“Labour Party. Socialist. Teacher.”

Put another way, “State education is generally sub-optimal and often shockingly bad. Let’s make sure that’s all there is available.”

We’ve been here before, of course. As when we heard the claim, conveniently unchallenged, that doing one’s best for one’s own children – in contravention of “social justice” – is merely a “cultural construction,” and therefore, presumably, ripe for deconstruction. By our betters.

And we’ve been here more than once.

Again, via Darleen in the comments:

It’s as if the movie Inherit the Wind had a different ending.

She’s referring to this intriguing academic development: 

Instructors at a prominent university in Australia have been warned not to lecture on the natural historical record of that country; instead, they should teach a creation narrative regarding the origin of indigenous Australian people. Lecturers at the University of New South Wales “have been warned off making the familiar statement in class that ‘Aboriginal people have been in Australia for 40,000 years’,” The Australian reports. Instead, they should state that “Aborigines have been here ‘since the beginning of the Dreaming/s’ because this ‘reflects the beliefs of many Indigenous Australians that they have always been in Australia, from the beginning of time, and came from the land’.”

It seems we’ve gone from “The aboriginal population is primitive and unable to think rationally about things,” which is a sentiment to be denounced, especially in academia, and progressed to “We must treat the aboriginal population as if it were primitive and unable to think rationally about things.” Which, apparently, is something to be applauded. Especially in academia.

Daniel McGraw on the self-inflicted sorrows of Oberlin College:

Activists on campus immediately concluded the arrest of the three students was evidence of racial profiling, which suggests an assumption that either the students were falsely accused on account of their race, or that Gibson’s [Bakery and Market] was happy to allow whites to shoplift but drew the line at blacks. I heard versions of these two theories during interviews I conducted with dozens of the student protesters. But, despite the students’ claims and the vehemence of the language with which they were made, police and others testified that there had been no complaints or allegations of racism made against the family business since it opened in 1885. Not one. […]

As the protests continued, Gibson’s annual revenue almost halved… Eight full-time employees were reduced to one, and family members have had to forego their salaries (and still do, pending the receipt of damages) since the protests began. The Gibson family testified that all they wanted was for Oberlin College to send an email to the community affirming that Gibson’s was not racist and to move on. But the school refused and doubled down on its support for the protesters and their defamatory allegations.

Oberlin’s decision to double-down seems in part an attempt to deflect Mao-ling discontent at the college’s own supposed sins of “imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, and a cissexist heteropatriarchy.” Having encouraged students to cultivate woke psychodramas at every turn, the ensuing hostility had to be pointed somewhere. Which rather speaks to the character of those involved.

David Gibson, owner of the besieged bakery, shares his account of events here:

Police arrested the student. But the next day, hundreds of people gathered in protest. From bullhorns they called for a boycott. The sidewalk and park across the street from our store were filled with protesters holding signs labelling us racists and white supremacists. The arrest, they said, was the result of racial profiling. The narrative was set and there was no combating it… The shoplifter confessed to his crime and said the arrest wasn’t racially motivated. But Oberlin College refused to help set the record straight by issuing a public statement that our family is not racist and does not have a history of racial profiling or discrimination. The damage had been done. And the truth seemed irrelevant.

Inevitably, Oberlin’s student newspaper lays blame elsewhere, denouncing the media and an “increasingly authoritarian country” – one in which “sustained and brave student activism” – i.e., vindictive hysteria and attempting to destroy the livelihoods of entirely innocent people – might become more difficult and even have consequences. At which point, the words that come to mind are lefties project.

“There are hugely varied debates within a broadly left concern about issues of social equity and social discrimination.”

Members of the LSE sociology department are asked a seemingly unexpected question: Are there any right-wing sociologists?

“A lot of sociology would be left-leaning… but not because of some sort of political bias, but just because of the way that we think.”

Via Amir Sariaslan.

Update, via the comments:

Great moments in sociology. More great moments in sociology.

For newcomers, more items from the archives.

Weepy And Hysterical.

A philosophy lecturer, a specialist in “critical whiteness studies,” apologises, at length, for his own heterosexuality.

Professor Yancy goes on to denounce, on behalf of all men, “our sexually objectifying gazes… our pornographic imaginations.” Our “dominant phallic economy.” Indeed, he continues, “we are collectively complicit with a sexist mind-set and a poisonous masculinity.” You see, being aroused by women, while not quite rape in itself, is nonetheless, as it were, rape-adjacent, and constitutes “a violent, pathetic and problematic masculinity.” One wonders how a species of suitably corrected human beings, purged of such heterosexual inclinations, might propagate and flourish. Such that we can indulge the theatrical sorrows of woke philosophy lecturers.

The Perils Of Jogging.

Zoe Williams warns Guardian readers that exercise “makes you rightwing.”

According to Zoe, if you visit a gym, or cycle, or merely take the occasional brisk walk with a dog in tow – or presumably have any kind of goals, however modest, and then achieve them – you’ll become boastful, consumed with “self-love” and wicked delusions of “self-sufficiency,” a gateway to the greatest sin of all: not being leftwing. Because leftwing people, like Zoe, are free of vanity and unblemished by urges to signal superiority of one kind or another. Say, by telling us, quite often, that they’re not at all rightwing.

Still, it’s strange just how readily Zoe leaps from ‘people can be a bit tedious when banging on about their enthusiasms’ – the word blogging comes to mind – to ‘regular jogging will make you vote Conservative because feelings of achievement and capability are politically corrupting’. Presumably, leftist piety is arrived at via indolence, whining and half-arsed flummery. Though it’s not, perhaps, as strange as declaring one’s own piety and compassion – as opposed to all those dreadful rightwing people – while sneering at a cancer charity because its most direct beneficiaries are men.

How To Impress Your Boss, An Intersectional Guide. 

Self-described “educator” Sophia Stephens says that minority employees shouldn’t have to be reliable or competent.