Elsewhere (262)
Mary Katharine Ham on woke scolds and public pushback:
Here’s how the removal of the [painting, Hylas and the Nymphs] went down — in the most eye-rollingly woke, modern-art-professor way possible. A professor and five members of a “drag collective” walk into an art gallery to talk about viewing art in a non-binary way. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Amy Wax on sinking standards and The New Unsayable:
An open letter published in the Daily Pennsylvanian and signed by 33 of my colleagues… condemned and categorically rejected all of my views [on the importance of bourgeois values]. It then invited students, in effect, to monitor me and to report any “stereotyping and bias” they might experience or perceive. This letter contained no argument, no substance, no reasoning, no explanation whatsoever as to how our op-ed was in error… To students and citizens alike I say: Don’t follow their lead by condemning people for their views without providing a reasoned argument. Reject their example. Not only are they failing to teach you the practice of civil discourse —the sine qua non of liberal education and democracy— they are sending the message that civil discourse is unnecessary.
This, remember, is the University of Pennsylvania Law School. For background, see the first items here and here.
And Andy Ngo on the “social justice” Sturmabteilung:
On Saturday we’re hosting a panel [at Portland State University] featuring James Damore, the Google employee who was fired last July for writing a memo expressing heterodox views about sex disparities in the company’s workforce… The left-wing newspaper Willamette Week published an article with a false and inflammatory headline: “Tech Bro Fired from Google for Saying Women Are Biologically Unfit to Be Engineers Will Speak at PSU Next Month.” The sub-headline inaccurately attributed to Mr Damore the view that “women can’t do math.” Campus activists called us misogynists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis. A person claiming to work for campus audio-visual services tweeted that he could break into our event through a back entrance and “literally turn the whole building off.” There were threats of violence. A Facebook user—it’s not clear if he’s connected to PSU—suggested he’d throw “active grenades” at Mr Damore onstage.
One local feminist group declared itself “appalled” that a discussion touching on statistical gender differences should be permitted without the involvement of enlightened beings such as themselves. The aggrieved ladies were seemingly unaware that the organisers had approached every tenured and tenure-track Women’s Studies professor on campus and had been rebuffed by all of them, presumably of grounds of heresy. Having failed to prevent the discussion occurring by hoarding and destroying tickets, other self-styled “activists” attacked the venue’s audio system in an attempt to prevent the speakers being heard, before being escorted out by police. One of the “activists” – this charming young lady here – subsequently berated the police for failing to see how “oppressed” she is.
Update, via the comments:
It turns out that the blue-haired vision of loveliness, Heather Clark, the one claiming to be “oppressed” while vandalising other people’s property, isn’t even a student at PSU. Yet she feels entitled to determine, forcibly, who gets to speak there – who is “absolutely not welcome,” as she puts it – and to determine what people on campus may or may not talk about. Which is quite a conceit, really. The word megalomaniacal comes to mind. And consider Ms Clark’s associates. Imagine being the kind of self-styled intellectual who demands to know whether a speaker is even “qualified” to talk about matters deemed “intersectional,” as if intersectional voodoo were on a par with quantum chromodynamics. The kind of person who delights in vandalism and stealing other people’s tickets, and who threatens to cut power to an entire building because someone might say something, or ask something, that they don’t want people to think about.
Yes, a self-imagined intellectual who doesn’t want people to think.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
The left-wing newspaper Willamette Week published an article with a false and inflammatory headline: “Tech Bro Fired from Google for Saying Women Are Biologically Unfit to Be Engineers Will Speak at PSU Next Month.” The sub-headline inaccurately attributed to Mr Damore the view that “women can’t do math.”
If they didn’t lie they’d have nothing to whine about.
If they didn’t lie they’d have nothing to whine about.
Given that the original document is readily available, you do have to marvel at their confidence that no-one will bother to read it, and thereby discover the breath-taking deception.
Tim Newman, here.
One of the “activists” – this charming young lady here – subsequently berated the police for failing to see how “oppressed” she is.
I think she means selfish and spoiled.
I think she means selfish and spoiled.
That would seem more likely, yes.
Here’s how the removal of the [painting, Hylas and the Nymphs]…
I repost the link to the article about a new show coming to Australia’s ABC network: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/feb/19/hannah-gadsby-on-the-male-gaze-in-art-stop-watching-women-having-baths-go-away
It is more on topic here.
I think she means selfish and spoiled.
I’m trying to imagine the mindset. So basically, you hear third-hand rumours that someone you’ve never met has said things you disapprove of, and instead of getting on with your life, you decide to spend several days trying to prevent that person speaking with other people who want to hear him speak. First, you swipe all the tickets for the event, to frustrate more people you don’t know; then you try to disrupt the speaker by shouting abuse and staging a walkout, as if anyone should care. And when this fails, you then start yanking at cables and breaking antennae, in the belief that this will sway people to your obvious righteousness. And finally, you shout abuse at a police officer, while insisting that you’re terribly oppressed – albeit by something that you can’t be bothered to specify.
I mean, it’s not an obvious way to spend one’s time and energy.
Hey, it worked for Lenin.
“Given that the original document is readily available, you do have to marvel at their confidence that no-one will bother to read it, and thereby discover the breath-taking deception.”
I find it interesting that the current Wave of Leftists* is using exactly the same methods as its 20th Century predecessors. In that time, when information wasn’t so readily available (and when a number of socialist states were willing to actively destroy what they could), it was a reasonable, if despicable, strategy. But today?
It’s almost as if lying through their teeth and shouting people down are all they’ve got.
*As Sellar and Yeatman would undoubtedly have had it.
when information wasn’t so readily available… it was a reasonable, if despicable, strategy. But today?
It does rather betray what the pundits think of their own left-leaning readership. I.e., that the likelihood of anyone actually checking these claims – even though it would be five minutes work – is so remote as to be irrelevant. Evidently, they don’t expect to be caught out and corrected. Perhaps they think that even if anyone does read the original document and register the mismatch, they still won’t object to the distortion and will instead embrace groupthink and feign outrage anyway.
Given the intellectual pretensions of those involved, none of this is particularly flattering.
when information wasn’t so readily available… it was a reasonable, if despicable, strategy. But today?
See also the thuggery and hysteria aimed at Charles Murray when he attempted to speak at Middlebury College. The distortion of Murray’s actual views and preferences was about as inverted and grotesque as it’s possible to get. As I said at the time,
But such details mustn’t be allowed to impede the Two-Minute Hate, which is much more exciting than mere reality.
I think she means selfish and spoiled.
Blue hair. *shocked face*
Blue hair. *shocked face*
It’s perhaps worth noting that the walk-out and subsequent vandalism by the blue-haired vision of loveliness was triggered by the panel discussing statistical gender differences… in height.
Because, you know, you mustn’t acknowledge that.
It’ll be nice when these idiots start costing the ruling class money (at which point they’ll be promptly silenced).
From MKH’s article, with my emphasis:
“The removal was a prelude to a March exhibition by Sonia Boyce, a modern artist and professor at Middlesex. She called its removal “art in action,” saying the idea was to get more people involved in the value judgments that go into what art is displayed.“
So we get more people involved in judging art, by removing art we don’t like and letting people look at . . . nothing of which we disapprove. That is, I involve you in a discussion by censuring all viewpoints other than my own. The word “chutzpah” comes to mind.
I think she means selfish and spoiled.
The thing is, despite chanting slogans and feigning deep political convictions, typically based on slim or non-existent knowledge, the screeching contingent are more likely to be animated primarily by their own obnoxious personalities. The politics is often little more than a convenient vehicle, a license to misbehave, typically with impunity. And the howling, pouting, blue-haired nightmare seen above is exactly the kind of malevolent bitch that wise fathers (and wise mothers) should make time to warn their sons about.
See also this haughty and self-satisfied young lady. Such is her obvious delight in being needlessly unpleasant, it’s pretty clear that what drives her isn’t strictly speaking political. The politics, such as it is, is just an excuse that allows her to behave as she wishes to behave. Which is to say, badly.
Given the intellectual pretensions of those involved, none of this is particularly flattering.
I try to be optimistic and charitable since I’m nobody’s idea of a Mensa member but how much of this wailing and gnashing of teeth is due to an influx of those with…let’s say less than average intelligence into the college ranks? The handful of truly cognitive elite tastemakers in academia have long been out of touch and left leaning, if not outright commies. The massive subsidies and cultural expectations of *everyone* going to college have provided a veritable army of useful idiots. Some of these people are smart and have been institutionally enstupidated, but I suspect a critical mass simply have simple minds.
enstupidated
I’m writing that one down.
how much of this wailing and gnashing of teeth is due to an influx of those with… let’s say less than average intelligence into the college ranks?
I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Angry Studies courses, around which “social justice” activism tends to accrete, attract students (and educators) with some of the lowest SAT scores – relative to, say, engineering or physics. By and large, they tend not to be people one would think of as ideal candidates for tertiary education.
And as I think I’ve said before, a mentally ungifted person surrounded by much smarter people – people who will probably go on to be successful in fields that are more rigorous, statusful and lucrative – may feel some resentment. Of course, Angry Studies offers endless excuses for such feelings, and indeed is premised on cultivating them, whether justified or not. And so almost any resentment, however petty and vindictive, can be indulged in the guise of activism, and in the name of “social justice.”
[ Added: ]
See also the last item here, in which Dr Duke Pesta details the shocking ignorance of his students and the fact that it’s all but impossible, career-wise, for a professor to fail 40% of his students, even though 40% of his students really shouldn’t be there.
I don’t have access to the TLS to check this, but a correspondent has emailed the following note.
Featured on the back page of the TLS at the end of January:-
“A reader has sent us an announcement for a course at Harvard University, Spring term, taught by Annabel Kim. Ms Kim is at work on a book called Cacaphonies: Toward an excremental poetics, and her new course has the same title. The goal is “to begin to articulate and realize an original approach to literature that, rather than take feces as a site of disgust, takes it as a site of creation”. Among its aims are the following:
1) Theorize an excremental poetics where excretion provides a model for the process of writing. The task of excretion, which translates into concrete form our experience of the world (we excrete what we take in, processing and giving it new form), is also the task of literature; …
3) Provide another angle from which to approach the question of gender and writing, as gender organizes both literature (eg, the paucity of canonical women writers) and defecation (eg, the gendering of constipation as a feminine condition);
4) Offer an alternative theory of the significance of fecal matter to the dominant one provided by psychoanalysis (ie, feces as gift, gold, à la Freud).
Ms Kim’s Cacaphonies course is administered by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. It carries four credits.”
Well, no shit?
the gendering of constipation as a feminine condition
Fuck me, I didn’t realise I was trans.
Although it may not seem like it, the good guys are winning, and the principle reason is the internet.
FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) is slowly unrolling back speech codes and other impediments on campuses, both through public pressure and lawsuits. They have been wonderfully effective.
Websites like Campus Reform and College Fix have pulled back the carpet on academic intolerance of conservative and libertarian thought.
Online student newspapers that allow reader comments follow a standard pattern: the editorials and articles are generally authoritarian left, but the comments often take them to the cleaners. It’s tough to defend a position that defends the use of violence and censorship to advance a particular point of view.
And then there’s countless blogs like these.
Thanks to these many sources, stories of abuse regularly make their onto the main stream media, where professors, administration, and student groups are undoubtedly shocked to learn that the general public do not share their authoritarian views. Most important, administrations are starting to learn that their illiberalism can result in falling enrollment and thus (the horror) declining funds.
Ms Kim’s Cacaphonies course…
Steve – that crap is straight from the course catalogue, FRENCH 241 – Cacaphonies: Toward an Excremental Poetics.
Now we know where the “South Park” guys got Mr. Hankey from.
Having taken an undergraduate level French course that was almost entirely conducted in French, I would have thought a graduate level French course would be conducted in French, but then I wasn’t at an “elite” Ivy League school.
Damnit, the TinyUrl link worked in preview. The Course – only Harvard would come up with a URL three lines long.
David, I think Fred Reed coined “enstupidated.”
http://Www.fredoneverything.org
I poop ergo sum?
Steve – that crap is straight from the course catalogue, FRENCH 241 – Cacaphonies: Toward an Excremental Poetics. “Fecal matter is omnipresent in works and authors that we consider canonical…”
I believe Baudelaire was rather excremental at times (Gargantua and Pantagruel), but that he did so not to celebrate excrement but to satirize some of the more horrible events and problems of his time. Our time seems to be cursed by an intellectual class which wallows in all that is worst in politics and esthetics and indeed everything else.
The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM. “It’s not that gender equality discourages girls from pursuing science. It’s that it allows them not to if they’re not interested.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/
h/t, Instapundit
FRENCH 241 – Cacaphonies: Toward an Excremental Poetics.
As much as she may try to lard it up with flowery “poetics”, Ms Kim’s scat fetish will never be “mainstreamed”.
The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM.
It’s “a strange paradox,” apparently.
Ms Kim’s Cacaphonies course
The shit you don’t know.
Ceterum autem censeo Donec Educationis delenda est
FRENCH 241 – Cacaphonies: Toward an Excremental Poetics.
Wonder if any of these “academics” have visited the homeless encampments in downtown San Francisco in the summer?
My advice would be they should be sure to have their HepA vaccination up-to-date and a mask filled with lavender
the howling, pouting, blue-haired nightmare seen above is exactly the kind of malevolent bitch that wise fathers (and wise mothers) should make time to warn their sons about.
I come for the ephemera but I stay for our host’s parenting tips.
but I stay for our host’s parenting tips.
I’ll stick with an avuncular role, I think. But if sitcoms are to be believed, there’s a custom of parents, usually fathers, warning daughters about the potential shortcomings of male suitors. Is there a parallel custom of mothers warning sons about avoiding demented harpies?
Victor Davis Hanson, here.
I believe Mrs S-E has at least agreed with the comment “just don’t stick your dick in crazy”. She, of course, would need a fair few bottles of Fleurie to actually utter it.
I want those busybodies who want to browbeat women into careers they might not choose on their own to STFU. I had one particular math teacher almost in tears because I decided NOT to make math my major in college. It was fun, I was very good at it, but it did NOT appeal to me as a career path. No one ‘nudged’ me into that direction, I wasn’t what I wanted to pursue.
Nothing is ‘nudging’ women out of STEM…many of us have other goals in mind. Leave.us.alone.
“it wasn’t what I wanted to pursue.”
argh
argh
Have you tried the new bar snacks…?
Don’t be shy.
I believe Mrs S-E has at least agreed with the comment “just don’t stick your dick in crazy”
I had only daughters, but step-son has been generally so advised by his father & mother.
The twins are now 15 and #2 daughter is similarly adamant about their education.
I will gladly fine you Tuesday for a deviation overlooked today. – J. Wellington Wimpy, misquoted
Ummmmmm…. by all that’s holy, please let this be Poe’s Law
Via Instapundit, The Blue Church & A Glitch in the Matrix.
Have you tried the new bar snacks…?
Dare I ask what those are? Purely scientific inquiry here, mind.
My initial guess was whole pickled gingerroots, but something tells me their origin could be more…animal in nature…
Another excellent example of artwork being removed by those that disapprove can be found here.
Since we live in a post shame world, the effect of being “caught out and corrected” is exactly zero; they can rape women, lie, cheat, steal, order arkancides, and be sure that they will never be punished in any way. The only sin is apostasy from Marx and the sacred narrative.
The new bar snacks are back bottom gristle lumps. They were most famously eaten in ‘The Ladies Man’ movie.
It seems to be the rich college girls who are the craziest. I guess if you are not rich acting up in public carries too much risk of being tased or shot by cops.
more…animal in nature…
Pickled manatee fetuses?
Is there a parallel custom of mothers warning sons about avoiding demented harpies?
The only thing I can recall was “If you don’t feel you can bring her home to meet your father and me, she’s going to be more trouble than she’s worth”.
The more frank mothers tend to mimic a fathers’ advice: “Don’t stick your dick in crazy.”
Darleen,
by all that’s holy, please let this be Poe’s Law
I wonder if there were any such gullible rubes who thought the super-smurf blue people in Avatar, and their islands in the sky, were actually real.
BTW, I’m 99% certain “Shanita” is kidding, but trying to make a political “gotcha” at the same time.
Since discomfort is now sufficient grounds for banning art, and its removal is a stimulant to conversation, how about we ban the woke performance collective and then talk about it?
Whatever happened to belaying pins and Cat o’Nines? Don’t they have a brig on these things?
I think she means selfish and spoiled.
It turns out that the blue-haired vision of loveliness, Heather Clark, the one claiming to be “oppressed” while vandalising other people’s property, isn’t even a student at PSU. Yet she feels entitled to determine, forcibly, who gets to speak there – who is “absolutely not welcome” – and to determine what people on campus may or may not talk about. Which is quite a conceit, really. The word megalomaniacal comes to mind.
And consider Ms Clark’s associates. Imagine being the kind of self-styled intellectual who demands to know whether a speaker is even “qualified” to talk about matters deemed “intersectional,” as if intersectional voodoo were on a par with quantum chromodynamics. The kind of person who delights in vandalism and stealing other people’s tickets, and who threatens to cut power to an entire building because someone might say something, or ask something, that they don’t want people to think about.
Yes, a self-imagined intellectual who doesn’t want people to think.
Yes, a self-imagined intellectual who doesn’t want people to think.
Yeah, but that’s what makes you an intellectual. Eliminating the competition. And intellectuals like these have got a lot of work yet to be done.
“The word megalomaniacal comes to mind.”
For most of history the world’s village idiots did not have access to near-light-speed communications with each other, organization and support from their fellow enstupided peers nor political entities able to coordinate and weaponize their particular “abilities”.
(Not to mention 24-hour/day “news” desperate for novel/compelling/over-the-top/conflict-inducing content)
For most of history the world’s village idiots…
It occurs to me that there would generally have been pushback to such behaviour – mockery, disapproval, actual consequences of some kind. But in the Clown Quarter, the left’s fiefdom, such things are not only spared the normal repercussions but are actively encouraged by woke educators. In the name of progress.
Yes, a self-imagined intellectual who doesn’t want people to think.
Well, obviously. Because they might end up holding a different view. And these ‘intellectuals’ can’t have that. I mean, people disagreeing with our [their] lofty pronouncements. It simply won’t do, you know.
One of my old mentors used to say “Being stupid has to hurt. If it doesn’t hurt, people won’t stop being stupid.” He meant it metaphorically, in the sense that there had to be onerous consequences for making easily preventable engineering and design mistakes.
In this case, and the one with the woman who stole the MAGA hat, and so many others, what’s needed is swift, stoic, merciless justice. Charged, no plea bargain, convicted, publicly branded a criminal and rendered unhirable. These miscreants need to feel the full consequences for their behaviour, and onlookers need to see those consequences meted out pour encourager les autres.