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: 

Via Tim Newman and lifted from the comments, a tale of  metropolitan woe: 

A common enough occurrence, especially in London. But Laurie has assured us, repeatedly and emphatically, that opportunist theft – of trainers, phones, laptops and such – is a sign of “desperation” and “a political statement.” Of which she approves. Are thieves, then, only “dickheads” when they steal from her?

I’m so confused.

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.

It’s racist, apparently.

And yes, the madam in question, Priyamvada Gopal, has been mentioned here before.