NAS Blog

If you are a double major in Classical Languages and English Literature at the University of Wyoming, you are saddled with a required diversity class on “literature by and about women, not men.”  The course that Marine Lance Corporal Aaron Graham wants to transfer, my Literature By and About Men class, thus does not meet the Cowboys’ standards for diversity.  Remarkably, Wyoming describes itself as a “welcoming community.”  Welcome, Lance Corporal, to institutionalized sexism in academia where men cannot be studied, only opposed; men cannot be analyzed, only condemned; men cannot be understood, only mocked and despised.

Wyoming is no maverick.  I had a fight just getting my course approved.  The University of California bridled at accepting a course about men and uniquely male experience.  That’s understandable because anyone raised on Family Guy, The Simpsons, American Dad, beer commercials, sitcoms, gender feminism, and the glut of misandristic Hollywood films (misandristic appears not even to be a word in most dictionaries) naturally thinks that males must be roped, tied, and broken of their stupid, pathetic, and predatory ways.

Aaron, however, read serious literature by David Lloyd, Faulkner, Sam Shepard (“The Real Gabby Hayes”), Amy Clampitt, Philip Larkin, Christina Hoff Summers, Hemingway, Camille Paglia, Harry Crews, Steven Pinker, Homer, Harvey Mansfield, Isaac Clemens, Leonard Gardner, Thomas van Nortwick, Robert Hayden, James Dickey, Leonard Sax, Vergil, Harvey Swados, Tennyson, Joan Didion (“John Wayne:  A Love Song”), et al.  Aaron viewed Seven Samurai, Ghost Dog, Deliverance, Fight Club, and “I am the Lord thy God . . .” from Decalogue. Aaron studied lessons about “Boys,” “Fathers,” “Sons,” “Men and War,” “Male Codes,” “The Man of Letters,” “Love and Marriage,” and “Manly Aging, Manly Death.”

Too bad, pardner!  Those readings, those films, those topics are not worthy of study at the University of Wyoming because Wyoming has an agenda:   “. . . women, not men.”  This is not welcoming, not inclusive, and not education; it’s galloping gender discrimination.

The same day I heard of Aaron’s dilemma, I also heard of a new academic direction for men:  male studies.  As one of my gender feminist colleagues frequently asserts:  “Equity must be addressed!”  How right she is.  Cowboy up, Wyoming—time to plant this locoweed up on Boot Hill.

NBC: Yale President Responds to T-Shirt Controversy

“I think of all Harvard men as sissies” from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book This Side of Paradise (which I’m currently reading) was deemed offensive to homosexuals. Also check out FIRE’s coverage of this case.

Chronicle of Higher Ed: Yale, the (High School) Musical

Yale redeems itself with an awesome (albeit long) admissions video.

Slate: The Opening of the Academic Mind (via Minding the Campus)

A book review of Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas. “Professors, the people most visibly responsible for the creation of new ideas, have, over the last century, become all too consummate professionals,  initiates in a system committed to its own protection and perpetuation.”

Joanne Jacobs: More Students Refuse to State a Race

“‘We shouldn’t be judged by our race,’ said senior Jessica Mae Belcher, 17, whose roots are African and Cherokee. She prefers ‘none of the above’ because ‘we’re all different, but we’re all the same, too.’” See also McClatchy:

Doug Craig, who’s been principal at Laguna Creek for 10 years, appreciates the students’ desire to be judged on their merits, not their race.

“I’d love to look at individual kids and leave it at that, but we wouldn’t even know there was an achievement gap if we didn’t measure our kids,” he said. “There must be a systemic reason and we need to figure out what causes it and how to fix it.”

Stanford Review: The Man-Made Myth

“Email and poster bombardments encouraging students to live sustainably (with the goal of cutting CO2 emissions) are based on flawed reasoning. [...] We have grown up in a society in which the myth of man-made global warming is so thoroughly pervasive, doubt is heretical. But science proves human carbon dioxide emissions are not responsible for global warming.”

Stanford Review: ES 10 Students Take on Climate Change Skeptics (via Campus Reform)

“While much of the layman world still debates the reality of human-induced global warming, the scientific community treats it as unquestionable fact. And, like scientists, says Head TA Jess McNally, in ES10 ‘We don’t debate climate change; it is just something we teach.’”

“ES10 is environmental ed, and so, it should result in a change of behaviors.”

New York Times: Professor is a Label That Leans Left

College professors are liberal because of typecasting – the same reason why nurses are women and cops are conservative.

Chronicle of Higher Ed: The Poetry is in the Proof

Why liberal arts students should learn mathematical proofs.

Minding the Campus: What is the AAUP Up To?

A review of Cary Nelson’s No University is an Island. “Nelson’s position on teaching social justice points to a related problem. He provides a ringing defense of academic freedom, but is reticent to discuss the legitimate limits to this freedom.”

Last week I posted a copy of an exam from an introductory sociology class, forwarded to me by a colleague. The test was graded 100%. I quoted the exam at length and noted that sadly “A student who matriculates in this field of study will have nothing in the way of useful skills, but will be convinced that his country is rotten to the core, and that whites and males are evil.” One reader, “progressive scholar,” (who has a blog under that name) commented on my post:

I don’t understand, what is the problem with this exam? It explores many common sociological theories. Not once does it proclaim that a certain way of thinking is right or wrong, nor does it discuss America and how the student should feel about it; in fact, the student actually begins an answer with “some say…”, which means that he or she recognizes that these are just theories, not objective fact.

The questions are asking the student to examine, explain, describe, compare, and analyze. Contrary to your claim, all of these skills are highly desirable in most career fields. Sociology as a discipline emphasizes critical thinking, not blindly following the “old Soviet agitprop of the Fifties”, as you say.

I’m not sure what China and India have to do with this topic, since many universities in both countries offer comprehensive liberal arts and social science programs, including Sociology. I encourage you to do some research on Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Nankai University in China, and the Indian Institute of Technology in India, before assuming that they have eschewed all humanities and social sciences (“hate-America” fields?) in favor of technology, mathematics, and engineering – which are, apparently, fields that really love America.

The respondent is quite right that the exam I made public is quite mainstream in sociology. The problem is, however, that the entire discipline is so corrupt that nobody within the discipline still seems capable of perceiving anything wrong with it.

The exam speaks for itself. It is biased on the face of it because, from beginning to end, its point of view is entirely anti-capitalist, anti-white, anti-male. No other perspective is included, even as a hypothetical.

For instance, the professor who composed the test might have asked why corruption is endemic in the Third World and why developing economies are often wrecked by indigenous dictators, such as President Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Students could have been called on to compare and contrast how Adam Smith and Karl Marx would view Third World development. But no, the only questions asked, and the only answers acceptable, are limited to the view that all the ills of the world are the fault of capitalist, white, male America.

In response to the question regarding the “matrix of domination,” the student focuses exclusively on whites dominating blacks. He or she does not discuss, for example, black-on-white crime statistics available from the FBI. Nor does the student evaluate (or was he or she asked to evaluate) high black crime rates or high school dropout rates in light of decades of affirmative action.

Nor does the student mention that males have lost more jobs than females in the recession, or that females outnumber men in college (58% of attendees are female, whereas 42% are male). Such inconvenient facts as the nation having a black president and a female Speaker of the House are omitted. Are these not positions of power and domination? Rather, the “correct” but empirically false answer – since the exam was graded 100% – is that whites dominate blacks, and males dominate females.

The exam’s unremitting bias is also on display in the question on immigration. The professor does not ask students to consider the possibility that restricting illegal immigration, which brings many criminals and welfare cases to the U.S., might be in the national interest.

But, then, what does one expect now of sociology? True critical, nuanced thinking? Hardly.

In short, the exam’s questions and answers – no doubt greatly encouraged and perhaps prompted by the professor – are transparently one-sided. They contain not even a hint of competing ideas.

Now that our leaders have taught us that opposing nationalized health care is supporting slavery, I think it’s pretty clear that high school students should be taught that denying global warming is supporting slavery.  Come to think of it, opposing affirmative action and partial birth abortion is clearly supporting slavery.

I might have difficulty persuading the Senate that rooting for the Yankees constitutes supporting slavery — though that seems more pleasing to me than any of the other innuendos.

My friends at NAS.org have posted on the “Climate Conspiracy” that broke when hackers revealed global warming scientists had apparently manipulated data, organized attacks on skeptics, and much more. Surprise, surprise.

The timing couldn’t be worse for those who would cripple economies with the plaintive cry: “Do as we say or we all die!” Worldwide there is growing skepticism about the benefits of micromanaging every aspect of daily life while measuring “carbon footprints.” The Wall Street Journal even contributed to this Nanny Project with a long piece measuring the carbon footprint of various common products. I was relieved to see that beer had the lowest carbon footprint.

How far have we gone when we decide whether or not it is “good for the planet” to drink beer? Now we must ask: Did German scientists manipulate the beer data to preserve their national beverage? (I’m kidding). It’s a good cause (beer drinking) but who studies this stuff? And when is enough enough?

To read more, click here.

Those of us laboring for academic reform often feel like Sisyphus, rolling a rock up the hill only to have it come crashing down again. The gods of academe seem to have condemned higher education to inevitable decay.

That thought came to me as I read about the demise of an institute (at Hamilton College) that did everything right, yet the overlords of Political Correctness purged themselves of enemies and “deviationists.” I use these terms because the notion that all-is-political, enemies-must-be-destroyed is linked so strongly to communism and its close cousin national socialism.

In the above unhappy story, Mark Bauerlein tries to see a silver lining by noting that the Institute survives outside the college. Students can go there and read books for which they receive no academic credit, of course. If ever there was a case study in how much the Left prizes control of higher education, this is it.

The next time you are tempted to think that much of what happens is a “misunderstanding” or “good intentions gone awry,” please banish the thought. When push comes to shove, there are those who would put a bullet in your head if this were a different place and time. Instead, they kill ideas by depriving them of air space on campus. No institute, no nonconformist faculty.

Or, as Stalin put it: “no people, no problem.” We, the few, will retire some day and then there will be nobody to speak out against the barbarians.

That is our problem.

Postscript: Robert Weissberg nails the problem(s) exceptionally well in this article.

In a recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh defends his record (“I am not a racist”) and further points out the double standard allowing left-liberals off the hook for statements that are clearly racist. Mr. Limbaugh, be glad you didn’t go into academe!

Limbaugh’s defense highlights several problems for any one who dissents from the Leftist party line, particularly on race:

First, playing defense 24/7 is no way to move forward. It places dissenters in the untenable position of answering “when did you stop being a racist?” Repeated denials inspire the race hustlers to keep asking the same question. To Rush Limbaugh: You wanted to purchase a football team that played both offense and defense. There is a lesson here.

Second, the Left dominance of higher education really does matter. Many individuals are in a state of denial about the insidious influence K-16 education has on the professions that shape public opinion: schools of journalism, education, law, social work are monoliths of the Left. Add the power of left-wing accreditation bodies and you have “the sound of one hand clapping”–the left hand, of course.

Above all, there is the problem of ignorance and miseducation of our youth. Yes, surveys may show that graduates retain some of the values they had prior to entering college. Yet they are not educated well enough to refute left-wing attacks.

Let me give you an example: Since 1995, I have advised College Republicans and Campus Libertarians. The knowledge base of libertarian and conservative students has seriously eroded. If I ask “why are you a libertarian? Why are you a conservative?” The answer is superficial: “because I am not a liberal.” Oy vey!

These students may retain a vague belief in individual freedom, nondiscrimination, and meritocracy but they fail to argue effectively against the Left. Why? Because they have never been exposed to information subverting the smug assumption that Leftists have always have been “the angels of history.” Conservatives and libertarians are (and always have been) the villains, according to this fairy tale.

That brings me to my book Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader (University Press of Kentucky, in association with the Independent Institute, 2009). This reader debunks the crazy notion that belief in individual freedom, capitalism, and colorblind law = racism. The book highlights how Frederick Douglass, Branch Rickey, Zora Neale Hurston, Clarence Thomas and others consistently championed the bedrock belief that all discrimination is wrong–and they embraced a philosophy of limited government. They experienced first-hand how the State acts as sponsor of discrimination.

Back to the football analogy. Here is the offense: those “angels of history” on the Left–labor unions, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and LBJ–committed some of the worst racist actions in our history. Labor unions demanded a ban on Chinese immigration–the first race-based exclusion of an entire race. Wilson segregated the federal government. LBJ declared that an anti-lynching bill was worse than lynching itself. FDR defended quotas to keep Jews from overwhelming Harvard (where he sat on the Board of Trustees). Roosevelt also wrote that interracial “mingling” (marriage) produced “horrific results.” As president, FDR blocked Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and interned Japanese Americans during World War II. Not surprising. In each of these cases, the classic liberals in my book fought against those typically portrayed as “angels” in history.

It is time for so-called liberals to give up the race hustle and learn their history. In so doing, they may discover some heroes of the classic liberal sort–neither Left nor Right–but committed to racial freedom and equality.

In recent weeks, the USA Today and National Public Radio have crowed that this recession is different: most of  those losing jobs were men (and predominantly white). This is “encouraging” according to these news outlets.

Why is it good? Because a majority of the workforce is now made up of women; and blacks have not been hurt as much as whites (the media seem to have forgotten about Asians and Hispanics but what else is new?). This is an advance in gender, if not racial, diversity. Whooo. One wonders how those women married to unemployed men think about their gender’s “advance.”

Is this recession different? We won’t know until later but with “diversity accomplishments” now part of our academic job descriptions, there is reason to think that we may be evaluated accordingly when (or if) layoffs occur. After all, what better way to “diversify” the faculty than to adopt the slogan:

“First thing we do, fire all the white males!”

Employers are fearful of employment-related lawsuits and this is the first recession to seriously threaten academic jobs since 1982. The Diversity Machine has grown enormously since 1982, when it was only a glimmer in the eyes of campus social engineers. Today it is an industry that influences accreditation bodies, professional associations, and university practices (think of the money set aside for “diversity hires”).

If universities can make diversity hires, why not make the same decision when firing people?

Time to dust off your computer screen and search for labor relations law in your state. Those of us with unions ought to contact them too if the proverbial four-letter word “hits the fan.”