse taking care of your loved one is incompetent.
I know this is a common analogy, but it does seem like Mao's cultural revolution. The difference being that radical blacks and radical feminist have used ideology (Critical Race Theory) as a cudgel. Its been a way to seize power and its been very successful.
It will take a long time for heterosexual white men to achieve equality in the workplace again. Once radical groups get into power, they do not give it up willingly. They become the standard. Academia, with its strong liberal leanings was fertile ground to use guilt to achieve their aims.
I remember a male professor telling me that he helped set up a woman's studies program in a small college in the early 80's. After the first year, the radical feminist drove him out and took over. He regretted not standing up to them at the time. He mistakenly thought it wasn't worth the trouble.
The FIRE organization gives me hope.. The only way to fight this pernicious movement is for white people (particularly white men) to overcome their fear and speak out.. Its not easy and will come at a price. However, we are living with the price of self-censorship or apathy.
We are absolutely living with the price of self-censorship and apathy. 💯 Medicine’s biology and quantitative base has slowed or blunted the orthodox intrusion imo. My discipline...well, it does contain many theories and pedagogies that if implemented would correct for this orthodoxy. But we left grounding theory in reality 2-3 decades ago. So ideology, the righteous mind, power, and orthodoxy reign supreme. The revolutionaries work WITH institutions until they can take them over or supplant them like your male professor’s experience. Everyone in my field wishes to change culture, including me...but I champion viewpoint diversity to correct social ills. They preach male white supremacy pervades all. No joke. May healthcare remain sane...
I just wanted to clarify that because the head of selection was a black woman, does not mean she was woke or got her job for that reason. I don't have that information. I mentioned it because black women are one the groups that benefit from this policy. Which could influence her perspective that DEI is a beneficial policy. I got the impression she supported it.
"By relentlessly zeroing in on those children most super-optimized for the perfect college app, and faculty with the most box-checking CVs, the fanciest institutions have spent decades selecting not for real intellectual passion and curiosity but eager apple-polishing, hoop-jumping, and grant-earning conformity."
I am a librarian at a rural community college, and when I was hired in 2010 I was required to come up with a diversity statement. Coming from a public library background, I was unfamiliar with such things and was somewhat insulted that anyone would question my commitment to the librarian credo of helping everyone who comes along, regardless of race, religion, or smell.
I entered an environment that has become more enthusiastic and committed to DEI every year, so I presume it's exponentially more so at the university level. Of course, much of it is performative and happens at the level of conferences, expensive events, and using fashionable terminology. A couple of years ago they stopped the bus service after 4 p.m., from a campus that closes at 6 p.m. and is in the middle of nowhere. This is an actual equity issue but nobody seems to be planning to fix it.
The conformity gauntlet is most similar to the Red Guard struggle sessions of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Commissars are groomed from a young age to become the sunrise movement antifa blm protestors blocking roads and tearing down statues. Millions of teachers are doing what Mao and his red book used to do: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/sunrise-movement-maos-red-greta-green-guards
That was my reaction to some stuff that went on at a boarding school I worked at. But not just students. Faculty reeducation as well. And the most like the struggle sessions was when you had to have those meetings with the students as the inquisitors. Never had to wear a dunce cap though. I would have resigned first.
It's not just teachers who encourage a new red guard. Today's internet culture entices students to become online moderators. Students, or anyone else, can then shadow ban anyone with whom they disagree: https://www.removednews.com/p/hate-online-censorship-its-way-worse
This is different from transparent content moderation, which notifies users of removals. With shadow banning, your comment is removed, you won't be notified, and the comment still appears to you as if it is not removed. Most people never notice when it happens which is what makes it so pernicious and, unfortunately, widespread.
DEI statements functioned as litmus tests in my current English PhD at Virginia Tech...and appear on most English/writing professor job flyers. It’s discouraging to say the least. Despite all of my efforts to understand social justice paradigm and attempt believing it, to question my possible role perpetuating r/Racism, to honestly question the limits of DEI ideology and antiracism since 2015 at chaffey college (when I was a member of the multicultural committee and underwent my first American struggle session), my open inquiry was regularly labeled as whiteness, as privilege, and made me start questioning my intelligence and ability to apprehend reality. Such demanded orthodoxy has decreased my motivation to research and complete my PhD. I have 2 MAs and desperately wish to teach viewpoint diversity and FIRE’s mission full time as a writing instructor...but I think my discipline has killed that dream for me. All cuz I refuse to conform to their flawed, essentializing, reductivist, Othering identity-based roles for me. When will English professors acknowledge the limitations of DEI paradigm, of social justice ideology, of antiracism to resolve racial or gendered injustices? Or realize these paradigms distort reality into mistakenly defining the problems in the first place?
I am so sorry to hear that, but I hear things like it a lot. I am not sure some departments have any interest in saving themselves from dogma and unwarranted certainty.
Seems you’re right, that most research and hiring and teaching incentives align to maintain dogma and unwarranted certainty. Since you hear similar anecdotes to my own, how do those individuals find the will to continue working? Or do they find ennobling work on the other side of education? Have any educators you know successfully promoted FIRE and HxA viewpoint diversity principles in classrooms, departments, and colleges?
To reform this orthodox seminary-style predicament, I would recommend directing federal funding for RAD initiatives because that could prevent research and tenure from being based on non-generalizable case studies as my discipline is now, make RAD part of tenure if tenure remains in tact, hell require a professor to actually reproduce another person’s study in their field (not their original research), so that even if it fails, they can confidently articulate why via a form of scientific methodological process and logic. Verify research results to weed out bad data, bad use of data, to focus on what data does for otherwise theoretical scholarship.
It’s not only the crisis of modern science and quantum mechanics but rhetoric and writing scholarship: too much theory gives place for and normalizes dogma and orthodoxy.
That's pretty sad. We are seeing the same in healthcare. The give-away to their devious plan is that DEI ONLY focuses on diversity in powerful, male dominated fields. They never evaluate female dominated fields like nursing, counseling and HR. I pointed this out in a public forum and it elicited a vicious fire storm. Mostly from young college aged women.
The institution trained medical professionals. For the last three years I've seen maybe 1 white male intern out 10 interns. I questioned the selection office about this & was met with astonishment that I would ask. I would note that the head of the selection committee was a black women.
The vicious firestorm is unwarranted but is so because every gender and race other than white male occupies the numerator of the new liberatory binary. Good on your for having the courage to comment then and later inquire about internship demographics. Since 2018, every question I ask that could be perceived to lessen faith in DEI or antiracism or social justice is met with similar vitriol from grad students and professors. My experience has shown me that the going academic narrative is that the male (white male) must be removed or at least subordinated. Not only do past white people occupy the denominator of this racially bigoted binary, but I am made to act like it in my coursework and scholarship to this day.
For example, English scholarship practices citation justice, which encourages scholars to only cite people of color and not white males, or even white females, as an equitable racial and gender corrective to millenia of oppression (from Aristotle to Kenneth Burke). Prof. Sano-Franchini, program chair and my former professor, wrote the CFP theme for the 2024 Conference on College Composition and Communication that calls in part for citation justice of all submissions. She also equates predominantly white presence in places like conference host city Spokane as therefore white supremacist. How reductivist and essentializing? It is because no one challenges this viewpoint in my discipline and white people in my field promote this crap. https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/call-2024.
One would think they could promote native Spokane populations without demeaning white people in such a generalizing way. But, they have refuted their postmodern skepticism of meta-narratives in favor of a new totalizing, universalizing meta-narrative that sloppily skewers normal white people as white supremacists. Keep sharing your healthcare experiences with us!
I thought healthcare was difficult but it sounds like its nothing compared to academia.. Maybe the difference is that the doctor or nurse taking care of your loved one is incompetent.
I know this is a common analogy, but it does seem like Mao's cultural revolution. The difference being that radical blacks and radical feminist have used ideology (Critical Race Theory) as a cudgel. Its been a way to seize power and its been very successful.
It will take a long time for heterosexual white men to achieve equality in the workplace again. Once radical groups get into power, they do not give it up willingly. They become the standard. Academia, with its strong liberal leanings was fertile ground to use guilt to achieve their aims.
I remember a male professor telling me that he helped set up a woman's studies program in a small college in the early 80's. After the first year, the radical feminist drove him out and took over. He regretted not standing up to them at the time. He mistakenly thought it wasn't worth the trouble.
The FIRE organization gives me hope.. The only way to fight this pernicious movement is for white people (particularly white men) to overcome their fear and speak out.. Its not easy and will come at a price. However, we are living with the price of self-censorship or apathy.
We are absolutely living with the price of self-censorship and apathy. 💯 Medicine’s biology and quantitative base has slowed or blunted the orthodox intrusion imo. My discipline...well, it does contain many theories and pedagogies that if implemented would correct for this orthodoxy. But we left grounding theory in reality 2-3 decades ago. So ideology, the righteous mind, power, and orthodoxy reign supreme. The revolutionaries work WITH institutions until they can take them over or supplant them like your male professor’s experience. Everyone in my field wishes to change culture, including me...but I champion viewpoint diversity to correct social ills. They preach male white supremacy pervades all. No joke. May healthcare remain sane...
I just wanted to clarify that because the head of selection was a black woman, does not mean she was woke or got her job for that reason. I don't have that information. I mentioned it because black women are one the groups that benefit from this policy. Which could influence her perspective that DEI is a beneficial policy. I got the impression she supported it.
"By relentlessly zeroing in on those children most super-optimized for the perfect college app, and faculty with the most box-checking CVs, the fanciest institutions have spent decades selecting not for real intellectual passion and curiosity but eager apple-polishing, hoop-jumping, and grant-earning conformity."
https://ivyexile.substack.com/p/cracking-the-prestige-cartel
Harvard student body to the T.
I am a librarian at a rural community college, and when I was hired in 2010 I was required to come up with a diversity statement. Coming from a public library background, I was unfamiliar with such things and was somewhat insulted that anyone would question my commitment to the librarian credo of helping everyone who comes along, regardless of race, religion, or smell.
I entered an environment that has become more enthusiastic and committed to DEI every year, so I presume it's exponentially more so at the university level. Of course, much of it is performative and happens at the level of conferences, expensive events, and using fashionable terminology. A couple of years ago they stopped the bus service after 4 p.m., from a campus that closes at 6 p.m. and is in the middle of nowhere. This is an actual equity issue but nobody seems to be planning to fix it.
Very interesting, thank you. I was turned off from grad school for similar reasons.
See this new book, intro here: https://brownstone.org/articles/the-real-purge-in-academia/
Thank you for sharing this!
Indoctrination for student and teacher alike! Huzzah modern civ.!
In the middle of the book now. Great book.
It isn't so much that tenure is ineffective in protecting faculty from "mobbish fads" as it is that the faculty itself is the mob.
Outside academia in the real world of aircraft and other stuff that’s bolted together:
Boeing: Go woke. Implement DEI. Hire unqualified incompetents based on their race and sex. Planes fall apart. Kill hundreds of people. Go broke.