Jonathan— great piece. We just had the dei operation shit down at New College. In this case, they wanted no interference with right wing board. Have enjoyed seeing you talk about Jimmy Carter. Even found my peanut button from the Chicago campaign 👏
Great interview, if depressing. I spend part of the year ten blocks from New College, which DeSantis is savaging, and I look at all our yard signs defending academic freedom and feel…pitiable.
Yesterday, though, I found myself behind a car with a lot of pro-DeSantis bumper stickers, one of which read “Don’t New York my Florida!” So I pulled alongside, honked and smiled and waved, and then politely asked to go ahead of him, which he nicely agreed to. Then he had to follow my NY license plates on my NY Subaru for ten blocks of very slow traffic. Just being friendly.
I applaud this article. Most of what I read bores me to tears. Nietzsche used to say that a good writer says in 10 sentences what other people fail to say in a book, and his sage counsel is usually rejected. (And I must concede that this post is no model of conciseness)
This piece is damn good because in addition to being truthful and fair, it is both wickedly left of center and wickedly right of center.
So much of what I read adheres to the dogma of either the staid and predictable and slightly prissy left or the dogma of the histrionic, hateful and Hunn-like Right.
This article veers to the "right" in attacking Wokism, but it also adheres to the Left by noting that Wokism is fueled by capitalism's subversion of education: To Get more students, universities will teach the favorite poisons of the day. This reminds us that the market, contrary to the Republican delusion, is certainly not a solution to all our ills.
Nice piece. I'm a Black woman civlil rights lawyer and I am horrified by what is happening on some campuses. The law professor at the University of Illinois who recently was disciplined for using an abbreviation or cover term for "the N word" (itself a bad construction from good motives) in an employment discrimination class is another egregious example. These kids are going to have terrible shocks when they get out in the real world. Worse, this is bad tactics and makes serious civil rights issues into a joke that can be dismissed as "cancel culture." I've been doing this for over 30 years and I still don't know what people mean by the term DEI (probably, many things). It seems to be turning into at best a gauzy label that includes everybody but able bodied, straight White men who didn't serve in the military and at worst, a cudgel to silence those who might ask questions.
To a greater or lesser degree, any student body in an institution is a pluralistic aggregation of thoughts, beliefs, heritages, histories, religions (or non-religions), associations, orientations, backgrounds, and perspectives. How then does a faculty member tread that thicket to avoid offense? It's impossible. Scholarly activities should not be allowed to be actionable by students or DEI counselors.
Infantilizing college students is the last thing the academy should be doing. As a former student radical I am horrified by this decline in academic freedom and academic standards. Thank you, Jonathan for this important post.
How ironic, that those of us promoting civil LIBERTIES must now be on guard against obsessively "woke" liberals who are determined to snuff out the freedom to be "wrong"in the name of promoting their tyrannical "DEI."
And amply providing the pseudo-conservative statists with ammo for their own nonsense.
It's so confusing. It makes me just want to go lie down and eat donuts.
So this is really a cover for racism. I ll be dropping my subscription. Enjoy your all white environment. I don’t
Good stuff
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/george-orwells-politics-and-the-english
Jonathan— great piece. We just had the dei operation shit down at New College. In this case, they wanted no interference with right wing board. Have enjoyed seeing you talk about Jimmy Carter. Even found my peanut button from the Chicago campaign 👏
Great interview, if depressing. I spend part of the year ten blocks from New College, which DeSantis is savaging, and I look at all our yard signs defending academic freedom and feel…pitiable.
Yesterday, though, I found myself behind a car with a lot of pro-DeSantis bumper stickers, one of which read “Don’t New York my Florida!” So I pulled alongside, honked and smiled and waved, and then politely asked to go ahead of him, which he nicely agreed to. Then he had to follow my NY license plates on my NY Subaru for ten blocks of very slow traffic. Just being friendly.
I applaud this article. Most of what I read bores me to tears. Nietzsche used to say that a good writer says in 10 sentences what other people fail to say in a book, and his sage counsel is usually rejected. (And I must concede that this post is no model of conciseness)
This piece is damn good because in addition to being truthful and fair, it is both wickedly left of center and wickedly right of center.
So much of what I read adheres to the dogma of either the staid and predictable and slightly prissy left or the dogma of the histrionic, hateful and Hunn-like Right.
This article veers to the "right" in attacking Wokism, but it also adheres to the Left by noting that Wokism is fueled by capitalism's subversion of education: To Get more students, universities will teach the favorite poisons of the day. This reminds us that the market, contrary to the Republican delusion, is certainly not a solution to all our ills.
Excellent piece. Thank you.
Nice piece. I'm a Black woman civlil rights lawyer and I am horrified by what is happening on some campuses. The law professor at the University of Illinois who recently was disciplined for using an abbreviation or cover term for "the N word" (itself a bad construction from good motives) in an employment discrimination class is another egregious example. These kids are going to have terrible shocks when they get out in the real world. Worse, this is bad tactics and makes serious civil rights issues into a joke that can be dismissed as "cancel culture." I've been doing this for over 30 years and I still don't know what people mean by the term DEI (probably, many things). It seems to be turning into at best a gauzy label that includes everybody but able bodied, straight White men who didn't serve in the military and at worst, a cudgel to silence those who might ask questions.
To a greater or lesser degree, any student body in an institution is a pluralistic aggregation of thoughts, beliefs, heritages, histories, religions (or non-religions), associations, orientations, backgrounds, and perspectives. How then does a faculty member tread that thicket to avoid offense? It's impossible. Scholarly activities should not be allowed to be actionable by students or DEI counselors.
Infantilizing college students is the last thing the academy should be doing. As a former student radical I am horrified by this decline in academic freedom and academic standards. Thank you, Jonathan for this important post.
How ironic, that those of us promoting civil LIBERTIES must now be on guard against obsessively "woke" liberals who are determined to snuff out the freedom to be "wrong"in the name of promoting their tyrannical "DEI."
And amply providing the pseudo-conservative statists with ammo for their own nonsense.
It's so confusing. It makes me just want to go lie down and eat donuts.
H. Watkins Ellerson