A sociology professor is not happy about this:

By failing to pretend that they’re oppressed at every turn, crushingly and invisibly, the Hispanic students are, we’re told, perpetuating “colourblind racism.” Which is to say, by choosing not to become irresponsible and neurotic, and instead getting a grip on their lives, they are now the villains of the drama. Or put another way, “I’ll tell you what to feel, you uppity brownling.”

Zareer Masani on artefacts, treasures and preservation: 

Before the British came [to India], there was no indigenous tradition of exploring or conserving antiquity. The wonderful Buddhist stupas of the Mauryan empire (circa 2nd century BC) were destroyed, abandoned and forgotten during the Hindu revival, and then many Hindu temples met a similar fate during Muslim invasions from the 12th century… The fact is that we have no idea what would have become of the world’s ‘looted’ antiquities if they hadn’t been preserved in Western collections. Would the treasures of Beijing’s Summer Palace have survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution? Would the Elgin marbles have survived Turkish tour guides chopping off chunks to sell as souvenirs? Would ISIS have spared those Middle Eastern artefacts that survive in European museums?

Readers may care to speculate as to whether, for instance, the Natural History Museum of Berlin’s famous Brachiosaurus, the tallest mounted skeleton in the world, which was discovered and excavated by German palaeontologists in 1909 and is currently maintained by German taxpayers, would have fared better had it remained in Tanzania. 

Jonah Goldberg on “affirmative action” and its victims: 

If Harvard lifted its anti-Asian [admissions] criteria, Harvard’s own Office of Institutional Research said the share of Asian students at Harvard would more than double, from 19 percent to 43 percent. But that 43 percent wouldn’t be distributed equally among all courses and disciplines. It would be a boon for computer-science and biology classes, but even more seats would go empty in women’s history or poetry courses. And I can’t help but think that the faculties in the humanities and the softer social sciences have disproportionate sway on the cultural and political assumptions of the school’s administration. They are, after all, the talkers.

Related: Law professor Gail Heriot on the same, and on other campus dramas: 

Apparently, black men are the new white men and should be scorned and silenced accordingly:

It’s strange just how often this “intersectionality” business looks an awful lot like a caste system, in which a person’s standing and moral significance, and their ability to take part in discussions, is determined entirely by their race and gender, and other attributes over which they have no meaningful control.

The author of the above, Harvard-educated sociology professor Crystal Fleming, has been noted here before. Via Neontaster.

Further to the first item here, on the academic taboo of affirming bourgeois values, Ben Weingarten interviews the woman at the heart of that particular storm, law professor Amy Wax:

Ben Weingarten: There was controversy over your first piece and maybe it’s in part because, while many of your critics would say that every culture is different and who are we to judge which one is superior… they would also say the bourgeois culture that you support is actually inferior and retrograde and regressive — something interesting, I think, in their position.

Amy Wax: Except that they exemplify many of the bourgeois values themselves. And as I point out to them – which only infuriates them more – they try to inculcate those values into their own children. I’m not sure why they do that if they think those values are worthless… They practice what they preach against in many instances.

The whole thing is worth a listen.

To get a sense of the pretension Professor Wax is describing – the laughable perversity of it – try to imagine some of those pretenders – say, tenured academics at Harvard and Yale – aping underclass chav culture in their own comfortable, middle-class homes, with their own comfortable, middle-class children. Apparently, we’re expected to believe that these Woke Denouncers Of Bourgeois Values would be thrilled by their own offspring being involved in burglary or getting pregnant at 15.

You almost have to admire the gall of these clowns.

Meet the academic left, part 3,047. In which a Cambridge lecturer in “postcolonial studies” complains, publicly and at length, about being addressed by a college porter as “madam,” as is the custom.

This is the crucial tweet, but the whole thread is worth a read.https://t.co/Spo4WN19Tj

— Damian Counsell (@DamCou) June 18, 2018

It’s racist, apparently.

Update, via the comments:

Cambridge porters, who see hundreds of people a day, including students, staff, faculty and visitors, tend to address people as “sir” or “madam.” It is in fact the custom. For obvious logistical reasons, Porters are not expected to remember the names and formal titles of every member of staff and faculty, numbering in the thousands, at Cambridge’s 30 or so colleges.

Contrary to Dr Gopal’s hysterical and self-serving tirade, this courtesy – being called madam – is not obvious and damning proof of “aggression,” let alone “racial profiling and unconscious bias.” A more obvious explanation is that Dr Gopal is a preening, delusional cow.

Those who dare to disagree with Dr Gopal’s latest persecution fantasy, including the head of the campus visitor service, are currently being dismissed by her as “presumably white.” So no racism there, obviously.

Readers may wish to ponder whether someone well-adjusted and secure in her intellectual status would engage in a protracted hissy fit over not being immediately recognised and referred to as a Being Of Immense Importance.

And then of course there’s the adage that you can tell a lot about someone by how they treat waiters, checkout assistants, porters, and so forth – anyone that they imagine to be of lower social standing.

Readers are also invited to speculate as to whether Dr Gopal, our high priestess of hair-trigger indignation, knows the name of the porter.