Posted on 09/27/2022 8:18:28 AM PDT by DeweyCA
The descent of academia into the cesspool of ideological effluvia continues apace. (I cracked open my thesaurus this morning).
As a refugee from the academic world I am no stranger to the wide weird world of academic life. Both my parents were physicists, and I didn’t escape the college and university environments until I was in my mid-30s. One of the several reasons I gave up on my dream of becoming a political philosophy professor was the increasing momentum of the ideological Left in taking over the academic world.
Academics have leaned liberal for as long as I have been aware of politics, but the lurch Left over merely liberal didn’t really begin until the late 80s or early 90s. Professors were politically liberal, but relatively few of them seemed dedicated to doing nothing but spreading propaganda. There were the Marxists, of course, but they were mostly fringe figures. Lots of academics still did real research, even in the liberal arts.
Academics today are a different breed, for whatever reason. There are still plenty of serious scholars, of course, but they now are the fringe. And many are hanging up the medieval robes and leaving. Social justice is the the primary mission of the University today, and that makes it a difficult place to seek truth.
But the problem of academic decline goes deeper than ideological rot. Many academics have lost all sense of dignity, and more importantly of respect for people with whom they disagree. Rather than begin with a genuine willingness to understand others who think differently than them, they have open contempt for the plebs. This doesn’t just make them awful people–and many of them indeed are awful people–it also makes them stupid.
If you care about learning, not just lecturing or hectoring, you need to at least try to listen with respect to others. The search for truth is rather different than the search for self-validation, and it definitely is incompatible with the impulse to cram your own vision of the good down others’ throats.
The latest example that set me off was the vile tweet by a a prominent academic, attacking a prospective student for her fine institution. I can only assume her politics, but I have direct evidence of her trashy character.
[Twitter post from Laura Chefetz] F*** that person who emailed me this morning to say they couldn't go to school here due to the vaccine mandate, absolutely go f*** yourself.
Who is Laura M. Chefetz, you may ask? Is she some low level instructor at a community college?
Well no, she is not. She is the Assistant Dean of Admissions, Vocation, and Student Life at Vanderbilt Divinity School.
Divinity School. Vanderbilt. Assistant Dean. Vocation. Student Life.
How can such a crass individual hold such a high position at a Divinity School? Well take a look at her bio and make a guess:
Laura is multiracial Asian American of Japanese and white Jewish descent. She was the fourth generation of her family to be born in California, and grew up in eastern Oregon and western Washington. Laura has served on various boards, national and international ecumenical bodies, and has been president of two homeowners associations. She is currently the co-moderator of the Special Committee on Per Capita-Based Funding & National Church Financial Sustainability for the Presbyterian Church (USA). As you might imagine, she is well-versed in people and politics.
Laura and her partner, Jessica Vazquez Torres, the National Program Manager for Crossroads Antiracism Organizing & Training, live in Nashville, Tenn. with two rescued Shih Tzus. They enjoy all their nieces and nephews, and hope to be such fabulous aunties that the kids smuggle good booze to them in their retirement home. In their free time, Jessica bakes and Laura delivers the baked goods to friends and neighbors.
We can only speculate about why she is in that position. But I have a guess.
That, and it don't pay crap....................
I remember the time when a Bachelor of Liberal Arts meant you studied Greek, Latin, Logic, and read the works of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Livy, Ovid,Virgil, and many others in their original language. You expanded your viewpoint by studying others. You were well versed on Art, Music, and Religion. You learned how to gather information think and solve problems.Unfortunately today it means that you studied a limited viewpoint that denigrates the bulk of humanity. Oh and they don’t bother to teach the concept of humanity or compassion. Just had to rant as I am afraid that a lesser world is being crafted by idiots.
“A trashy lesbian is the Assistant Dean of Admissions, Vocation, and Student Life at Vanderbilt Divinity School.”
And you wonder why churches in America are half empty . . .
The reason bureaucratic infighting in academia is so ferocious, is because the stakes are so low.
“person who emailed me this morning to say they couldn’t go to school here due to the vaccine mandate, absolutely go f*** yourself.”
100% her body
100% her choice over it
I am awed at this glowing example of the finest logic and rhetoric from a master of the argumentative.
I think they have used the wrong tense on the verb “to become”
Your opinion jibes precisely with what Victor Davis Hanson says about people who study classics and how the profession has sunk to rock bottom. He is so dismayed by what has happened.
This woman epitomizes absolutely everything wrong with society.
I seriously doubt the disgusting homosexual is "well-versed" in either.
This is how an ordained minister talks?
The church has truly gone to hell.
I think he needs to direct his fire at the next level up - state-funded universities, with lots more money to waste on woke politics, more students up to their necks in debt, and bloated humanities and woke social-sciences departments.
Community colleges, around us anyway, are low-cost, technical colleges. Kids are only there because they want some meaningful skills in 1-2 years, and they are usually paying even the reduced tuition, by themselves. Teachers can't waste their time on politics, and are busy with remedial education they didn't get in public high-schools, and pulling these kids up.
Anyway, I digress...
There’s a fair number of humanities\social science nut job profs at community colleges (CCs). (A lot of people go to these CCs to reduce the number of humanities\social science electives they have to take in 4-year programs!) Pay attention to where the profs come from that are making the news, getting arrested & quoted saying ridiculous things. These are nut job humanities\social science profs so useless they can’t get jobs in four-year collegiate programs. (It also shows that we produce far far far too many PhDs in these humanities\social science programs!)
There is a new religion in the university. The Saints are Marxists and social revolutionaries, and they excommunicate other profs for not holding the same creed, sacraments, and dogma. They inform government and, like the Popes of Medieval Europe, they legitimize the secular rulers who submit to their theology of Marxism and Wokeness. They have Inquisitions to root out the heretics with cancel culture and other diabolical methods to stamp out free of thought. And there is no escape from their tyrannical hold on power unless the peasants and common people rise up and demand freedom. YES, there is HOPE! Trump is the new common sense Luther that is bringing in the new RESTORATION. And countries like Sweden, Hungry, Italy, etc., are going for it. God’s common sense is returning and the rarefied and false language of the university will take a nose dive into the trash bin of history. The corrupt practice of selling indulgences, the selling of Carbon Credits and Offsets will be over. The fashionable nonsense of the university, of rabid Marxists that want to bite the invisible hand of Capitalism, will be over... That day is soon approaching. This religion, and the Marxist/Postmodern philosophy that under girds it, will become nothing but a brief footnote in history. Sanity and God will once more prevail and common sense will rule again.
Does she believe in God?
Seriously, when was this? Before World War Two?
Besides being trashy, her post was just useless virtue signaling. No one cares that she was mad at this random person, assuming that person even exists.
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