As a counter to Woke Uniquack U:
UATX’s forbidden courses program, which brought together undergraduates from leading colleges and universities, lived up to its name. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s course analyzed “key foundations of critical thinking, argumentation, reasoned debate, and freedom of expression, as these pertain to some of the most controversial issues of our day.” Students studied logical argumentation and read John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty in preparation for exploring theses like “Islam is a religion of peace” and “transgender women are women” from opposing perspectives. Kathleen Stock’s course on varieties of feminism examined “what kind of metaphysical and political subject is being implicitly conjured in the background under the heading ‘woman,’ and whether it is a coherent one.” Writer Thomas Chatterton Williams introduced his class to the “pain, rage, and hope of America’s most loyal critics,” including Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin. McCloskey’s course asked whether capitalism has been a tragedy or a triumph. Historian Niall Ferguson led an examination of free and unfree societies in the twentieth century…
The disarming power of culture was palpable. Students who had learned to hold their tongues in college classrooms poured forth their souls once the cork of wariness was unstopped.
Jacob Howland, “Reach For Your Culture“ at City Journal (July 1, 2022)
Of course, the establishment can always just refuse to recognize UATX’s degrees, in order to protect its own mediocrities. But eventually, it may come down to, who do you want to listen to? The people who did the homework or approved tokens? ‘Twas often thus.
Meanwhile, another prof explains why he’s just retiring:
Gradually, one hire at a time, practitioners of “critical” (i.e. far-left postmodernist) anthropology, some of them lying about their beliefs during job interviews, came to comprise the department’s most influential clique. These militant faculty recruited even more extremely militant graduate students to work with them.
Honestly, the “critical” profs may represent what the public really wants: In a world where a university degree is supposed to confer social status, they offer a way to get a degree by posturing for social justice without really learning a discipline. One effective tactic is to attack and destroy the standards that might be used to evaluate their performance.
The good effects will be felt now by the degree holders who get status jobs. The bad effects will be felt by others down the road, mostly by people who no longer matter or never did.