By Professor Doom
It seems like
every week our “scholars” in higher ed make another startling discovery, that
something innocuous is, in fact, RACIST. I’ve certainly covered many of these
revelations, from milk, to fiscal responsibility, to showing up on time, but
I’d like to put a capstone on the ultimate of this madness:
--note
carefully how the media supports the author by stating unequivocally the
premises are “faulty.”
One of the big
problems on campus today is the takeover by Leftist lunatics who feel quite
justified in doing physical harm to anyone who dares challenge their beliefs.
One of the strongest challenges to their beliefs concerns their alleged belief
in “diversity,” which clearly doesn’t allow for any diversity of thought.
The professor
here presents three arguments against allowing diversity of thought on campus.
I’m not exactly optimistic that he’ll make much sense, but let’s get it on:
The first faulty premise is the idea that those
who call for diversity of thought and free speech are arguing in good faith.
Well, that didn’t
take long. The fallacy here is called “ad hominem.” The author says we should
dismiss the calls allowing for freedom of thought on campus because people
making those calls are (supposedly) not arguing in good faith. Is it just some
people not arguing in good faith that negates the value of free thought?
Even supposing
that all the people asking for freedom of thought on campus were not asking in
good faith…what of it? In no way does this address why freedom of thought would
be a bad thing. So this first argument is immediately invalid, although the
author does try to support it:
Certain conservative foundations, activists and
professors have used diversity of thought as a political tactic to exert power
over higher educational institutions.
Alas, the author
provides no examples of this, and, more importantly, it’s clearly never worked as the Left clearly controls far more educational institutions than conservatives.
So, what of it?
The key here is that this is a political
project aimed at making racist and misogynist ideas acceptable.
Bottom line, his
first argument against freedom of thought on campus is “it’s RACIST.” Don’t
these guys ever get tired of calling everything RACIST? Apparently not.
…attempts to cast doubt on the science of
climate change follow a similar logic, attempting to undermine disciplinary
consensus…
I don’t know if the author is being
deceptive here, or simply ignorant. “Disciplinary consensus” doesn’t exist on
global warming--because the evidence is so wildly against it…it’s why the
global warming was re-named to the impossible to refute name of “climate
change.” I can’t help but digress here and note that the whole “Trump/Russia
Collusion” narrative has fallen apart so badly that it’s been altered to
something just as silly as “climate CHANGE”—it’s now “Russian MEDDLING,” which
is about as relevant as change.
Anyway, his assertions about the consensus
is irrelevant: just because there’s a consensus doesn’t mean the consensus is valid
(eg, the consensus over matter being composed of 4 elements, which held for
millenia).
Enough of this first “argument” against
freedom of thought. Let’s look at another:
The second false premise that promoters
of so-called diversity of thought rely upon is that conservative ideas are
marginalized in higher education when, in fact, they are ubiquitous.
Wait, what? There’s been a Leftist bias
on campus for decades now, as easily evidenced by voting records. This bias has
been common knowledge, but not, apparently, this professor. Honest, if 78% of departments have zero Republicans on them, in a country where roughly half the
population votes Republican, it’s tough to call conservative ideas “ubiquitous”
on campus.
Universities’ fights with graduate unions, the
increasing reliance on contingent labor and
the retreat from affirmative
action are not symbols of a left victory in
higher education.
Again, the author seems inexplicably ignorant. In your typical Leftist
utopia, the workers and lowest castes are indeed crushed into the ground, if
not outright murdered (as yet, not an option in higher ed, but I’m hard pressed
to guess just how much longer it’ll be until it is). Seeing as this has
happened every single time, it’s only natural for the workers to begin starving
once there’s a leftist takeover. Unions being crushed and reliance upon
contingent labor are actually quite consistent of leftist victory.
His supporting links are atrocious, by the
way. Let’s take a quick look at the abstract of his citation regarding
affirmative action:
In 1994, 60 percent of selective
institutions publicly declared that they considered race in undergraduate
admissions; by 2014, just 35 percent did. This decline varied depending on
status (competitiveness) and sector (public or private). Race-conscious
admissions remain the stated policy of almost all of the most elite public and
private institutions. The retreat from race-conscious admissions occurs largely
among schools lower in the status hierarchy…
While the first two sentences of the
above sort-of supports his claim, the last sentence destroys it. Those lower
tier schools no longer look at race for admissions because they’ve become open
admissions (it’s what, by definition, makes them lower tier)…everyone gets in,
so of course race isn’t a factor in admissions.
I don’t understand how the professor
could be ignorant of this rather important detail.
Further, students are often comfortable
expressing racist ideas, as are some of our colleagues.
Seriously, the cry of RACISM again? Of
course, the professor gives no supporting evidence. Losing interest in this
feeble argument, I move on to his third, and presumably strongest, claim:
A third premise that should be strongly
questioned is the very idea that conservative thought is diverse.
I suspect the professor is being obtuse
here, as this isn’t even remotely what’s being asked for in the allowance of
freedom of thought. The fallacy here is called “straw man.” Having completely
misunderstood (I’m being generous) the argument, the professor then goes on to
show the premise he imagines is wrong.
But there is nothing edgy or very thoughtful
about denigrating people of color or women, assuming that the natural order of
the world is out of order because we had a black United States president or
attacking trans students for simply existing.
Yet another cry of RACIST, and then more
straw men. Again, no supporting evidence is given that freedom of thought has
much to do with the previous president or transgender students…I can’t even
consider the confusion of ideas which leads the professor to write such lunacy.
The comments section uniformly has little
trouble obliterating these feeble arguments, and one poster sums things up
well:
There's a great paradox in saying "the
other side isn't arguing in good faith," and then proceeded to oneself
argue in bad faith by misrepresentation and constructing imaginary strawmen.
So now I have questions. How does this
rubbish even get printed on major sites like Inside Higher Ed? Perhaps I’m no
great shakes as a writer, and that explains why I can get no Education-related
publisher to consider my work but…am I really deluding myself in believing I’m
more coherent than this guy?
Who is this professor, anyway?
Surprisingly, he doesn’t have an Education degree. Instead, he’s a
Sociologist. While this
is good to know, I’m now even more puzzled how he doesn’t know of the heavy
Leftist bias of our campuses, or what has happened in every Leftist takeover on
the planet.
Very puzzling, indeed. But now that
we’ve finally reached the ultimate goal of all these wild allegations, namely
that any disagreement with the predominant ideology on campus makes you a
deplorable RACIST, can we just concede that everything
is racist instead of naming every individual thing specifically as racist, and
move on to actually pursuing useful knowledge?
Can we stop publishing every
identification of something as RACIST, at least?
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