Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

I do wish certain humanities professors would stop embarrassing the academy with pointlessly inflammatory social media posts

The latest culprit is Steven Shaviro, an English professor at Wayne State, who posted on Facebook his view that it would be better to kill bigoted speakers rather than simply protest them, offering this analogy:

The exemplary historical figure in this regard is Sholem Schwarzbard, who assassinated the anti-Semitic butcher Symon Petliura, rather than trying to shout him down. Remember that Schwarzbard was acquitted by a jury, which found his action justified.

The idiot right (like the site linked above) glossed this bizarre post as Shaviro advocating murder "for those he disagreed with," but as the analogy with Schwarzbard suggests, "disagreement" is not sufficient:  after all, he murdered someone who was a butcher of Jews in Ukraine.  What's slightly nuts about Shaviro's post is analogizing mass murder to the expression of racist views:  speech and action aren't the same, despite the best efforts of many folks to confuse the two.  (Being an English professor, Shaviro throws in "transphobic" views to the list of views that warrant murder!)  Anyone who decides to kill a bigot will not be acquitted.  So Shaviro's post is idiotic and ignorant on many levels.

QAnon continues to thrive in the heart of the Republican Party

This is just bizarre; here's a small taste:

ReAwaken America is sort of - it's a very popular pro-Trump road show, essentially, that travels the country. And it's all of these conspiracy theorists under the banner, as you said, of Michael Flynn and a guy named Clay Clark, who's a Tulsa radio host, who's sort of a - slash sort of entrepreneurship guru. And so it's stocked with a lot of - it's a lot of kind of COVID quacks, a lot of people, you know, pushing ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and a lot of leading QAnon figures. I went to its first event for the book in Tulsa in 2021. And I, you know, I kind of slipped past security. They said they were going to have a lot of security to keep out media and antifa because they were convinced that, you know, antifa would travel to suburban Tulsa to wreak havoc.

When the yahoos take over the community college

This is a warning about what may start to happen elsewhere.

(Thanks to Gregory Mayer for the pointer.)

What happened to the Twitter maniacs from a couple of years ago?

The good news is that many of them have left academia (e.g., this one, this one, and this one), some self-destructing in a way consistent with their online antics, others just failing to find academic positions.   Alas, some of the juvenile jackasses remain in the academy, at least for now.  Let me add that the only ones who ought to have their online stupidity held against them are those who are openly hostile to academic freedom.  There are enough threats to the latter without multiplying them from within the academy.

MARCH 18 UPDATE:  A reader just flagged for me that the aforementioned juvenile jackass, Dallas Jokic, offered this response (on Twitter of course) to the original post:   "It is very strange indeed that a prominent philosopher is gloating about his graduate student critics having left academia following his bullying of them. Stranger still that he seems to view this as a victory for 'academic freedom.'" There really is no bottom to dumb with these pathetic people: none of the three who have left academia were critics of me, let alone "bullied" by me or anyone else, and all three made clear their hostility towards core academic freedom values, which is why their departure is good news for the academy.

Montana Taliban trying to wreck science education

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JANUARY 24--UPDATED    

Religiously inspired stupidity isn't dead yet, as a new draft bill in Montana makes clear, which states that, "a scientific fact is observable and repeatable, and if it does not meet these criteria, it is a theory that is defined as speculation," and can't be taught in the public schools.  Oy veh!  Does the draft bill have any chance of enactment?   Comments from knowledgeable readers welcome.

(Thanks to Bradley Wood for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  I learn from comments by Glenn Branch, below, that this mischief has died in committee.

A Black professor "trapped in anti-racist hell"

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FRIDAY, FOR THOSE WHO MAY HAVE MISSED IT

This is a pretty wild story:  it's like Lord of the Flies meets Ibram Kendi.

Charlie Kirk "solves" the Euthyphro dilemma

It's not fair to idiots to observe that Mr. Kirk is one, but this video certainly drives it home:

(Thanks to David Livingstone Smith for the pointer.)

Hamline University's disgracefully stupid violation of academic freedom

This is really breathtaking in its stupidity:

On October 6, during a class on Islamic art that was part of a global survey course in art history, a professor at Hamline University offered students an optional exercise: Analyze and discuss a 14th-century Islamic painting that depicts the Archangel Gabriel delivering to the Prophet Muhammad his first Quranic revelation.

Before showing a slide of the painting, the instructor issued a content warning and spent over two minutes providing context about the controversies surrounding depictions of Muhammad. “I am showing you this image for a reason,” the professor explained. “There is this common thinking that Islam completely forbids, outright, any figurative depictions or any depictions of holy personages. While many Islamic cultures do strongly frown on this practice, I would like to remind you there is no one, monothetic Islamic culture.”

A senior in the class, who is also president of the Muslim Student Association at Hamline, later complained that pictorial depictions of Muhammad offended her Muslim sensibilities....

[T]he complaint set in motion the DEI bureaucracy on campus, and on November 7, David Everett, associate vice president for inclusive excellence, called the classroom exercise “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful, and Islamophobic.” Just days later, on November 11, Everett told the student newspaper in an interview that because of the incident, “it was decided it was best that this faculty member was no longer part of the Hamline community"....

What better way to start the New Year than with the news that...

...the Thomist legal and moral philosopher John Finnis has been made a Commander of the British Empire.  Being Finnis, he uses the opportunity to opine:  "It is good that this award bears the name of a great and essentially beneficent institution which was conceived and pursued in a spirit of service..."  Although his bigoted views about homosexuality are well-known, it seems to me this whitewash of two centuries of imperial rape, exploitation and bloody murder is far more appalling, admitting of no rationalization in terms of Catholic dogma.  What an embarrassment for Oxford.

Republicans and Covid deaths

This is really stark evidence of the pathological dysfunction of this benighted country, in which one of the two major political parties is openly hostile to de minimis public health measures (recall that Americans died of Covid at a rate two to three times that [or more] of other normal countries):

[B]y far the single group of adults most likely to be unvaccinated is Republicans: 37 percent of Republicans are still unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, compared with 9 percent of Democrats. Fourteen of the 15 states with the lowest vaccination rates voted for Donald Trump in 2020. (The other is Georgia.)

We know that unvaccinated Americans are more likely to be Republican, that Republicans in positions of power led the movement against COVID vaccination, and that hundreds of thousands of unvaccinated Americans have died preventable deaths from the disease. The Republican Party is unquestionably complicit in the premature deaths of many of its own supporters, a phenomenon that may be without precedent in the history of both American democracy and virology....

We know that as of April 2022, about 318,000 people had died from COVID because they were unvaccinated, according to research from Brown University. And the close association between Republican vaccine hesitancy and higher death rates has been documented. One study estimated that by the fall of 2021, vaccine uptake accounted for 10 percent of the total difference between Republican and Democratic deaths. But that estimate has changed—and even likely grown—over time....

The point of education according to Democrats in America

On Twitter, the Secretary of Education in the Biden Administration wrote this:

Every student should have access to an education that aligns with industry demands and evolves to meet the demands of tomorrow’s global workforce.

Remember that this is a Democrat speaking, thus confirming, once again, that the Democrats are simply the party of the prudent (rather than insane) wing of the ruling class in America.   Humboldt where are you when we need you?  Not in the Biden Administration obviously!

Who said it: Adolf Hitler or Kanye West?

This is from 13 years ago (so long before the current grotesque behavior):

 

Kanye West and Hitler

To the extent I even noticed Mr. West previously, he struck me as a talentless, ignorant buffoon, like many successful purveyors of "popular" music.   His recent forays into anti-semitism and Nazi sympathizing have put this absurd person back into the news.  One of the better commentaries on this grotesque  display comes from John Ganz; an excerpt:

While all these far-right goonies play constant games, equivocate, make bad faith disavowals, or employ euphemisms, Kanye doesn’t have the time, inclination, or ability to do all that. He just says the underlying truth of this kind of politics: he likes the Nazis! Yes, he pretty much said this verbatim, “I like the Nazis.” It was too much even for [Alex] Jones.

Socialism lite

This essay excoriates (from the left) what passes for "socialism" in certain circles these days, as reflected in the recent 2022 "Socialism Conference" in Chicago, which even included some philosophers (I missed it, happily).  Some excerpts, with some interspersed observations:

The vast majority of panels were on topics related to police/prison abolition, antiracism, reproductive rights, opening borders, and other progressive movements and causes with precious little to do with socialism proper. And while there were panels billed under the categories of “labor movement” or “socialist theory and strategy” (for example, “Class Struggle Unionism,” featuring union negotiator and labor lawyer Joe Burns, and “The ABCs of Marxism”), these topics received no more time, and often far less attention, than abolitionism or various kinds of identity politics. In other words, the Socialist Conference treated the labor movement—and even socialism itself—as just one of many progressive causes, and class as just another identity around which to organize....

[M]uch of the conference was devoted to making the case that any progressive cause or movement actually is socialism. Keynote speaker Ruth Wilson Gilmore, professor and a center director at the City University of New York, claimed that abolition is communism, race the modality through which class is lived, and mass criminalization class war, pretty much all in the same breath.

Another triumph for diversity: Italian fascist set to become Prime Minister is also a woman

It's amazing that the New York Times is so pathologically invested in "diversity" that they can't shake the fixation, even when reporting on a not-so-crypto fascist with an infantile hobbit fixation.  The article is headlined, "Giorgia Meloni Could Be the First Woman to Lead Italy," instead of "First fascist since Mussolini set to lead Italy."  The article continues:

As happy as women’s rights activists are about that fact that a woman could finally run Italy, many wish it was essentially any other woman in Italy....

“It’s not a gain at all and, indeed, a possible setback from the point of view of women’s rights,” said Giorgia Serughetti, who writes about women’s issues and teaches political philosophy at Bicocca University in Milan.

There's no evidence in the article at all that "women's rights activists" are "happy" about Meloni:  the NYT just made that up, projecting their own ideology on to the Italian political landscape.

This really is a new low for "diversity blather."

Twitter is a cesspool of stupidity, ignorance, malice, ressentiment, and virtue-signalling, part 319...or Kripke was not a plagiarist

What's irresponsible is to accuse someone who just died of plagiarism without having any idea what one is talking about.  Quentin Smith did not cover himself in glory with this nonsense, and it was dispatched years ago by serious philosophers of language.  Stephen Neale's authoritative assessment of the debate is perhaps the most accessible account, and is certainly decisive.

Realism about democracy, part 192

According to a recent study of the American electorate:

Americans’ understanding of basic facts about the U.S. government declined for the first time in six years, as fewer than half in a new survey could name all three branches of government..... 

About a quarter of Americans surveyed could not name a single branch. 

The survey also found a decline in the number of respondents who could name any of the five freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment.  

Freedom of religion was named by 24 percent of those surveyed, falling from 56 percent from the previous survey. Those who named freedom of the press also declined sharply down by 30 percentage points from 50 percent in 2021.  

Around 26 percent of respondents could not name any First Amendment freedoms. And the percentage of respondents who listed the right to bear arms — a right protected under the Second Amendment — as a First Amendment protection tripled from 2021 rising to 9 percent.

Trump's "Brownshirts" now threatening judge who signed off on the warrant to search his property

First we had the stormtrooper riot at the Capitol, and now we have threats against federal officials, including judges:

Far-right extremists on pro-Donald Trump message boards and social networks are making violent, antisemitic threats against the judge who reportedly signed the warrant that allowed the FBI to search the former president's Mar-a-Lago property in Florida.  Multiple members of these toxic online communities are even posting what appears to be Judge Bruce Reinhart’s home address, phone numbers, and names of his family members alongside threats of extreme violence.

Of course, some of these folks are just keyboard warriors, but not all are.  As long as the lawful authoriteis with the guns--the police, FBI, Federal Marshalls etc.--step up and protect the judges and others who preserve the rule of law in a democratic society, we can weather these outbursts.  The tipping point will come when the keyboard warriors also turn out to be the people charged with preserving the rule of law with force when needed.

ADDENDUM:  A timely example, alas, that the crazies are not all keyboard warriors.

Modern mysteries: "Why" would a tech billionaire (Larry Ellison) become a leading donor to the Republican Party?

Utterly mysterious that someone fabulously rich would align themselves with the imprudent wing of the ruling class party.   What a puzzle.   Maybe Marcuse could help?

When you can't tell what's a parody and what isn't

This exchange has been circulating on social media.  My first reaction was that this had to be a parody of mindless identity politics, but in fact the participants actually believe their nonsense.   God help the universities if too many people like this gain a foothold.

(No doubt there are instances of "indigenous knowledge" that are actual cases of knowledge. But do they really add up to a Wissenschaft?  Maybe some do, but repetitive assertion of the point doesn't inspire confidence.   It's downhill from there in this Twitter exchange....)

Meet Kelley Watt of Tulsa, Oklahoma...

...a damaged human being who now damages others.

UPDATE:  It  turns out Ms.Watt has done work with James Fetzer, a notorious conspiracy theorist who lost a defamation action brought by a parent of the one of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting.  (Thanks to Cora Diamond for the pointer.)

Jennifer Ruth, enemy of academic freedom

And she's now continuing her war on academic freedom (under the guise of protecting it) with Michael Berube in a very bad book reviewed here:

It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom...is a maddening book. It raises many important questions but is so chock-full of unresolved contradictions; gross misrepresentations; and wild, unjustified claims that it ultimately makes you wonder how the manuscript made it into print.

It's a serious embarrassment for the AAUP that Ruth is allowed anywhere near its committee on academic freedom.

Florida man, taking advantage of new "parental rights" law, asks school libraries to remove the Bible

Exactly right:

"My objection to the Bible being in your public schools is based on the following seven points, offered for your learned consideration," Stevens wrote.

Stevens proceeded to question whether the Bible is age-appropriate, pointing to its "casual" references to murder, adultery, sexual immorality, and fornication. "Do we really want to teach our youth about drunken orgies?"

He also took issue with the many Biblical references to rape, bestiality, cannibalism and infanticide. "In the end, if Jimmy and Susie are curious about any of the above, they can do what everyone else does – get a room at the Motel Six and grab the Gideons," he wrote....

"If you want to teach morality and ethics, do you really want to turn to a book that wants you to dash babies against rocks?" he told NPR, pointing to Psalm 137:9.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is still real

Dunning responds to critics.  Every day on Twitter confirms its existence, of course.

"Mob review" rather than "peer review"?

Last week the Twitter mob panned a book they hadn't read, and now we have this:

The blurb for the book “Bad and Boujee: Toward a Trap Feminist Theology” says that it “engages with the overlap of Black experience, hip-hop music, ethics and feminism to focus on a subsection known as ‘trap feminism.’”

But the book, written by Jennifer M. Buck, a white academic at a Christian university, was criticized by some authors and theologians as academically flawed, with deeply problematic passages, including repeated references to the ghetto. The project was also widely condemned on social media as poorly executed and as an example of cultural appropriation.

In response to the criticism, the book’s publisher, Wipf and Stock Publishers, decided on Wednesday that it would pull the title from circulation.

The incident touched on a larger debate in the world of publishing over when, how, and even whether, it is appropriate for authors to write about subjects outside their own culture....

There is actually a whole academic discipline in which authors write "about subjects outside their own culture":  it's called anthropology.

(Thanks to John Doris for the pointer.)

Justice Ginsburg is a philosopher, and other great moments in the Dunning-Kruger Effect

A propos this (and especially this), it was recently brought to my attention that philosopher Sandra LaPointe (McMaster), opined as follows on Twitter:

And now the "open letters" attacking OUP begin

Yesterday's English professor who doesn't speak English is now apparently behind this letter, whose contribution to scholarly debate and free thinking is to ask OUP for,

[A] clear and detailed account of what measures have been taken to ensure the scholarly quality of this forthcoming publication (while being mindful of the need to maintain reviewers’ anonymity), and what further steps the Press is taking to make itself accountable for the consequences of its publication should the book go forward to print. Measures the press could undertake to offset the harm done by the publication of this work might include soliciting and publishing trans-affirming scholarship by transgender authors, updating the house style guidelines to include specific guidance on language around transgender rights, donating a portion of the book’s profits to supporting transgender rights organizations, and/or developing editorial guidelines for the submission of works that challenge the human rights of any marginalized group. We recommend that these steps for accountability be undertaken in consultation with transgender rights activists and transgender scholars. We hope that this process can help guide OUP in editorial directions that affirm trangender peoples’ humanity and rights.

Of course, it is quite normal to demand that an academic press account for the publication of a book that none of the critics have read.   I do hope OUP will ignore this little tantrum by the thought police.

OUP publishing a book="organized violence"

Thus spake this English professor in Canada, who apparently doesn't know what words mean:

If only Hitler had realized that a book could constitute "organized violence," he could have just published his way to the Third Reich.   Naturally, the University of California professor who flagged this for me said,

I hate to have to add that, if you say anything about this on your blog, I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention my name. My husband is still working at [our UC campus], which, as you know, is a hotbed of Diversity etc. I am looking forward to his retiring so I can speak my mind about the [insert expletives here] mess we’re in with regard to gender and biological sex.

The academy, or at least some campuses, are in a "mess" if faculty don't feel they can object in public to stark-raving idiocy like the tweet, above.

UPDATE:  An alert reader points out to me this extraordinary response on Twitter:

U.S. life expectancy continues its decline, thanks to the mishandling of Covid

Here; an excerpt:

The study -- published Thursday on the preprint server medRxiv, which means it has not been peer-reviewed -- found that after falling nearly 1.9 years in 2020, life expectancy in the US decreased another 0.4 years in 2021.  In the decade before the pandemic, life expectancy in the US changed by an average of less than 0.1 years annually, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

Changes to life expectancy amid the Covid-19 pandemic widened an existing gap between the US and other high-income countries, the new report shows. Among a set of 19 peer countries, life expectancy dropped only a third as much as in the US in 2020 (down 0.6 years, on average) and rebounded in 2021, with an average increase of about 0.3 years.

 

For yet another instance of American exceptionalism, we can thank the Republican Party, Tucker Carlson, Alex Berenson, and other pathological liars and ignoramuses.

Right-wing "cancel culture" watch: study room at University of Florida named for Karl Marx has the name removed

Zieg Heil, baby, we're ideologically pure in Florida!   The case study in the Dunning-Kruger Effect that initiated this bit of petty tyranny in the service of ideological delusion is one Jennifer Carbrera who objects--obviously on the basis of no study or knowledge--to Marx being described as a "philosopher, radical economist and revolutionary critic" (all true, of course), adding that the description "neglects to mention the millions of people who have died as a direct result of his ideas."   Direct result?   Some people have funny views about causation, but I guess she's opposed to the Bible too for similar reasons.

Arthur Caplan, bioethicist...and aspiring war criminal?

Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at NYU's medical school, is certainly very good at talking to journalists.  My impression has long been that he is not well-regarded by philosophers, and not even by many fellow bioethicists.   But this is really a new low:

Arthur L. Caplan, a professor of medical ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, has been campaigning for a program of mass death. He has written, not one, but two op-eds calling for a pharmaceutical boycott of Russia.

"How far does noncooperation with Russia go?" wrote Caplan on March 11 in Medscape. "Very, very far ... Whatever can be done to minimize harm to existing subjects in a short period of time ought to be done, but that is it. Similarly, no sale of medicines or therapies ought to be occurring, be they life-saving or consumer products." (Emphases mine.)

"The Russian people need to be pinched not only by the loss of cheeseburgers and boutique coffee but by products they use to maintain their well-being," Caplan lightheartedly adds.

The targeting of civilians is a relatively new form of barbarity in the history of war.

Caplan is untroubled by the implications of his proposal. "War is cruel that way," he shrugs, "but if you tolerate a government that is bombing and shelling a peaceful neighbor to oblivion, then pharma must ensure that efforts to make Putin and his kleptocratic goons feel the wrath of their fellow citizens."

In America the Vengeful, even the philosophers of health can preach death....

The backlash to U Mass/Boston's proposal to cease being a university in favor of becoming an "anti-racist" institution

We noted this embarrassment previously (here and here), and now CHE has an article:

An early draft of the statement, which would commit the university to becoming “an anti-racist and health-promoting institution that honors and uplifts the cultural wealth of our students,” has drawn sharp criticism both on and off campus, even as some applaud the effort.

As of March 11, some 75 faculty members at the university had signed an open letter of opposition written by some colleagues from the College of Science and Mathematics, which called the draft statement “deeply flawed in content, direction, and representation.” The letter argues that “the fundamental role of the public university can neither be political nor ideological activism.” A growing number of supporters from other colleges have also signed the letter of opposition online. A Boston Globe column characterizing the draft as reeking of “woke indoctrination,” has added fuel to the conflict.

Banning Dostoevsky to punish Putin?

A university in Milan had that stupid idea, but it looks like the decision will be reversed.  This is, indeed, a very good time to be reading Dostoesvky, who understood human beings, not to mention Russia, better than most.

(Thanks to Blake Myers for the pointer.)

Here we go again: St. Olaf students protest Peter Singer's virtual talk at their college

At least they only want the talk "boycotted" rather than cancelled, although they also want a commitment that the college will not invite speakers with incorrect views again.  (The misuse of the category "hate speech" is particularly remarkable:  nothing they quote from Singer would qualify as "hate speech" in any democracy with actual "hate speech" laws.)

(Thanks to Justin Garson for the pointer.)

America is doomed, an ongoing saga

During 2021, American voter party identification shifted from the Democrats to Republicans. 

Smarmy Jonathan Ichikawa still dissembling

Somehow Ichikawa (part of the miscreant team from Vancouver) thinks that the unfortunate disagreement (and, in part, misunderstanding) between the PGR editors, Professors Brogaard and Pynes, and Wiley-Blackwell, shows that I'm not honest (!).  (A reader sent me his tweet [we are mutually blocked on Twitter] stating, "Brian Leiter is not an honest person, and the PGR is intellectually bankrupt.")  Since I literally have nothing do with any of this (I appointed Brogaard as a co-editor in 2014, and then Pynes as another co-editor for 2017, at which point they were in charge, and I have only offered them advice about the PGR when asked, and that's it), this really is a stretch even by Ichihkawa's standards of dishonesty, which are, to be sure, peerless.  (Recall that when Ichikawa and Carrie Jenkins were challenged over their defamation of me, their own lawyer would not defend their statements as true [see #5], arguing only that they were "lawful.")

There are two other ironies here, beyond the "pot calling the kettle black."

Amy Wax and "the Asians"

At my law school blog, I comment on the latest travesty from Professor Wax.  She is certainly pushing the envelope on her academic freedom rights.

Do your own research on how to "do your own research"

Philosopher Nathan Ballantyne (Fordham) and psychologist David Dunning (of Dunning-Kruger Effect fame) comment.

America is doomed, part 414: millions of armed individuals may revolt if Trump doesn't win in 2024

That's the short version; here's a longer excerpt:

If armed violence erupts the 2024 elections, quelling it could fall to the U.S. military, which may be reluctant to take arms against U.S. citizens. In that case, the fate of the nation might well be decided by a simple fact: a big subset of one of the two parties has for years been systemically arming itself for this very reason.

"I hope it's just too crazy to happen here," says Erica De Bruin, an assistant professor of government at Hamilton College, who studies coups around the world. "But it's now in the realm of the plausible"....

DEI initiatives in action in the public schools

This would be laughable if it wasn't real:

They also recommend that people read a bunch of Robin DiAngelo books and brag that “more than 2,000 DCPS staff have participated in Courageous Conversation training.” But is Courageous Conversation training a good idea? This NYT Magazine profile of the company and its founder made it sound pretty bad:

    Singleton, who holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford, and who did     stints in advertising and college admissions before founding what’s now known as Courageous     Conversation in 1992, talks about white culture in similar ways. There is the myth of     meritocracy. And valuing “written communication over other forms,” he told me, is “a     hallmark of whiteness,” which leads to the denigration of Black children in school. Another     “hallmark” is “scientific, linear thinking. Cause and effect.” He said, “There’s this whole     group of people who are named the scientists. That’s where you get into this whole idea that     if it’s not codified in scientific thought that it can’t be valid.” He spoke about how the     ancient Egyptians had “ideas about how humanity works that never had that scientific-       hypothesis construction” and so aren’t recognized. “This is a good way of dismissing people.     And this,” he continued, shifting forward thousands of years, “is one of the challenges in the     diversity-equity-inclusion space; folks keep asking for data. How do you quantify, in a way     that is scientific — numbers and that kind of thing — what people feel when they’re feeling     marginalized?” For Singleton, society’s primary intellectual values are bound up with this     marginalization."

 

I don’t think Frankfurt School Marxists are going to take over society by injecting these ideas into K-12 schools or anything like that. What I do think is that time and money is being wasted on initiatives that are run by people who are somewhere between stupid and fraudulent.

America is mostly doomed, the latest poll evidence

Here, although it isn't all bad news.  Some excerpts:

Only 29% of Republicans today say that American culture and way of life have changed for the better since the 1950s, a substantial decrease from 46% in 2020 and a return to their opinion in 2016 (31%), prior to the election of former President Trump. Most Republicans (70%) say American culture and way of life have changed for the worse since the 1950s. By contrast, a majority of Democrats (63%) think that American culture and way of life have changed for the better, much the same as in 2020 (62%). Independents closely resemble the general population (48% better) and have also declined in this view since 2020 (57% better).

Just as a reminder, large portions of the U.S. were a de jure apartheid regime in the 1950s.  Onward:

Around three in ten Americans (31%) say that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. This share has remained steady throughout 2021, in August (29%), June (30%), and March (29%).

More than two-thirds of Republicans (68%), compared to 26% of independents and 6% of Democrats, believe that the election was stolen from Trump. These shares are even greater among Republicans who most trust Fox News (82%) and essentially universal among those who most trust far-right news (97%). Less than half of Republicans who most trust mainstream news agree (44%).

Brad Rosenheim (South Florida) and Dawn Sumner (UC Davis) are enemies of academic freedom

Two other choices quotes from the Boston Globe article about MIT faculty protesting the shabby treatment of Professor Abbot:

Brad Rosenheim, associate professor of oceanography at the University of South Florida, said EAPS did the right thing because Abbot’s opinionsconflict with the department’s official stand on diversity, equity, and inclusion. “It’s almost schizophrenic, in a way, to have a diversity statement and to invite somebody who espouses these views,” Rosenheim said.

The problem wasn’t Abbot’s political opinions, Rosenheim said. Rather, it’s the fact that he has so openly expressed them.“I could invite somebody else who has the same views as Dorian Abbot, but hasn’t written a Newsweek piece and hasn’t promulgated videos of it on the Internet,” Rosenheim said.

Nothing is too trivial to nonetheless inspire a grievance

Many in the STEM fields now use "JEDI" as the acronym for "justice, equality, diversity, and inclusion."   This, however, is offensive according to these academics (mostly from education schools).  One mathematician who sent this to me, singled out this passage from the article:

[T]he Jedi are inappropriate symbols for justice work. They are a religious order of intergalactic police-monks, prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic lightsabers, gaslighting by means of “Jedi mind tricks,” etc.). The Jedi are also an exclusionary cult, membership to which is partly predicated on the possession of heightened psychic and physical abilities (or “Force-sensitivity”).

The mathematician added:  "At first I was certain it was Onion-style parody. But the rest is too sanctimonious. Maybe we *are* in end-times?"  Characteriznig the Jedi as "white" makes about as much sense as characterizing Plato as "white."  Vide Professor Reed.

21 million American brown shirts ready for action

Wow!

Who is vaccinated against COVID and who is not?

Interesting poll (based on self-reports, however) of the demographic breakdown of those who say they have been vaccinated against COVID:

• Whites: 66 percent
• Blacks: 76 percent
• Latinos: 71 percent
• Urban residents: 79 percent
• Suburban residents: 67 percent
• Rural residents: 52 percent
• White evangelicals: 59 percent
• Democrats: 88 percent
• Independents: 60 percent
• Republicans: 55 percent
• Republicans who support Trump more than party: 46 percent
• Republicans who support party more than Trump: 62 percent
• Democratic Sanders-Warren voters: 88 percent
• Democratic Biden voters: 87 percent
• Biden voters in 2020 general election: 91 percent
• Trump voters in 2020 general election: 50 percent
• White non-college grads: 60 percent
• White college grads: 80 percent

 

Alex Berenson, the world's dumbest journalist, redux

A good overview of the serial misinformation emanating from this malevolent buffoon, whom we've noted before.   Karl Kraus:  "No ideas the ability to express them:  that's a journalist!"

Fascists in Idaho target the public universities

CHE story here.  They should target me, since I am promoting Marxism and anti-Americanism, albeit not really in my classes (sorry), but at least on my blog!  And I favor repeal of the absurd Second Amendment.  (On the other hand, I don't "attack law enforcement" [the armed faction of the working class, after all] and unlike the Idaho fascists, I actually believe in free expression, especially in the universities.)

QAnon and survey responses

A props the QAnon craziness, a couple of readers point out that some number of survey respondents (maybe 4% on average?) are either inattentive to the questions being asked or simply mischievous.  That's worth remembering, but hardly reassuring given that the survey found one in four Republicans believed in a batshit crazy conspiracy theory:  if we discount the clueless and the pranksters, that still gets us 1 in 5 believing a batshit crazy conspiracy theory!  So America is still doomed!

Hawaii legislature moves to eliminate salary for tenured professor

While Republican legislatures are (rightly) attracting attention for their attempts to violate the constitutional and academic freedom rights of faculty at state universities, the threats to these rights are becoming an increasingly "bi-partisan" problem (recall, e.g., it was the Democratic legislature in California that pushed for the unlawful "diversity statements"); this shocking move by the Hawaii legislature is the latest example:

Senator Donna Kim, chair of the higher education committee, said the effort to sweep the position at the university was part of cost-cutting measures. The provision is in the main budget bill for the university.

“We need to control the costs and we need to make sure that our students in Hawaii are being able to afford higher education,” she said.

Two years ago, Kim requested from the university a list of professors who did not teach classes and did not bring in any extramural funding. She had at the time proposed cutting that entire list of about 100 professors, but that did not come to pass. This year, Vogel’s position [a cancer researcher] was the only one proposed to be cut. There are no classes taught at the cancer center, where he works. She said she did not have names associated with position numbers, but she was informed that the position’s occupant did not hold office hours and was hardly on campus.

25% of Americans think Trump is currently the "true President" of the U.S.

53% of Republicans believe that.  On the other hand, 14% of the poll respondents aren't sure whom they voted for in the 2020 election, so go figure.