Here is a hanging curve ball for you, swing away.
Posted on 05/13/2012 1:53:45 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Even though The ChronicleofHigherEducation long ago reflected the leftist agenda of its readership, I never could have imagined it would stoop so low as to fire someone for writing a piece at variance with the political correctness it has come to uphold. But it did. The Chronicle fired Naomi Schaefer Riley for revealing what almost everyone on any campus knows, but is reluctant to say, about black studies: it is a political cause masquerading as an academic discipline, and if there were real intellectual, and not political, standards on campus, it would be shut down.
There is, however,a larger issue: not only is what Schaefer Riley says true about why black studies should be closed down, but her statements could also be easily extended to many fields in the social sciences and humanities. The vulnerability of the campus on this issue is why the Chronicle chose the unseemly and totally inappropriate device of censorship. It was so willing to placate its audience of ideological leftists massing with pitchforks in hand that it inadvertently gave Riley's exposé on black studies far and away more visibility than it would otherwise have achieved.
[must read snip]
[NSR]exposed not just black studies; indirectly, she exposed the bubble that is academia. Academia in the liberal arts and sciences has become a therapeutic society for angry leftists able to act out in class under the guise of academic freedom, and higher education has deteriorated into a propaganda mill for those seeking their own brand of social justice. Although nearly everyone knows what academia has become, just as everyone knew about Walker Hill, there is a large vested interest in not having it splattered on billboards for the world to see. [NSR] had the courage to run afoul of those interests. The academic world needs more truth-telling.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Naomi Schaefer Riley's column that raised such a fuss she was fired: The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations.
Here is a hanging curve ball for you, swing away.
.............."Many academics I know agree that black-studies programs are often slipshod, academically non-rigorous, and repositories for “grievance” politics. But they won’t say so publicly, for fear of being branded as “racists.” Naomi Riley had the courage to state the obvious. The author of two substantive books on higher education, she has worked with me as an editor on such topics at the Wall Street Journal. She knows her stuff. Certainly in a 500-word blog post she oversimplified, but that’s the nature of the blog that the Chronicle hired her to write for — it consists of quick opinion takes on issues of the day. It is even called “Brainstorm” to make clear it doesn’t publish the definitive word on any issue.
Her lone blog post brought a torrent of criticism, attacks by MSNBC, and finally a petition demanding that the Chronicle “dismiss” her. It was signed by 6,500 professors and graduate students.
At first, the Chronicle defended Riley’s right to speak out and invited people to debate her on the subject. But within days, its editor caved to the mob, fired her, and wrote the following craven apology:"........................
A lone voice crying out in the wilderness.
The truth shall set you free.
It sure freed her from her job.
There is one subject in this country tht is “untouchable”, she touched it.
There is irony in censoring diversity of opinion in the name of diversity.
There is a frightening know-nothing quality in academia when the subject of race is broached and the institution becomes reflexively intolerant to the point of bloodthirsty animosity, thus betraying it's very raison d'être
. The synergies between government and the left in the Academy on the one hand and government and the left in labor unions on the other hand are strikingly parallel and for similar reasons: the government subsidizes universities and unions with third-party money, both tax money and private money, privilege, and protection in return for support, inevitably co-opting and corrupting them.
The corrupting influence of government in universities and in unions inevitably separates the self-interest of the institution from their constituents, their students and their worker members.
As a result, both of these institutions become anti-rational, almost cultlike, impervious to appeals to reason, self indulgent, and emotionally childish.
Inevitably, as a result of government seduction, academia and unions become a liability not just to of their own constituents but to larger society.
It’s an organized criminal network, a “mafia” system, exerting fear and fed with money and muscle.
Perhaps the pendulum is beginning to swing back?
I thank the Good Lord on a daily basis for guiding me to the right side.
And ignorance. And trifles, based on the embarrassing, repetitive, unoriginal subjects of study by these so-called grad students.
I agree. Cute AND smart is sexy.
I think the ultimate irony here is that the people who called for her firing work in a system that doesn’t allow for firings, except in extreme cases that rarely have anything to do with what goes on in a classroom or opinions expressed.
One of the titles, the one about childbirth, led me to believe that the student wrote a dissertation about herself. Studying “me.” Yeah, that’s for the betterment of society.
One of the bigger problems is that no one pays attention to this kind of stuff until we get an article like Naomi Schaefer Riley’s. Then a larger problem arises because everyone takes a look and people who don’t believe they are wrong are told they are wrong.
Educating the indoctrinated lights a candle for those who care to see the truth.
“.....I vote NOT GUILTY. . .”
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I agree, most definitely NOT GUILTY.
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