Journalist Abigail Shrier spoke to Princeton University students at a private event on Wednesday, discussing everything from free speech and academic freedom to gender ideology and parental rights.
The talk was held at an off-campus venue, the location of which was revealed solely to RSVP’d guests just a few hours before the event due to “threats and harassment” organizers said were leveled against Shrier and student groups co-hosting the lecture.
Matthew Wilson, “Conservative journalist’s Princeton talk given in secret location as students protest, denounce event” at The College Fix (December 10, 2021)
Abigail Shrier is the author of Irreversible Damage (2021). Trans-activists don’t like it. So no one else at Princeton can hear what she has to say except in secret.
Threats? Harassment? And the local bullies were not rounded up and expelled?
Forget John Nash (surely an unperson now):
The new Woke U is more like Bret Weinstein’s old stamping grounds (utterly forgettable now except for the spectacular bullying):
Will Princeton be this soon? And the graduates will be poured out on the rest of us?
Those who vote for or fund it have consented by their actions.
You may also wish to read: How naturalism rots science from the head down
Wokers are NOT naturalists. They think human belief and human will power can change all facts of nature. That’s a spiritual worldview, basically Christianity in disguise.
Polistra claims that ‘wokeness’ is “basically Christianity in disguise.”
REALLY???
Perhaps Polistra should do just a little bit of research before he blurts out the first thing that pops into his head?
For instance, perhaps it might interest Polistra to know, far from being “basically Christianity in disguise”, that ‘wokeness’ is actually the ‘spiritual child’ of Marxism and Darwinism?
First off, Critical Theory was “conceived within the crucible of Marxism”,,,
And secondly, Darwinism provides the “basis in natural history” for the Marxist worldview. As Karl Marx himself observed, “This is the book (Origin of Species) which contains the basis in natural history for our view.”
Of additional note on the uneasy relationship between Darwinism, Postmodern Pragmatism, and Critical Theory.
And postmodern pragmatism is also, like Critical Theory, the bastard ‘spiritual child’ of Darwinism,
So while ‘wokeness’, as Polistra noted, may indeed be a ‘spiritual worldview’, it is, at its basis, a self-refuting spiritual worldview in that it denies the reality of spiritual realm altogether.
Which is, as should be needless to say, diametrically opposed to Christianity which holds the spiritual realm to be ‘more real’ than the physical realm.
As Sedgwick scolded Darwin,
@Polistra
The woke movement, in its current form, is about being conscious of social injustices, both past and present. And while it might be possible to draw some parallels between Christianity and wokeness, the latter of the two is fundamentally secular in its origins. Wokeness is also typically associated with institutions that lean decisively to the left, such as most secular universities.
After just watching Part III of the video (The Hunted Individual) posted above, I think any of the respect I had left for our academic institutions, which wasn’t very much, has finally dissolved into nothing.
Unbelievable! It’s also incredibly sad that western society has caved to this unhinged mafia!
Have you ever read the Everlasting Man? There’s a reason agnostics wear charm bracelets.
Anyway, Christians have long been pointing out, the many different ways that atheist presuppositions lead to epistemological nightmares, but even as a non-theist, you can get away with it as long as you had some kind of metaphysical structure that supported the idea that humans were meant to genuinely discover truth, a kind of teleology. But teleology was discarded along with Paley. It was only a matter of time then before one of these nightmares stuck. What stuck: Critical Theory. Logic is merely a power play now, a means of controlling others. Naturalism has burned to death in the acid of its own skepticism. Congratulations. You played yourself.
It appears to me that concern for social injustices very easily slip into nothing more than virtue-signaling. Removing the name of Thomas Henry Huxley from the College of the Environment at West Washington University, for example, does little if anything towards addressing social injustices. It just appeases student’s own prejudices rather than compelling them to confront them, which is what a university should be doing.
Polistra @1,
Yes, but not Christianity in “disguise,” but more like some people have said, “Marxism is a Christian heresy.”
KRock @4,
Yes. This is not so different than the brown shirts in Germany and the Red Guards in China brutalizing and intimidating the people under the passive protection of the government.
Seversky @6,
Good observation, and I think you’re right. As such, it’s a religious movement founded on social karma rather than personal karma.
I don’t think that government can or should become pervasive enough to punish all forms of hostility between people and people groups. This includes misogyny, racism and ethnicism of all kinds, ageism, and so on, which seems to be the rule in all human history. It includes discrimination against people shorter than average, red hair, blond hair, rural heritage, and so on.
For example, the family memories of some immigrants to the U.S. includes notices reading “Irish Need Not Apply.” How did THAT go away?
It’s my belief that the tools to re-educate and monitor everyone’s attitudes can and will be used to identify any “unpatriotic” or “non-participatory attitudes as well, resulting in a sort of secular theocracy based on social virtue, which as you’re pointing out, is largely symbolic and hypocritical.
-Q
When I was younger, Ayn Rand’s cynicism appealed to me:
And that’s what’s happening now. Create guilt and cash in on it.
-Q