Posted on 05/09/2012 4:43:31 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The trade paper of the academic industry just fired a writer who dared express skepticism about the academic worth of a number of doctoral dissertations in the field of black studies. Liz McMillan, editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education wrote a "Note to readers" explaining why Naomi Schaefer Riley's blog posting on Brainstorm last week ("The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations" merited her dismissal and an abject apology from the editorial honcho.
Reactions are mostly predictable, from both leftists and conservatives.
Riley is, of course, being widely termed a racist. She summarized her critics in a second post, her last before she was fired from the CoHE blog titled "Brainstorm":
The comments regarding my post seem to boil down to the following:
I am picking on people because they are black (and I am a racist).
I am picking on people even though I don't have a Ph.D.
I am picking on people who are too young and inexperienced to defend themselves.
I am picking on people even though I haven't read their entire dissertations.Let me take the first two criticisms first. My qualifications to post on this blog consist of the fact that I have been a journalist writing about higher education for close to 15 years now. My work has been published in every major newspaper in the country and I have written two books on the subject as well. The editors at those papers and those publishers and at The Chronicle have all been aware that I hold no advanced degree. Black studies is now an academic discipline at most universities, which means I get to comment on that too.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I believe that if someone characterizes themselves as “African-American”, they should make a choice which continent they want to live in and assimilate that culture.
Like nanoscience? LOL
Looks like you may have missed the nuanced distinction between "discipline" (with quotes) and discipline (without quotes)...
It’s funny, and I guess it’s just human nature, that when a person or group is more successful than you or yours is, you seek to have the more successful person or group’s successes destroyed.
That’s the way it is with these “grievance” cultures.
Western/Christian culture, being successful, makes their cultures look bad by comparison, so instead of adapting to the more successful culture, they seek to destroy it.
I think this one of the big reasons for anti-semitism as well, besides the fact that the prince of this world has an inherent antipathy for God’s people.
They are not nearly as good as McMillan describes and that's not sarcasm.
That's just knee-jerk dumb.
Politicians should keep out of this other than to cut spending at state schools. College is not just a jobs-training center. If someone wants to waste his life on black studies that should be up to him.
It's interesting just which sorts of government intervention supposed conservatives support.
Thank you, Doctor. I am sick of the anti-cultural philistinism of so many on the right - let’s remember that Arthur Conan Doyle was a doctor AND an important writer...the liberal arts are a valuable asset to emotional and intellectual development, with countless possible applications.
I’ve got a liberal arts degree myself, with lots of English and philosophy included in it.
The value of said degree, let alone its utility, is debatable.
What I would suggest is that with a little effort you and I could have read what we read and learned what we learned without sitting in a classroom, living in a dorm, and paying through the nose for the (literal) privilege.
I loved college, had a great time and pulled down a 3.86 gpa. But a lot of what I did, and what the curriculum required me to do, really only got in the way of my acquiring knowledge, let alone wisdom.
Point is, your ”emphasis” should be tied into something that has a reasonable chance at getting you a job, such as finance, economics, history or law.
Graduating with a degree in “Black Studies” qualifies the graduate to do exactly one thing - - teach “Black Studies”.
I had a major in Theater with a minor in Political Science.
All it really qualified me to do was to stage a coup.
Obviously, college education serves no purpose for the 90% who don’t belong there.
Everything I learned which I consider important to my life- politics, psychology, sociology, history, I’ve taught my self long after my college days. Self education with degrees offered via timed standardized examination over the internet will be the future of education.
Lifson was a Freeper back at the beginning. Met him at the March for Justice back in ‘98. Brilliant guy...and relative of General Washington.
“I won’t disagree with you about too many people going to college but the unemployment rate differential for college no college is stark.”
that’s because way too many businesses require needless degrees and, at kleast in graphics, most of the required degrees are so artists who can’t make a living with thjeir art can teach. it’s a scam. you need experience and teaching skills to teach intro graphics software, not a bfa or mfa.
My step-mother the late Edythe Wass (disclosure - a white woman) said that over 40 years ago.
...and the left-wing professors who put them up to it.
One thing that never gets enough attention was how rotten the academic world was (riddled with leftists) even before 1968. That was just the year that there was enough critical mass, mostly from the brainwashed students of these corrupt high school and college instructors, to overwhelm the whole thing.
A huge number of leftists got into the academy in the 1930s and 40s (including refugees from Europe, who were steeped in Socialism), and of course there was already that Deweyan progressivist current running through it.
I had to take 2 P.E. classes....when I went back to get a degree. How dumb is that? I actually liked them..."Basketball" and "Racketball"...as I already played both....But, my time and money could have been better spent...As I had a family, a home, bills, etc..etc.
fwiw-
I know one big difference from say 30 years ago is many more industries would hire and train.Now u need much more in the way of education to get that trainee position.
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