From academia, that hothouse of social progress:

Ah, the arts. Where it’s all thou-shalt-not.

Not really in the spirit of what music is, methinks. Sort of, “You only get to sing this if we think you look right. Because appearance – specifically, your racial classification – is what matters.” And hey, who wouldn’t love a game of Who May Sing What, Based On Their Skin Colour? How terribly uplifting.

Needless to say, no corresponding restrictions or accusations of “cultural appropriation” would be tolerated regarding minority students performing music deemed white. Say, as when the troupe performed the works of the Jonas Brothers and the very pale pop songstress Ariana Grande. But clearly, reciprocal principles would be too much to ask.

Fair point.

Being entirely reasonable, this didn’t go down well.

Yes, I know. The word irony scarcely covers it.

Despite the group’s policy of unilateral racial exclusivity in singing being somewhat dissonant with the university’s codes of conduct, which prohibit “discrimination… based on race,” Mr Phillips was warned that his expectations of fairness and merit might have dire consequences. And there followed exquisitely detailed conditions of any further discussion of the issue, with stern pre-emptive cautions against “aggressive wording.”

Vocal Intensity styles itself as the university’s “premier all-gender a cappella group” and claims to provide “an inclusive environment for all individuals who have a passion for music.” But obviously, not if you fancy singing Alice Smith and Miles Caton’s Last Time (I Seen The Sun) while being offensively white.

Update, via the comments:

Dicentra asks,

Well, quite. And the reactiveness of the group’s board – their spluttering that anyone might notice the inconsistency and even dare to point it out – and their remarkably detailed conditions regarding any further discussion – does rather paint a picture of a certain mindset. A type.

As noted here more than once, it does save a lot of time and aggravation if pointed use of the words inclusive, cultural appropriation, etc., is regarded not as a welcome or reassurance, but as a warning of the kinds of personalities you’ll be likely to encounter, should you venture closer, foolishly.

Commenter Aitch quotes this,

And adds,

And hey, everything is so much more fun when it’s been racially organised.

See also, the thrill of ideologically corrected dancing.

For those with an interest in recent history, and indeed surrealism, a catalogue of progressive cancel culture.

Among the sins punished with both swiftness and eyebrow-raising severity – questioning the benefits of rioting; questioning overt racial favouritism at the University of California, Los Angeles; saying that George Floyd wasn’t actually a moral exemplar; liking tweets in support of Donald Trump; questioning the methods of Black Lives Matter; showing the 1965 film of Laurence Olivier’s Othello to students at the University of Michigan; and teaching students of Chinese how to pronounce Chinese words.

And regarding the above, this:

And also, from recent comments, this by Mr Wanye Burkett:

Readers may wish to ponder whether the sins mentioned above – expressing doubts about rioting, or teaching Chinese pronunciation to students of Chinese – exist on the same level of inaptness as, say, a public-school teacher showing ten-year-olds shockingly graphic video of a man being shot in the neck, and killed, in front of his family, and showing that footage repeatedly, “numerous times,” while hectoring those same ten-year-olds on the merits of so-called “anti-fascism.”

Answers on a postcard, please.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the example immediately above, John D adds,

It does, I think, invite questions as to the vetting of public school educators and the kinds of personalities the job seems to attract in high concentrations. It also invites questions as to what kind of environment, what kind of workplace assumptions, might make a teacher of ten-year-olds think that such behaviour would be considered acceptable.

I mean, if nothing else, and even absent any conventional moral inhibition, you’d think that one of the obvious considerations for a teacher of ten-year-olds might at least be the assumption that parents will find out. In this case, when their children arrive home bewildered and distressed. And to therefore behave accordingly. And yet.

Update 2:

Regarding this,

Liz adds,

Or sufficiently sympathetic, politically, to not mind too much, or maybe just accustomed to politicised overreach and inapt behaviour in general. Those would seem to be among the more obvious inferences. And as so often, it appears that shocked parents, rather than colleagues, were the ones to object.

On the subject of parents being shocked to discover, belatedly, what their children are actually being taught, these three incidents came to mind. Among many others. Note, in the third link, the casual invention of a fake curriculum – yes, a fake curriculum – so as to deceive any curious parents.

And all while insisting, “This is not being deceitful.”

In light of which, the “anti-fascist” snuff-video session mentioned above doesn’t exactly scream anomaly or aberration, or some unfortunate misreading of the room, so much as a ratcheting upwards.

With a hat-tip to Darleen.

And in expensive and statusful education news:

It’s protest, you hear. Albeit of a gratuitous and self-serving kind.

Because in order to titillate pinhead students and their pinhead lecturers, you need to frame selfishness and moral squalor as sexy and upscale, and ever-so daring. It’s “radical ethics,” you see.

Unlike modish Manhattan universities that applaud themselves as “a place for fearless progress,” and whose lecturers glamourise shoplifting and the self-satisfied violation of other, better people.

The seminar, since you ask, is the work of Cresa Pugh, a woman who lives in Brooklyn, obviously, and who boasts of “decolonising” and “interrogating” many things, while arriving at entirely predictable conclusions.

You see, being a grubby, antisocial prick and stealing from a library or grocery store is giving it to the man, man.

At which point, readers are invited to imagine Ms Pugh being robbed in broad daylight – a bag-snatching or phone-snatching or possibly a mugging – and her subsequent search for some aesthetic in the experience. 

And because sometimes the punchlines just write themselves:

Previously – on needless, habitual mooching as a radical lifestyle thang.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Time, I think, to dip a toe in the world of academia. Specifically, some lively rumblings on the relative importance of electricians and sociology lecturers. I suppose you could start here, with this, but there are plenty of tangents and pith, and moments of slightly comical indignation.

Among those moments, this one:

Societies lived without electricity for millennia. Some still do. Don’t give me this shit.

By contrast, societies have ALWAYS needed individuals to assess their societal needs and propose solutions.

That by nature is The Sociologist. https://t.co/A0xifaYrXW

— Tim Gill (@timgill924) July 22, 2025

You see, Dr Tim Gill, our associate professor, is “an authority on society and everything in it.” Being an “intellectual,” he can “diagnose entire societies.” And then issue instructions to people of less importance.

Update, via the comments:

From one of Dr Gill’s own students:

A data point, I suppose.

Quoting this,

Rafi adds,

Which does rather suggest a gap in his model of the world.

At one point, Dr Gill boasts of never having used a lawn mower. Because apparently that’s a credential. Readers may also note Dr Gill’s use of the word handyman, complete with connotations of something other than respect. Still, you’ve almost got to admire the imperviousness of someone who responds to accusations of being arrogant and haughty and unmoored from reality by being arrogant and haughty and unmoored from reality.

Regarding Dr Gill’s rumblings of alleged profundity and intellectual heft, commenter Chow Bag draws our attention to this.

No laughing at the back.

And it must be quite strange to be rendered indignant by something – assumptions about a field, its standards, and the kinds of people it attracts – that your own indignant replies are pretty much confirming.

The thing is, the field of sociology needn’t, I think, have become so disreputable. I see little that’s inherently dubious about an attempt to study human society. But the field’s near-total occupation, or colonisation, by smug, delusional leftists, with all of their blind spots and baggage – and the consequent near-ubiquity of faulty default assumptions and predestined conclusions – has, inevitably, taken a toll.

The kind of people who, like Dr Gill, want to use a pretence of academic rigour to propagate their own rather weird and implausible political preferences.

Which is why we get supposed social scientists who find it problematic that Wikipedia entries written by men about pop culture topics that tend to be liked by men are often longer and more detailed, more nerdy, than entries by women on topics that are more likely to be of interest to women. As if men and women were somehow – and must be – identical in their psychology, their preferences and priorities, and as if any difference in Wikipedia entry length must be a result of some social oppression, some invisible downtroddenness.

And likewise, it’s why we get a social science lecturer being bewildered by the inegalitarian distribution of litter, and fretting about how to “narrow the gap” in discarded fag packets and food-smeared detritus, while studiously avoiding any acknowledgement of obvious differences in behaviour between social groups, as this would presumably offend his own egalitarian assumptions. And who gives no thought, none at all, to how the litter gets there in the first place. As if it just fell from the sky, randomly, like overnight snow.

And among Dr Gill’s peers, thinking of this kind is hardly uncommon. Hence the reputation.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye, and so forth.

And in brief British heatwave news:

It was a month-long experiment. Behold your taxes at work.

And before you ask,

Oh, and should you be tempted:

Do let us know how it goes.

Should clarity be required, this is not some miraculous property of yoghurt, even of Greek yoghurt at 10% fat. It’s merely a function of any substance that can be smeared onto windows before drying white. Presumably, similar effects could be achieved by gluing toilet paper onto your windows, which would also alert neighbours to your cunning. Or by purchasing any of the commercially available window films that do much the same thing, only better.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye, and so forth.