April 19, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
The INSANITY of Our
Educational System and the Abolition of Our Culture
Friends,
Not mentioned in the Mainstream Media—and hardly noted on
Fox (I only heard it spoken of once)—was a recent episode, a message by a major
writer for The New York Times which
symbolizes not just the sorry state of our communications and journalistic
media, but, ultimately, the abject failure of our higher educational system:
indeed, the two go hand-in-hand. And that failure, let me suggest, has
redounded to the extreme advantage of the progressivist far Left politically
and culturally, and, in large part, has been produced by it.
Here is the episode: on Thursday (April
18) the news surfaced that the White House had played the famous song, “Edelweiss,”
at some function. Learning this, top tier White House New York Times reporter, Maggie Haberman furiously tweeted: "Does...anyone
at that White House understand the significance of that song?” [ https://pjmedia.com/trending/new-york-times-white-house-correspondent-thinks-edelweiss-is-a-nazi-anthem/ ]
As PJ Media pointed out, Haberman’s tweet suggested
that Trump was outing himself as pro-Nazi by playing the song at the White
House. Yet, as anyone—anyone—with a minimal knowledge of famous and classic Hollywood
films will recall, the song “Edelweiss” comes from the superb musical, The Sound of Music (1965), about the
attack of the Nazis against Austria, and was sung precisely to symbolize opposition to them and as a clarion call
to liberty. No matter, when called out on
her historical ignorance, Haberman doubled down (she may have been thinking
about a more recent film where the song shows up, but even then a Nazi connection
is not really present.)
Should we be surprised?
Not at all. Consider who Haberman is: Educated at the
elite Sarah Lawrence College, she is the recipient of all sorts of prestigious awards
from an incestuous journalistic establishment (e.g., she received a Pulitzer
Prize for her “reporting” on the Trump White House!). In October 2016, one month before Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the
U.S. presidential election, a document was released by WikiLeaks which showed that the Clinton campaign used Haberman to place
sympathetic stories in Politico. "[The Clinton campaign] has a
very good relationship with Maggie Haberman of Politico over the last year. We
have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed.
While we should have a larger conversation in the near future about a broader
strategy for reengaging the beat press that covers HRC, for this we think we
can achieve our objective and do the most shaping by going to Maggie."[Greenwald,
Glenn; The Intercept. (October 9,
2016). "EXCLUSIVE: New Email Leak Reveals Clinton
Campaign's Cozy Press Relationship"]
Haberman is a prime example of what emerges from our elite institutions
of higher learning these days. She is emblematic of those who, after an
exclusive Ivy League education, then proceed as if by Divine right to exercise authority
over the rest of us and what we think.
Her example can be multiplied in the many thousands. Those graduates
and newly-minted professionals are those who assume positions of leadership in
the American nation, new enlistments in the Deep State managerial class. A
major characteristic that unites them all is their condescension towards the
rest of us, the “deplorables,” those of us who live in “fly-over” country and
who were so ill-informed and uppity that we actually voted for Donald Trump in
2016. That characteristic, and the belief in their own infallibility.
But what is so glaringly evident and symbolic in Haberman’s tweet is
her real ignorance, that all the very “best” of Sarah Lawrence and Ivy League
education, all the veneer of elitist puffery, in the end only reveal that “the
king has no clothes” and that, at base, our academic system with its multiple
titles and awards is largely fraudulent.
I recently came across another example to illustrate this, a humorous
and satirical case which demonstrates not just the vacuity much of our higher
educational system but the impoverishment of much of what passes for
intellectual (and Leftist) thinking in our colleges. And the nearly complete, one-dimensional
humorlessness and lack of introspection on the part of today’s “social justice
warriors” who take themselves oh-so-seriously.
A
professor of philosophy at Portland State University, Peter Boghossian, recently
attempted to expose how ludicrous political correctness has become.
Unfortunately for him, his attempt succeeded all too well—and now he may be out
of a job.
I quote at length what the good professor attempted to
show:
Over the course
of a few years, Boghossian and two academics produced 20 hoax essays,
collectively called “the Grievance Studies” experiment, that were written to be
as ridiculous as possible and designed to appeal to small special interest
groups made up of mostly far-left scholars.
Seven of
Boghossian’s bogus studies were accepted for publication by social science
journals, including a feminist rewrite of Hitler’s Mein
Kampf. The journal Gender,
Place, and Culture bit on a piece claiming to study “canine rape culture.”
In that study,
Boghossian and his colleagues charged that, “dog parks are rape-condoning
spaces and a place of rampant canine rape culture and systemic oppression
against ‘the oppressed dog’ through which human attitudes to both problems can
be measured.” Boghossian’s team even claimed to have “tactfully inspected the
genitals of slightly fewer than 10,000 dogs whilst interrogating owners as to
their sexuality.”
In another
eagerly accepted article, the hoaxers demanded that the world of bodybuilding
recognize “fat bodybuilding, as a fat-inclusive politicized performance.”
For his efforts,
which once brought to light should have caused academia to engage in some
self-analysis, Portland State University moved to fire Boghossian.
“I truly hope the
administration puts its institutional weight behind the pursuit of truth, but
I’ve been given no indication that’s what they intend to do,” Boghossian said.
All of the
journals involved are part of the dubious field of “grievance studies.” Some in
the mainstream media attempted to rationalize and defend academia’s attachment
to the most extreme, and in these cases totally fabricated, areas of identity
politics that focus on gender and race.
A group of 11
Portland State professors and one graduate student published an anonymous letter
in the student newspaper Vanguard,
which featured a menacing image of Boghossian equipped with a Pinocchio nose.
They charged Boghossian’s team with repeated “fraudulent behavior violating
acceptable norms of research in any discipline” and castigated the beleaguered
professor for inviting James Damore, who was fired by Google for exercising his
right to free speech, to an event at the university.
“Boghossian has
not only indicated his less-than-collegial attitude through his hoaxes,” they
charged, “but has actively targeted faculty at other institutions. None of us
wish to contend with threats of death and assault from online trolls.”
Some in the
academic world displayed a degree of rationality. Yascha Mounk, a Harvard
lecturer in government, condemned what he viewed as unfair attempts to
undermine the hoaxers.
“Even if all of
the charges laid at the feet of Boghossian [and the two other authors] were
true, they would have demonstrated a very worrying fact,” Mounk wrote. “Some of
the leading journals in areas like gender studies have failed to distinguish
between real scholarship and intellectually vacuous as well as morally
troubling [expletive deleted].”
In a recent
YouTube video, Boghossian read out an email from Portland State, which
threatened an investigation and sanctions against him.
“I think that they will do
everything and anything in their power to get me out,” he stated. “And I think
this is the first shot in that.” [https://russia-insider.com/en/culture/epic-troll-professor-tricks-academic-journals-publishing-joke-papers/ri26156?ct=t(Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014)&mc_cid=7bea437df6&mc_eid=4e31a191e0
]
Boghossian merely demonstrated what is obvious: In today’s America,
satire is impossible while a frighteningly authoritarian political correctness
rules the day.
His case—continuing this commentary—is merely the latest example of
political correctness run amok on college campuses across the country. Recently, it was widely reported that Washington, D.C.’s American University
would be hosting a multisession seminar aimed at getting faculty to combat
“white language supremacy.” The seminar will also propose “alternative” methods
of assessing writing other than quality, such as “labor-based grading
contracts.”
While even the most unthreatening and lukewarm “conservative” voices
have been denied the opportunity to speak at various universities, some astonishingly
anti-white figures have been welcomed.
Christian evangelical Wheaton College, not a typical leftist
institution, permitted Emory University philosophy professor George Yancy to
speak there in 2017, in the esteemed Billy Graham Center on campus. His speech
was filled with expletives and hateful declarations like, “To be white is to be
racist.” Stephens College, a women’s college in Columbia, Mo., recently
announced that it will “admit and enroll students who were not born female, but
who identify and live as women.” All-women Mount Holyoke College canceled plans
to change its logo due to protests that it could be perceived as not being
inclusive to transgender students. [cf. American Free Press]
Well, the NC Gen. Assembly has got a bill going with bipartisan support that would mandate the teaching of the "standard" Holocaust narrative in public middle and high schools. Any thoughts on that?
ReplyDelete