Via Darleen, Terry Newman on life among the Mao-lings at Concordia University: 

For readers, Alice’s journey in Wonderland is amusing. But to be Alice is something altogether different. The experience is hard to pin down with words. With few exceptions, no one on campus is officially censored. But the culture itself exerts power. One feels constantly judged. One is always on-edge. To perceive nuance, to be sceptical, to ask questions, gets one quickly accused of moral deficiency. The students are zealous, the professors often unprepared, fearful, or complicit. And make no mistake — to be told unendingly that the whiteness of one’s skin is disqualifying, one’s morals questionable, one’s words offensive, one’s opinions invalid, has a significant cumulative psychological effect.

John Ellis on presumptuous and revolting male feminists: 

I understand that Dr Michael Kimmel is accomplished in the non-scientific field of sociology and traffics himself as a gender-studies expert. And I understand that some consider him “the world’s most prominent male feminist.” But why does he get to speak for me and my fellow “heterosexual white ones” at a condescending conference with a priori commitments to the silliness called intersectionality? 

And Andy Ngo on the inexplicable demise of an intersectionally feminist bookstore: 

The customer wasn’t always right. In fact, he was expected to “abide by” seven “guidelines” including this one: “Cishetero-patriarchy exists, white supremacy exists, ableism exists, racism exists, colonialism never ended, capitalism is bad. This is not a space where we argue about the basics of the situation.” […] Signs denouncing police, the U.S. military and immigration authorities lined the windows. Inside, I looked at some of the merchandise for sale. There were “Riots not diets” buttons and a “Fuck patriarchy” T-shirt. The latter was double-extra-large—too big for me. One piece of merchandise carried a label that read “Trigger warning: gendered and patriarchal language.” The offending verbiage? Instructions for using a feminine-hygiene product. I attempted to make a small purchase but didn’t have any cash. A sign at the counter declared: “Due to patriarchy we require a $5 minimum on all debit/credit card purchases.”

No, he’s not kidding. 

I left empty-handed.

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

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: 

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.

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.

Time, I think, for a visit to the pages of Everyday Feminism, where Ms Ixty Quintanilla is turning her mind to matters ectoplasmic:

I spoke with several individuals who each channel their ancestral spirituality in different ways and asked them how to use spiritual practice as a form of healing and resistance, now during this difficult Trump era and beyond.

You see, when your preferred candidate loses an election, what you really need is some channelling of ancestral spirituality. As opposed to say, a sense of proportion. And so Ms Quintanilla lists some “spiritual practices” in order to enable fellow feminists to cope with the unutterable trauma that is their lives.

Suggestions include Call On Ancestors – which is to say, the dead – and Burn Herbs Mindfully. The latter is surprisingly fraught with complication, as we’re told, emphatically, that we must avoid setting fire to white sage and various endangered plants, and that it is “vital to recognise and respect the ancestors of the land you stand on.” Exactly how one fathoms the particulars of these things, at any given point in history, and how one should respect the relevant no-longer-living parties, assuming one has been able to identify them, is not made clear.

Other recommendations are more prosaic – feeling the breeze, watching trees grow, and, er, pushing up against said trees. No, I don’t know either. But apparently, if your psyche has been exploded and rendered unto dust by the election of someone other than Hillary Clinton, you should immediately find a tree and push up against it. It’s the feminist way.

Heather Mac Donald on leftist contradictions: 

The same left-wing establishment that in the morning rails against American oppression of an ever-expanding number of victim groups in the afternoon denounces the U.S. for not giving unlimited access to foreign members of those same victim groups. In their open-borders afternoon mode, progressives paint the U.S. as the only source of hope and opportunity for low-skilled, low-social-capital Third Worlders; a place obligated by its immigration history to take in all comers, forever. In their America-as-the-font-of-all-evil-against-females-and-persons-of-colour morning mode, progressives paint the U.S. as the place where hope and opportunity die under a tsunami of misogyny and racism… In pressing for an immigration policy determined by the desire of hundreds of millions of foreigners to enter the U.S., progressives implicitly acknowledge that the left-wing narrative about America is false.

Toni Airaksinen on feminist nutrition: 

Two professors argue in a newly published anthology on “feminist nutrition” that “athletic performance” and “longevity” are simply “Western values.” 

The authors, Allison Hayes-Conroy and her sister, Jessica Hayes-Conroy, are unhappy that dietary literature, which they wish to “decolonise,” rarely devotes space to activist issues such as “strikes and boycotts,” knowledge of which is apparently essential to any attempt to lose weight or correct a vitamin D deficiency. The ladies are also unhappy that farmers markets are “spaces of whiteness” and therefore oppressive.   

And via R. Sherman, Bret Weinstein describes his career-changing encounter with the Mao-lings at Evergreen: 

Everything is racist. Just confess, for God’s sake.

So, to summarise. If you dismiss people based solely on their skin colour, that’s racist. But if you don’t dismiss people based solely on their skin colour, that’s racist too. Having a family dinner on Columbus Day is an act of “covert white supremacy,” and loaning money to people who are likely to repay you, as opposed to those who aren’t, is also racist and proof of “white supremacy.” If you have reservations about unlimited immigration, that’s racist. If you suggest that non-white people can be racist, that’s racist. If you fail to be outraged by so-called “cultural appropriation,” that’s racist. And if you dare to argue that you aren’t in fact racist, that’s racist too.

Oh, and if you don’t instantly believe whatever a brown-skinned person says, anything at all, however improbable – including the demented conspiracy theories of one Dr Dwight Turner – then obviously you’re seething with “unconscious racism.”

So anyway, there’s a large, lavish room in which wealthy and statusful people are giving each other prizes. Then, rather incongruously, a particularly wealthy and statusful person steps onto the stage and shouts “Fuck Trump!” At which point, the other wealthy and statusful people rise to their feet, applauding, and whistling, and cheering. As if something terribly brave had just taken place.

And those doing the applauding, and whistling and cheering, seem oblivious to the message being sent by this display. Specifically, that “Fuck Trump!” translates as something like: “Fuck Trump and all of the people who voted for him.” Some of whom, perhaps many of whom, may have grown tired of being openly and gleefully disdained by people much richer and more statusful than themselves, their self-imagined betters, and who may find their only obvious recourse to such disdain is to vote for Donald Trump again.

Via sH2 in the comments.

Andy Ngo on paying the price for other people’s intersectional piety:

[Portland bakery owner, John] Blomgren’s chronology matches and corroborates [his employees’] version of events. However, having established that his staff had done nothing wrong did not alter Blomgren’s decision to fire them. “In this situation it doesn’t really matter that the two staff members working are not themselves racist because the call they made to deny [student and activist, Lillian Green] service caused her to feel like she had been discriminated against,” his statement explained. “Sometimes impact outweighs intent and when that happens people do need to be held accountable.” The bakery has since deleted this statement and denies firing the employees to “save face or to appease anyone.”

If the word accountable has a perverse and sour ring to it, it should. “Dismantling the white supremacist hetero-patriarchy,” as Mr Blomgren puts it, is apparently something that small eateries should do now, ostentatiously, above all else, and is best achieved, it seems, by firing female employees for the sin of doing their jobs. Mr Ngo covers the escalating drama, and others, in some detail, and none of it is particularly encouraging. But it does reveal quite a lot about who such people are, the psychology in play, and the consequences of prostrating yourself in front of relentlessly spiteful “social justice” bedlamites.

The section on Cameron Whitten, one of Portland’s more prominent “social justice” activists, is also worth highlighting:

“I think he’s actually a sociopath,” speculates ‘Alex,’ a Portland-based social justice activist who has worked extensively with Whitten and witnessed his strategic use of baseless accusations of racism to take down opponents and manipulate allies. Fearful of retribution given Whitten’s growing influence, Alex spoke to me on condition of anonymity but provided evidence of their relationship. “He’s created a chilling effect in Portland. People are scared of him and no one knows how to intervene.” Alex expressed sympathy for Blomgren and said Whitten selects his targets carefully — mainly white progressives who are likely to trip over themselves when accused of racism. Some of them offer him money or career opportunities.

If you think the word sociopath sounds a bit strong, do read the whole thing.

In the comments, Rafi notes that the above bears a striking resemblance to a protection racket, which it pretty much is. It certainly seems to have attracted the kinds of personalities that you’d expect to find involved in one. And if you encourage the credulous to cultivate delusions of collective guilt, and to contort themselves, abase themselves, in order to conform – and if you do it institutionally, systemically, in the name of progressive education – then it’s hardly surprising that moochers, narcissists and marginal personalities waste no time in exploiting it.

Previously, this and this.