Woke Universities are Rousseau’s Children

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | December 1, 2021 | Garion Frankel

[karpov]

In early October, Bright Sheng, a professor of music at the University of Michigan, played the 1965 rendition of Shakespeare’s Othello for his undergraduate class. The film starred Laurence Olivier, who was wearing black makeup, as the titular character.

Having no concern for context or artistry, the university community revolted, deeming the film (and Sheng by association) racist. As a result, Sheng was temporarily removed from the classroom, and placed under investigation.

Michigan administrators knew that Sheng had done nothing wrong. He showed his class a movie that cannot, in any sense of the word, be considered obscene, and Sheng obviously had no intention in showing the film to incite or endorse racial prejudice.

However, in the eyes of students and many faculty members, Sheng committed an unforgivable offense—he defied the “anti-racist” moral consensus that permeated every aspect of university life. Because of this unforgivable sin, the only “just” option—independent of the law—was to cast him into the fire.

Thankfully, Sheng was able to return to the classroom without any penalty, but this situation did not occur in a vacuum. Around the country, and in all types of universities, the anti-racist moral consensus has become as strong as binding law.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs now function more as civil religion than academic abstractions. They demand complete faith, underlie every opinion and action, and result in punitive action against non-believers. In effect, any defiance will result in some form of censorship, whether it is legal or not.

The primary philosophical source for this civil religion is Jean-Jaques Rousseau. While the founding fathers largely rejected Rousseau, educators and curriculum designers love him. Rousseau was far from an anti-racist, but his predilection for censorship and authoritarian behavior make him a patron saint for modern social movements.

[bk1000]

The only way to be is to allow things like a black faced character from a 1965 movie about a story written in 1603 to exist without throwing a conniption fit over it. Don’t get excited or nervous upon finding a curved piece of string stuck in a tree. Stop insisting there be a special “Black xxxx”. Stop pretending to be a victim.

And you white folks: stop bending over backward to be “inoffensive” to blacks. Nothing you can do will ever make it ok to the instigators, so why try? Treat people like you wish to be treated. (That goes for blacks, too) Nobody wants to be pandered to like liberal whites pander to uppity blacks. It makes me sick.

[Restless]

I’m glad I’m a RETIRED professor. For many years, I taught a course called Media and Society, covering the history of American media and its impact on our culture. I’d probably be punished today for the clips I used to play from shows like All in the Family, the Jeffersons, and Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts. Those clips involved a lot of racial humor, which produced excellent learning and class discussions about our society’s changing racial attitudes. Sadly, today’s students would file “charges” against me with the university’s diversity office.

[Srednik]

Ahistorical thinking is more than an American problem. In Montpelier, France in 2018 I stopped to guffaw at a French Government plaque affixed to the “Jean Jacques Rousseau Nursery School.” Why hillarious? Rousseau, the father of Communism by extension, fathered a number of children with his mistress — all of which were carried off to orphanages as newborns, thus demonstrating Humanism’s anti-human bias.

[otness_e]

Personally, I’d argue the SJW mentality in universities actually had its roots grounded more firmly in Voltaire and Diderot than in Rousseau. At least Rousseau had a mental illness as an excuse for his role in causing the French Revolution and the SJW environment in universities. Diderot and Voltaire were clinically sane and deliberately spread lies against Christianity, the exact same lies that the SJWs are at best gullibly believing and at worst are deliberately pushing as well. Just read up Abbe Barruel and Timothy Dwight if you don’t believe me. In fact, Voltaire and Diderot played far more of a massive role in creating the concept of Cancel Culture via expelling the Jesuit order from France than Rousseau ever did, and they’re the ones lauded even among Conservative circles as being defenders of freedom of speech. Though, yes, Rousseau definitely played a very major role in this crap as well.

I wouldn’t say Thomas Paine would have been opposed to Rousseau’s views on governance, though. Aside from his being particularly infamous alongside Thomas Jefferson for cheerleading the Jacobins during the worst excesses (and when he narrowly escaped being killed by them proceeded to stupidly publish a book attacking organized religion despite literally living through the results of that bit), he also pretty much pushed for a progressive tax and also basically bashed the very concept of limited government by calling the Bill of Rights as “a bill of wrongs and insults.”

[otness_e]

Here’s another piece of ahistorical thinking that will make you guffaw as well. Voltaire being praised in France and other places, even here in America among conservatives, as a defender of free speech. Why hilarious? That guy if anything did far more to help set up the cancel culture situation with his treatment of the Jesuits and also of various Christian groups, including setting the foundations for the dechristianization of France, and even playing a direct role in the formation of Marxism, than he ever defended Free Speech. Meaning Voltaire is as self-serving in free speech as the 1960s Free Speech movement helmed by Marxists. Oh, and did I mention that Voltaire had sex with his own niece? Even Rousseau never stooped THAT low.