Angry Georgetown Prof Wants to Castrate Men
The feminist Georgetown professor who tweeted that white male Republicans who voted to confirm Justice Kavanaugh should die miserable deaths and then be castrated has paid a price, but so far, only to Twitter, which suspended her account. Georgetown gave her the rest of the term off, but in a limp statement defending free speech and criticizing unkind remarks, the president of Georgetown didn’t even name the professor—Christine Fair. Fair tweeted this statement: “Look [this] chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.”
‘Accidental’ Loss for Yale Conservative?
James Kirchick, a conservative anti-PC journalist, has been running for a seat on the Yale University Board of Trustees and counting heavily on the class notes section of the alumni magazine to boost the effort and attract endorsements. Imagine his surprise when the magazine ‘accidentally’ dropped the class notes from the Oct.-Nov. issue. Now he must gather 2000 more endorsements by midnight tonight, October 1. The College Fix says, “Kirchick is campaigning on a free-speech platform that aims to rein in the Ivy League school’s ‘busybody’ bureaucrats, trigger warnings and ‘mob’ justice.”
Surprise! College Faculties Are Mostly Democrats
Mitchell Langbert, an associate professor of business at Brooklyn College, published a study of the political affiliations of faculty members at 51 of the 66 liberal-arts colleges ranked highest by U.S. News in 2017. Commenting at Bloomberg this week, Democratic stalwart Cass Sunstein called the findings “eye-popping (even if they do not come as a great surprise to many people in academia).”
Democrats dominate most fields. In religion, Langbert’s survey found that the ratio of Democrats to Republicans is 70 to 1. In music, it is 33 to 1. In biology, it is 21 to 1. In philosophy, history and psychology, it is 17 to 1. In political science, it is 8 to 1.
The gap is narrower in science and engineering. In physics, economics and mathematics, the ratio is about 6 to 1. In chemistry, it is 5 to 1, and in engineering, it is just 1.6 to 1. Still, Lambert found no field in which Republicans are more numerous than Democrats.
The faculties of Wellesley, Williams and Swarthmore are overwhelmingly Democratic, with ratios at or above 120 to 1. At Harvey Mudd and Lafayette, the ratios are 6 to 1. At the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, it is 2.3 to 1; it is just 1.3 to 1 at West Point.
For two reasons, these numbers are genuinely disturbing, Sunstein wrote.
“The first involves potential discrimination on the part of educational institutions. Some departments might be disinclined to hire potential faculty members based on their political convictions. Such discrimination might take the form of unconscious devaluation of people whose views do not fit with the dominant perspective.
“The second reason is that students are less likely to get a good education, and faculty members are likely to learn less from one another if there is a prevailing political orthodoxy.”
It is far too simple, of course, to say that professors of history, political science, philosophy and the like should “look like America” in political terms. What matters is that they are experts in their fields, able to convey what they know. In faculty hiring, affirmative action for those with conservative political positions is not likely to serve anyone well.
Nonetheless, the current numbers make two points unmistakably clear.
First, those who teach in departments lacking ideological diversity have an obligation to offer competing views and to present them fairly and with respect. A political philosopher who leans left should be willing and able to ask students to think about the force of the argument for free markets, even if they produce a lot of inequality.
The Men's Rights Movement at Yale
It was bound to happen. Last May, a 30-year-old Ph.D. student has accused the University of Southern California and Yale of creating a toxic environment for male students. Kursat Christoff Pekgoz, a member of the National Coalition for Men, is partly basing his claim on data that shows 56% of all college students are women, and 42% are men. He filed a “Dear Colleague” letter, a Guide to Abolishing Affirmative Action for Women explaining how to file a Title IX complaint. Now, some of those complaints are being investigated. According to The Wall Street Journal, “The government dismissed parts of Mr. Pekgoz’s complaints, including concerns about Yale Women in Business and USC’s Gender Studies Program and its Center for Feminist Research, after finding that they don’t exclude or discriminate against men. But it will investigate Yale’s Women Faculty Forum, Yale Women Innovators and five other groups or programs at that school. It is also looking into USC scholarships and fellowships that are advertised as being open only to females, and a Women in Science and Engineering group that excludes males.”
‘Slap a Zionist’ at Vassar
Some 400 students at Vassar received email copies of “The Vassar College Disorientation Guide” to offset the impact of the annual Orientation Guide. Much of the text was either anti-Israel or anti-Semitic, including the advice to “Slap a Zionist.”
I wonder if Professor Treadgold is talking about his own St. Louis University, where the tuition and fees are at least nominally not much short of those at Harvard, maybe 93%.
Anyhow, I wasn’t able to read John Leo’s piece behind the WSJ paywall (I let my subscription lapse some time ago). So I went to the Amazon site, found this:
“he proposes federal legislation to monitor the quality and honesty of professors and to limit spending on administration to no more than 20 percent of university budgets (Harvard now spends 40 percent).”
This strikes me as a horrid idea for too many reasons to list. And his further idea to start a new elite university that would be different from what we already have, that would welcome moderates and conservatives along with liberals and leftists, strikes me as rather naive. First of all, don’t places like the University of Chicago, Caltech sort of fit the bill already? Both those places could use the dough it would take to start a new university from scratch. Second, I am doubtful that the new university would be more successful than most of the old in resisting what seem like almost unstoppable forces. (I know, that sort of contradicts what I just said about a couple of distinguished schools that also are something of outliers. But that sort of supports my point that the money might be better placed at schools that already exist and seem to have a track record.)
The limiting of administrative positions, in universities and K-12 schools, is a good idea. Less administrators means less wacky programs and less internal agendas, more plain old teaching and research overseen only by professional peers.
Thank you for an interesting review of “The University We Need.” I completely agree with Warren Treadgold’s thesis–founding a “new university” may be the only solution. It is unalterably clear that America’s universities have been co-opted by the far left and a college “education” is no longer worth the expense. However, I was surprised Treadgold did not mention Hillsdale College as a template for the university he proposes. Hillsdale is the polar opposite of today’s typical university and (as of now) the sole beacon of hope.(I have no connection to Hillsdale College, having graduated from the University of Redlands, a small, private college that has also been corrupted by leftist ideology. But I admire Hillsdale’s unswerving belief in America’s ideals–since 1844!)
I’m wondering how the debate teams function in the postmodern university. Remember in the old days, a topic would be presented, such as, “Resolved: Capital punishment should be ended.” One team would take the affirmative and the competing team would take the negative. But now there is only one side permitted in controversial ideas–which are now no longer controversial at the university. The team that in former days would have argued the now politically incorrect side would today be charged as thought criminals and subjected to disciplinary proceedings and rehabilitation–even though they might protest that they didn’t really hold that viewpoint. One of the foundational ideas underpinning the old debate structure was that to have an informed and reasonable commitment to an idea, one must know and understand the arguments against it as well as for it.
I got a glimpse of how “debate” teams now function, and it came as quite a shock, since I once participated on a team myself. My faculty office is next to classrooms where a debate meet was being held one weekend several weeks ago. I was surprised to hear a guy screaming, his rant peppered with F-bombs, so I went and peered into the classroom to see what was going on. The room was filled with young people in very prim attire, and the young man “debating” was standing in front, the veins on his face bulging as he rendered his social justice “oratory.” And his presentation–of you could call it that–was typical of the entire morning. It seems that what we used to call “forensics teams” back in my day are now just theater; the participants do not reason, just emote. Perhaps they are judged on how impassioned their emoting is. Are these our future attorneys?
The real old-style debate is called “Parliamentary Debate”. There are other ones “XYZ Debate” that range from limp to ridiculous.
Nowadays I expect the teams take turns denouncing anyone opposing the correct political line, and the most fervent denunciation wins. Either that or they all start clapping once the topic is announced, and whoever stops clapping first gets sent to the gulag.