And then this happened. 

Toby Young on things you mustn’t acknowledge, even politely, at least among educators: 

Unfortunately, [education charity] Teach First decided my blog was unacceptable. In spite of the fact that it was billed as part of a ‘debate’, and appeared alongside another piece expressing an alternative point of view, the organisation decided to remove it from its website and issue an apology. That’s right, it apologised for publishing my piece. “It was against what we believe is true and against our values and vision,” Teach First explained… The most disappointing thing about the whole affair is that… I was attempting to show how teachers could remain evangelical about raising standards without denying the mainstream scientific understanding about the heritability of IQ and the impact of IQ on educational outcomes. Teach First’s reaction and its description of my piece as “against what we believe is true” suggests it doesn’t share my view that its values are compatible with mainstream science. 

Toni Airaksinen on the Clown Quarter’s high standards: 

An academic journal on “white privilege” has apparently stopped publishing articles following a Campus Reform investigation in September. The journal, Whiteness and Education, published by Routledge, claimed to publish peer-reviewed research on issues including “critical discussions of White racism, White identity, privilege, power, and intersectionality.” However, a closer inspection revealed that the majority of published articles were “accepted” for publication within two days of being “received” — a very short time frame that could not allow for proper peer-review, according to professors consulted by Campus Reform. 

And further to rumblings in the comments, Michael Jones notes an inspired exercise in trolling and what it reveals: 

Signs declaring “It’s okay to be white” have been spotted on college campuses across America and even in Canada over the last week, prompting outrage… Others have questioned why saying “it’s okay to be white” is automatically racist… Even though the campaign has been widely identified as a troll attempt, many took the bait. “I am deeply disgusted that this organised online campaign to divide university communities across the country has come to our campus. It is shameful that anyone would use these posters to promote a racist agenda,” University of Kansas’ student body president, Mady Womack, told the Kansan. The flyers were denounced as “racist” and the school’s Multicultural Student Government convened an “emergency meeting” over it, according to the report.

Given the endless courses and faculty proclamations denouncing “whiteness” as both “oppressive” and a “problem,” something that pale-skinned students should atone for ostentatiously, while promising not to produce children as pale and sinful as themselves, the accusations of racism and divisiveness – because of a small notice suggesting that, actually, “It’s okay to be white” – may ring a little hollow and seem absurdly dishonest. And it’s hard not to admire the economy of the trolling, whereby a modest and unobjectionable statement, one that if applied to any other, comparable group would be utterly innocuous, is denounced, and denounced immediately, as if it were scandalous. Which suggests that there’s no position a pale person could take, short of continual deference and self-abasement, that would keep such people free of doctrinaire convulsion. And which in turns suggests a kind of madness.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Yes, another opportunity to throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. Being a generous guy, I’ll set the ball rolling with some suspicious-looking trousers; some people looking at art; a demonstration of how to have fun with blood and magnets; and Mr Tom Baker sharing tales of tingling titties and poisonous bottled farts.  

Oh, and a visit to the world of competitive grave-digging. 

For Hallowe’en, three strange tales from academia. 

Further to recent comments, Toni Airaksinen marvels at a bedlamite educator: 

A sociology professor at the City University of New York recently argued in an extensive series of tweets that “the white-nuclear family” perpetuates racism. Jessie Daniels, a self-described “expert on race,” began by declaring that, “What I’ve learned is that the white-nuclear family is one of the most powerful forces supporting white supremacy. I mean, if you’re a white person who says they’re engaged in dismantling white supremacy but… you’re forming a white family [and] reproducing white children that ‘you want the best for’ – how is that helping [and] not part of the problem?”

Apparently, the stable family structure is a “fact to be lamented,” and stable white families should be discouraged from existing.  

And again, on associate professor of sociology, and fellow bedlamite, Lisa Wade: 

A feminist professor at Occidental College recently argued that men must renounce their masculinity and “denounce anyone who chooses to identify with it.” Calling masculinity a “dangerous idea,” Wade argues that, “The problem is not toxic masculinity; it’s that masculinity is toxic,” adding that masculinity is “simply not compatible with liberty and justice for all.” Wade concludes her essay by urging people to “call masculinity out as a hazardous ideology and denounce anyone who chooses to identify with it,” saying that doing so is crucial for “gender revolution.”

We must “attack masculinity directly,” says this educator of the young.

And further to this item here, via dicentra, J Oliver Conroy on the new intersectional morony: 

When [panellist and author, Kmele Foster] started explaining the methodological research behind his claim, the audience [of students] exploded. “Facts?! Facts?! Don’t tell me about facts!” one person screamed. Foster tried to finish as five or six people shouted at him. “Do facts matter?” Foster asked, and repeated it several times in mounting frustration. The resounding, devastating answer was no, facts do not matter. 

As usual, feel free to add your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments. Oh, and sleep well. 

Flat, grating and unfunny. Don’t trust the Rotten Tomatoes score. 

Myron Magnet on ‘progressive’ policy versus the skills of city living: 

Civility — the art of living in a city — is not innate. We have to learn to stand in line and take our turn, not to blast music from our apartment or car, not to block the sidewalk or market aisle, not to yell on our cell phones, not to litter, not to monopolise public spaces with our “expressive” behaviour, not to bother or offend others unnecessarily. We no longer teach civility in schools: instead of the “citizenship” that my generation learned, we impart “social justice,” which teaches grievance and resentment of others; and city officials, with an Obama edict’s backing, have hamstrung school discipline, fostering misbehaviour. In college, we don’t teach free and civil discussion, tolerance of intellectual differences, or respect for learning, but only a kid’s right to resent microaggressions and silence politically incorrect speech as “violence.” The result will not be urbanity.

And further to this item here, Professor Charles H F Davis returns to the public eye: 

A University of Southern California professor says he stands behind his tweets that… call for whiteness to be “destroyed,” and the promotion of violence against the “white supremacist heterosexist patriarchy.”

“White supremacist heterosexist patriarchy needs to get the violence it imparts,” says the professor, who invokes “black rage” as a self-validating phenomenon, a kind of moral mic-drop, as if anger were synonymous with righteousness. “Whiteness and white supremacy,” he adds, “must be, by any and all means, destroyed.” This bold, if adolescent, proclamation is followed, belatedly, by a denial of cultivating racial acrimony, and an assurance that “whiteness,” which the professor despises and wishes to see “eradicated,” is “neither synonymous with nor exclusive to white people.” Which I’m sure is a great comfort to any melanin-deficient students in the professor’s proximity, and whose concerns regarding such language are dismissed as “white fragility.” Readers may wish to ponder how such assurances can be squared with the professor’s chosen Twitter banner, or his endorsement via Twitter of sentiments such as these.

Added: Somewhat relevant.

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Man plays saxophone without a saxophone. || The eternal battle of wits. || Boo. || I bring you art. || Birmingham. || GIF juxtapositions. || Designer cat furniture by Okawa Kagu. || Where priests get their clothes. || I question the practicality. || Invaders from the future. || Indelicate phrasing. (h/t, Julia) || Also somewhat unfortunate. || An Islamic scholar speaks: “The Earth is fixed and does not move. This is in keeping with the Quranic text, and it makes sense as well.” || Trees that wouldn’t die. || Atlas of the underworld. || Things to come. || Organ pipes. || Assorted paper wigs. A tad ostentatious. || Vanity. || Varieties of sushi. And yes, since you ask, there will be a test. || Hubris and nemesis. || A sense of proportion. || And finally, children can be surprising, and in all sorts of ways.

Via sH2 and lifted from the comments, Debra Heine has news of a fearless and sure-fire political strategy: 

Over 4,000 Facebook users in the Boston area have RSVP’d to attend the event they’re calling “Scream helplessly at the sky on the anniversary of the election.” Another 33,000 have expressed interest in attending the event… The organisers say in a Facebook post: “Come express your anger at the current state of democracy, and scream helplessly at the sky!”

“This administration has attacked everything about what it means to be American,” Johanna Schulman, an activist and one of the organisers of the event, told Newsweek. “Who wouldn’t feel helpless every day? Coming together reminds us that we are not alone, that we are part of an enormous community of activists who are motivated and angry, whose actions can make a difference.” […]

In Philadelphia, 538 people also plan to “scream helplessly at the sky” to mark Trump’s one-year anniversary as seen in a similar Facebook post. More than 3,000 people are “interested” in attending the event… The event is hosted by Philadelphia United for Progress, which describes itself as a “grassroots, feminist, intersectional group of passionate Philadelphia progressives.” People who are unable to attend are encouraged to “scream in solidarity” in their own backyards.

Presumably, this is the latest and most deadly phase of the “true insurgence” we were previously warned about. Admittedly, that curling-into-a-ball-and-weeping business didn’t alter the course of history, and the whole get-a-really-bad-tattoo-that-you’re-going-to-regret-two-weeks-later thing didn’t pan out either; but this time, this time, the very heavens will tremble.

In other academic news, it turns out that if you dare to punish students who use coercive mob tactics to threaten and intimidate non-leftist speakers and those who wish to hear them, then you are creating “an unsafe and threatening environment” for students who want to use threatening and coercive physical tactics. And also you’re racist, which rather goes without saying. Apparently, any hint of consequences for thuggish and censorious behaviour merely affirms “white supremacy” and will “suppress and criminalise” students whose own attempts to suppress veer towards the criminal. 

This, we’re told, is “unfair.”

The thinker of these deep thoughts, Charles H F Davis, a professor of education at the University of Southern California and the director of USC’s Race and Equity Centre, is aghast at the prospect of students being suspended if found to have repeatedly engaged in violence or disorderly conduct with the intention of suppressing debate. The professor also accuses Ben Shapiro, a speaker who’s been on the receiving end of student thuggery, of advancing “racist rhetoric,” while omitting any evidence to support this claim. We are, however, informed that this unspecified “hate speech” is “a form of violence itself.” To which, presumably, any actual violence – say, by leftist students exulting in mob force – is merely a form of payback. Physically coercive tactics are, says Professor Davis, employed only in desperation by “those… willing to labour in the name of justice” and whose “very minds, bodies and spirits” depend on these lively and vigorous forms of expression, which are “clearly a demand for greater racial equity and inclusion.”

Readers are invited to find justice in this short but somewhat instructive video here, filmed during Mr Shapiro’s visit to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in November last year, and in which a lone female journalist experiences first-hand the bottomless compassion of these brave student labourers.

Such is academia’s Clown Quarter, where the best and the brightest are nowhere to be seen.

Lifted from the comments, University of Pennsylvania teaching assistant Stephanie McKellop signals her wokeness to lesser beings: 

That’s this lady here. The one whose areas of expertise include “race, gender and the body,” “self-marriage” and, wait for it, “racial blame.” And who announces, rather proudly, “The classroom is the place YOU get to control the social setting.” A mixed blessing, I suspect. 

Update:

From the pages of Inside Higher Ed: 

Stephanie McKellop, a graduate teaching assistant in history, says she is under attack by fringe-right groups for using progressive stacking in her classes and then tweeting about it. Worse, she says, the university is cowing to such groups instead of supporting her. She’s claimed on social media that her classes were cancelled this week and she may be asked to leave her programme.

According to sociology professor Jesse Daniels, a supporter of Ms McKellop, the negative public response – which included a spectrum of students, educators and parents, of various hues and orientations – is “ripped from the playbook of the far right.” So if you object to overt racism in the classroom, racism framed as piety, then there’s something suspect about you, something marginal. Ms McKellop prefers to dismiss her critics as “white nationalists” and, inevitably, “Nazis.” Readers may wish to ponder how any students who object to this “progressive stacking” policy – i.e., blatant, self-satisfied racial discrimination – will also be designated, and subsequently treated.