Alex Southwell, a pseudonym, on “diversity” hires and the deskilling of academia:

I mentioned that I had received an email from one of the candidates and shared it with the committee members. After reading the email aloud, I argued that the missive effectively disqualified the candidate. The writing was riddled with awkward expression, malapropisms, misplaced punctuation, and other conceptual and formal problems… I asked my fellow committee members how we could possibly hire someone to teach writing who had written such an email. The candidate could not write. I also pointed to her application letter, which was similarly awkward and error-laden. My committee colleagues argued that “we do not teach grammar” in our writing classes. 

Further to the above, Amy Alkon has identified the unnamed beneficiary of these piously lowered standards, and shares some student feedback. As even basic grammar and punctuation are apparently deemed superfluous, even among faculty, and even in official documents, I suspect the “Liberal Studies” department at NYU is probably best avoided.

For more on the Clown Quarter’s disdain for competence, see also this and this. 

Noah Rothman on the delusional excuses of campus Mao-lings: 

Georgetown’s student paper The Hoya endorsed Oberlin’s assessment of the threat posed by Christina Hoff Sommers – and thus, critical statistical analysis – by asserting that her invitation to speak at the university amounted to endorsing “a harmful conversation.” The notion that one is under physical assault eventually legitimises — even demands — a preventative response. The editors at Wellesley College’s student newspaper inadvertently endorsed this grim totalitarianism in an editorial advocating the use of “appropriate measures” against those who support those they deem to be irresponsible politicians or lecturers. “[I]f people are given the resources to learn and either continue to speak hate speech or refuse to adapt their beliefs, then hostility may be warranted,” the piece read. Amid laborious prose that read as though an algorithm translated it from the original Mandarin, these students articulated the logical foundations of fascism: We, the victimised, are owed reparative justice. And here it comes.

And Theodore Dalrymple on vanity as policy: 

The Swedish government agreed to take 160,000 refugees or migrants from the Middle East in a single year (who did not want to claim asylum in Denmark, where the social security payments were lower). The government did this because it (and its supporters) wanted Sweden to be an ethical superpower, a country responsible to and for the whole world, rather than to and for itself… Even these ethical narcissists soon realised, however, that if they proceeded in this fashion for, say, ten years, Sweden would have become, with the aid of a little family reunification and a higher birthrate, a semi–Middle Eastern country stuck in the Baltic, and they promptly closed the borders… Since they were motivated not so much by the desire for change as the desire to preen themselves like ducks at the edge of a pond, they suddenly realised the danger they were in. Their desire to be good was much shallower than their desire to appear good.

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

Further to this, Heather Mac Donald recounts her recent harassment by 300 or so student Mao-lings:  

When speakers need police escort on and off college campuses, an alarm bell should be going off that something has gone seriously awry… I am reluctant to wield the epithet “fascist” as promiscuously as my declared opponents do. But it must be observed that if campus conservatives tried to use physical force to block Senator Elizabeth Warren, say, from giving a speech, the New York Times would likely put the obstruction on the front page and the phrase “fascist” would be flying around like a swarm of hornets, followed immediately by the epithet “misogynist.” 

Indeed. But it seems highly unlikely that the mob of dogmatic morons – the ones banging on windows, blocking fire escapes and assaulting faculty – would wish their behaviour to be constrained by something as inconvenient as consistent and reciprocal principles. Despite the chanted professions of piety, what matters to the ‘protestors’, whose grasp of Ms Mac Donald’s written output is somewhat sketchy, is the thrill of harassing people, frustrating them, scaring them. And thereby, a sense of power.

Also this:

Of all the chants, “How do you spell racist?” “C-M-C,” was the most absurd. “Racist” Claremont McKenna College is so desperate for “diverse” students that it has historically admitted black and Hispanic students with an average 200-point lower SAT score than white and Asian students. Such racial preferences satisfy CMC’s desire for racial virtue but set the alleged beneficiaries up for academic struggles, if not failure.

As noted here. Such institutional privilege also provides an unending supply of academic inadequates who, feeling incongruous, direct their resentments into thuggish ‘activism’, which gratifies all manner of unbecoming impulses, and requires less intelligence.

There’s much you can learn during a “diversity” course for faculty at Clemson University. Including the revelation that punctuality is racist:

The online training presents a variety of scenarios featuring fictional characters…  [On one slide], a character named Alejandro schedules a 9:00 a.m. meeting between two groups of foreign professors and students. The first group arrived fifteen minutes early, while the second arrived ten minutes late [and wanted to “socialise” first].

According to the course material, any acknowledgement of this tardiness, or of the customary expectation that people arrive on time for meetings, and that they generally apologise when they don’t, is denounced as wrong, and is marked with a large ‘X’ to stress the deviation from the new moral purity. Because casually disrespecting your host – by turning up late and offering no apology and then wasting more of everyone else’s time – is fine, and indeed culturally enriching, provided those arriving late have sufficient racial otherness. And so, instead,

Alejandro should recognise and acknowledge cultural differences with ease and respect… Time may be considered precise or fluid depending on the culture. For Alejandro to bring three cultures together he must start from a place of respect, understanding that his cultural perspective regarding time is neither more nor less valid than any other.

Yes, punctual and tardy are equally valid, apparently. Which will be a huge comfort when all of Alejandro’s subsequent appointments run late as a result or have to be truncated. Thanks to the “respect” in question being entirely unilateral. According to the course literature, this commitment to “diversity” and “inclusion” – and with it, a freewheeling approach to time-keeping – can “lead to better decisions.”

Somewhat related: “We should disrupt Eurocentric notions of time.” 

Again the audience erupted in shouting, with one young man saying he was upset at her audacity to speak to the audience with such information.

Further to this, Heather Mac Donald visits UCLA and attempts to share statistics with unhappy students.

Ms Mac Donald is of course scolded for her impertinence, loudly, repetitively and at length, and this sharing of relevant data and neglected perspectives is denounced as proof of her supposed embrace of “white supremacy,” and of her “capitalist, imperialist, fascist agenda.” Acknowledging statistics is, we’re told, “violent in itself.” Ah, academia, that temple of the mind.

Update: 

And again, only more so, at Claremont McKenna College:

Thirty minutes into the speech, police officers told [Ms Mac Donald] to cut it short, and she was given a four-officer escort through a side door.

You see, if you’re invited to speak on campus and you say things that challenge leftist prejudice, there’s a good chance you’ll need an armed police escort to protect you from the mob of budding intellectuals.

Rod Dreher on identity politics versus art: 

Schutz’s painting has been denounced by some black artists and others, because the painter is white. Hannah Black, a British-born black artist, has written an open letter demanding that the Whitney Museum not only take the painting down, but also destroy it. 

Mark Steyn on our tolerant betters: 

The left doesn’t want to win the debate. They want to cancel the debate… A case in point, [this headline]: “Citing security issues, the Somalian-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali calls off her scheduled Australian tour.” Let’s just expand that “Somali-born activist” précis a little. She’s not a dead white male like me or Charles Murray. As someone once said, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is everything the identity-group fetishists profess to dig: female, atheist, black, immigrant. But, because she does not toe the party line on Islam, her blackness washes off her like a bad dye job on a telly anchor-man – and so do her femaleness and godlessness and immigrant status. And in the end she is Charles Murray, or Geert Wilders – or even David Duke. A black Somali woman is, it turns out, a “white supremacist.”

And by way of timely illustration, at Villanova University, Charles Murray once again encounters the leftist welcome wagon: 

Political science professor and event coordinator Colleen Sheehan offered [the disruptive students] the first question during the Q&A. Nonetheless, all offers by the hosts were rebuffed by the protesters, who continued to interrupt the lecture.

Note how these attention-seeking clowns – who grin at their own lies and then demand applause – are indulged, effetely and at length, by university staff, as if the venue were a toddlers’ day-care centre. And note that the protestors, who wish to impose themselves on others and inhibit other people’s discussion, refuse to participate in the debate without ultimate veto and Disruptor’s Privilege.