I swear, when I wrote the recent post about the lawsuit against the use of the standard college admissions tests, I had not read nor was even aware of Heather MacDonald’s superb essay on the topic of the manipulation of higher education in pursuit of ideological domination. (Thanks and gratitude to Instapundit for the timely link.)
Here is a taste:
The social-justice diversity bureaucracy has constructed a perpetual-motion machine that guarantees it eternal life. Minority students who have been catapulted by racial preferences into schools for which they are not academically prepared frequently struggle in their classes. The cause of those struggles, according to the social-justice diversity bureaucracy, is not academic mismatch; it is the lack of a critical mass of other minority students and faculty to provide refuge from the school’s overwhelming bigotry. And so, the school admits more minority students to create such a critical mass. Rather than raising minority performance, however, this new influx of diverse students lowers it, since the school has had to dig deeper into the applicant pool. The academic struggles and alienation of minority students will increase, along with the demand for more diversity bureaucrats, more segregated safe spaces, more victimology courses, more mental health workers, more diverse faculty, more lowered standards, and of course, more diversity student admits. And the cycle will start all over again.
And another…
The ultimate social-justice solution to the skills and behavior gap is to remove the competition entirely. From the moment children enter school, they are berated for their white heteronormative patriarchal privilege if they fall outside a favored victim group. Any success that they enjoy is not due to their own efforts, they are told; it is due, rather, to the unfair advantages of a system deliberately designed to handicap minorities. Teachers are now advised to ignore white male students, since asking or answering questions in class is another mark of male supremacy.
Please read it all, here.
There will be a quiz.
Ethics Alarms 
Thanks for that. A superior paving material for the Road to Hell…
“There will be a quiz.”
Is there a prize? I only work for treats.
Ask Michael West: I’ve owed him a prize for two years. But I’m still going to get it to him…
It’s even worse than you think. The system is rotten to the core: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/universities-breed-anger-ignorance-ingratitude/
It can’t POSSIBLY be worse than I think.
“It can’t POSSIBLY be worse than I think.”
oh no… never say that in a world where Joe Biden leads in the polls of likely Democrat voters…
Well, there’s no burying the lede here. There is, however, statement of the obvious. I guess that’s the lesser of the two evils.
This is not just a problem with the academy or social justice generally, but the decision by the Left in America to decide, unilaterally, that it will brook no dissent whatever to their entirely superficial definition of what constitutes “justice,” and the creation of multiple identities and “intersections” to spread what has traditionally been a black-white problem to everyone except males of Anglo-Saxon descent, “white” Latinos and high-performing Asians.
The article goes on to describe a form of hostile academic environment currently extant in academia which, instead of adopting the wise advice of sociologist Max Webber when discussing why professors should abjure politics in the classroom:
“It is somewhat too convenient to demonstrate one’s courage in taking a stand where the audience and possible opponents are condemned to silence.”
We know this is not what happens, and in fact, it is very much the opposite. College administrations and professors actively suppress non-Leftist thought, demand and get administrative action against conservative and non-conformist associations, and actively persecute non-conformism at every turn, going so far as making “bias” training of various types mandatory for students.
Social media is now used as a scarlet letter delivery system, and non-conforming students now rationally fear lifetime consequences from excoriation on social media as being some kind of “-ist,” and having it echoed and investigated by the school administration. This is an actionable hostile work environment, but nobody ever has to defend it as such.
Alas, this a question that may not be asked. Anyone who does it by definition a white supremacist or other member of a group that must be excluded, canceled, and made to suffer by polite society.
Here’s the “crux of the biscuit,” as the late Frank Zappa once wrote. The United States is on course for a clash between white, traditional middle-America types and the urban spew of this new woke academy. The clash, to an extent, has already happened with the 2016 election. But like Boris Johnson, Donald Trump is very much in a position to win away the suburban moderates and middle-class labor because the Left is going off the rails and has little in common with them anymore. If that happens and Trump gets re-elected, violence is an almost certain result.
History indicates there is only one way, and that is open conflict with one ideology defeating the other. The Left is sure that it is correct in all things, and everyone else is wrong to the point of being unworthy of civilization. Such beliefs always lead to open warfare. It happened in China. It happened in Russia. It happened in Antebellum America. It has been going on in the Middle East since the advent of Mohammad ibn Abdullah.
So one day, the fruits of the Left’s labors in academia will be harvested, to the woe of all.
The cited paragraph beginning ” it is somewhat too convenient. . .” Is actually in agreement with your counterpoint .
Both state that speaking truth to power is easy when the metaphorical guns are trained on your audience.
Yes, and I was trying to agree with it, I just did so very badly. My proofreading skills are sometimes just embarrassing.
this violence will be followed by prosecutions.
Or will it wind up being a prosecutorial war, where partisan DA’s prosecute crimes mainly the other side, depending on where the violence happens?
Tit for tat is certainly unethical, but it looks like we’re coming to the point where it is the default response.
Tit for tat will be inevitable unless the “tat” is fairly punished.
“Tit for tat will be inevitable unless the “tat” is fairly punished.”
er… does that mean the ‘tit’ should be given preferential treatment?
Always.
I left a comment on the other article.
http://www.city-journal.org/social-justice-ideology#comment-4725663732