Fisking a Flawed Article
Fisking - The word is derived from articles written by Robert Fisk that were easily refuted, and refers to a point-by-point debunking of lies and/or idiocies.
In this post, I will Fisk (lightly) this Atlantic article.
A new Left-of-Center Facebook friend recently made the argument that the caricature of American Universities as hotbeds of Jacobin intolerance, PC drivel, and mass indoctrination is simply wrong. Worse yet, that view also suffers from being “anti-intellectual.”
I’ve heard that before, mostly from other Left-of-Center Facebook friends who have made the same argument. My newer friend posted and interesting article by the Atlantic, which essentially argued “Move along, move along, nothing to see here. Everything is fine.”
Of course, I disagree. Vehemently.
The article starts by laying out many of the events that have led so many reasonable Americans to view the higher education appropriately, as the hotbeds of Jacobin intolerance, PC drivel, and mass indoctrination that they are. It then states “ This vision of American universities is largely inadequate in at least two ways. First, it incorrectly blames increased fragility exclusively on the university system itself and, second, it relies on a reductive caricature of America’s institutions of higher learning.”
Let’s start with this. It is no concession to this article’s wrong viewpoint to admit that yes, many students are attending higher education institutions, learning what they want to learn, and generally progressing through their education, unscathed by much of the nonsense going on around them. The proper response to such an argument is “so what?”
Yes, there probably are some professors who aren’t left-wing activists calling for the dismantlement of Western Civilization. So what?
Yes, there may even be a few conservative professors in the sciences or business curricula that don’t hate capitalism or want to make every issue a post-modernist whinge about the patriarchy, white-privilege. There might be quite a few professors who don’t make their classes a fevered attack on the social and economic system that gave us these universities, hospitals, roads, legal system, and the gas and electric grids that protect them from the sub-zero temperatures we experiencing here in Chicago at the moment.
Again, so what?
What IS happening is bad enough. It is bad enough to demand change. It is bad enough to withdraw and withhold funding until change takes place.
Now let us handle the first charge, that my view “incorrectly blames increased fragility exclusively on the university system itself."
Some may be guilty of that, but not me, and not most of the people commenting on this situation right now. The advent of bad parenting is clearly part of the problem. The generation now in college is probably the most pampered and coddled class of kids ever, and the generation following them may well be worse.
Of course, public education in the US deserves a great deal of the blame. When one flawed study resulted in the massive overvaluation of “self esteem” across every public school in the US, the whole nation was forced through a dumbing-down of an already mediocre system.
[Note: Spare me the argument that many in this cohort are “doing just fine.” Again, so what? The fact that many are doing OK means little against the backdrop of what is happening to vast numbers of students.]
The facts speak for themselves. In terms of anxiety and emotional well being, today’s younger Americans are doing far worse than any generation before them. Here is search on their resilience.
Social Media is also a problem, as it is a force multiplier of every bad habit or trait inculcated over the past 2 decades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLn...
I could post articles for hours.
Is higher education fully and solely to blame? Of course not. This does not mean that they are not part of the problem.
Now let’s talk about whether my view is a “reductive caricature of America’s institutions of higher learning.” I’ve already made the point that the existence of some good students and some good professors is not an effective argument. Safe spaces, students screaming at their professors. Students demanding, and succeeding, in driving professors out of their jobs, and worst of all, university administrators capitulating to every demand from a class of students that have been trained to hate the patriarchy, capitalism, baby-boomers, the greatest generation, but who can’t tolerate a difference of opinion, can’t change a tire, and can’t clean their rooms.
No. This doesn’t pertain to every class or every student. So What?! The point is NONE of it should be happening AT ALL!
The article goes on to argue that the reaction to this nonsense is unfair. I’d respond that it is my view that we are in “culture war,” and that war has been waged for decades, perhaps even centuries, if you go back as far as the “progressives v. traditionalists” battle over Harvard University.
I would therefore argue that conservatives (for lack of a better term) picking up the tools of the left, is a completely fair tactic. The article complains about the www.ProfessorWatchList.org website, saying “At best the website serves as a massive “trigger warning” for conservative-leaning students; at worst it is a modern Scarlet Letter.”
Oh Boo Hoo! The political faction that perfected “scarlet lettering” of everyone it disagrees with is now angry about a site that outs profs who might be ideologues? That’s rich.
As an aside, I think there should be a page that rates every doctor, professor, lawyer, and even (or especially) school administrators. The idea that someone is tracking a professor’s views and making them public is a good thing. There should be more of it.
Anti-Intellectualism
Perhaps the most potentially damaging charge made in the article is embedded in this paragraph.
"Reducing American universities to inaccurate clichés about the “collegiate left” does serve a hard-nosed political function: It marginalizes, excludes, discredits, and diminishes these institutions and intellectuals more broadly from public debate and office. This is part of a much longer tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, first tracked by Richard Hofstadter and more recently chronicled by Susan Jacoby. This culture of anti-intellectualism is likely an important factor in why the number of American professors who serve in Congress is dwarfed by politically dominant professions like lawyers and businessmen."
Ah yes. Anti-intellectualism. That horrible boogeyman. Here is a recent post of mine that described my view of anti-intellectualism.
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Responding to someone who said one of the 4 corners of Trumpism was "anti-intellectualism." (an accurate comment, BTW)
The only thing worse than anti-intellectualism is intellectualism, the hubirstic myth that some mixture of IQ and indoctrination elevates one's subjective biases to "OBJECTIVE REALITY THAT CANNOT BE GAINSAID!!""
Anti-intellectualism gives us some people like Trump.
Intellectualism gives us Identity Politics, Social Justice Warriors, and puts us back on the path to the 10s of millions killed by Nazis, Stalinists, Maoists, and their retarded offspring like Che, Marduro, PolPot and even lesser murderous clowns.
I'm a well-read post-graduate (law degree) with a decently elevated IQ and a deep interest in all sorts of intellectual pursuits. I defend anti-intellectualism because it's more reasonable and psychologically healthy than intellectualism any day of the week - and far less dangerous.
All "isms" are dangerous, because they are ideologies that revolve around a partial truth (a lie). Clearly though, some are more much dangerous than others.
A well-behaved bigot who distrusts "others" as a group, but just wants to be left alone to shoot some guns, practice a trade, and fish or ride a wave runner, is far less dangerous than a college professor steeped in post-modern, materialist drivel, whose current role is to turn formerly normal citizens into weak-minded, totalitarian Jacobins who hate reality.
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So there.
Look, I get that many will disagree with what I wrote above, but I stand by it. Intellectuals, like everyone else, should be judged by their results. They hardly have a strong track record over the last few decades. Post Modernism is a mish-mash of some observations, mixed with a brew of Marxist “power-relationships” and nihilism. Marxism destroys every economy and culture it touches.
Critical Theory is a pile of destructive nonsense developed by group of European ingrates who couldn’t sustain a culture if they tried, so they invented a way to destroy it. Worse yet, they found a way to cartelize, monopolize, and incentivize an entire culture (and a damn fine one) to participate in, and pay for, its own destruction.
If the current view of higher ed as a breeding ground for bad ideas is “anti-intellectual,” then that should be viewed as feature, not a bug.
I lack the time to properly Fisk the rest of this article. I may do a second post, or I may leave it here.
All I can say is this. I am correct in my view of higher education (and education in general). It has become an indoctrination industry where actual education is left to the hard sciences and some basic skills. The Humanities, in particular, are hollowed out husks of their former selves.
When angry mobs of conservatives shut down a Bill Ayers speech, I might reconsider my view. In the meantime, when thoughtful Atheists like Sam Harris are questioning PC, and thoughtful liberals like Jonathan Haidt and Stephen Pinker feel it necessary to start sites “Heterodox Academy”, I’m pretty sure I’m correct in my assertion regarding higher education.
And we haven’t even started to discuss the financial damage caused by America’s horrific higher education system. For more on that, read this.
The Atlantic article is wrong. This earlier Atlantic article was much more on point.
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