Her response (in a Murdoch vehicle, of course) to the long-overdue decision of the Chronicle of Higher Education to fire her is, unsurprisingly, not responsive to any real issue. I'll preface this by saying those critics who called her a racist were probably mistaken. She's dumb, trite, and lacks rhetorical and analytical skill, but I actually don't see convincing evidence that she's a racist (I'll return to the issue below). She simply has no business writing for any publication that aims to reach scholars or intellectuals or educated adults. Mostly, she has been excluded from such fora, and rightly so. CHE made a serious error when they hired her as a blogger, but that they did so, is a good indication of how civilized journalists have been cowed by repeated harassment by far right ignoramuses, her natural constituency.
It was her original post, of course that was "puerile and vitriolic"; the responses were mild by comparison. Making fun of doctoral dissertations by recent PhDs based on their titles and a few lines of an abstract? That's all she did, nothing more. If she'd posted it on www.naomischaeferrileyblowhard.com no one would have noticed. But she was given a forum by CHE that she was supposed to share with adults and scholars, and that's what stunned people.
The allegations of racism arise from the fact that one could have undertaken the same exercise with dissertation titles in most fields, even philosophy. (Think how much fun a malevolent fool like Schaefer Riley could have with recent dissertation titles from Princeton!) But Schaefer Riley chose a field rich with "hot button" issues that lent themselves naturally to the various stereotypes into which the Right-Wing Blob deposits ideas and positions it can't understand. That all these issues, and the stereotypes, are demeaning, directly and indirectly, to African-Americans is no doubt what led many to assume Schaefer Riley is a racist. Maybe she is, but let's not lose sight of the most important fact, namely, she's a moron who couldn't defend her tripe in a debate with any serious scholar anywhere. This last point is really the more important one: her failing is not really moral, but intellectual, as anyone who has read her other "blog postings" at CHE would have known long ago.
Her firing is a triumph for intellectual standards in the public sphere. It should be celebrated.
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