Academic insurrection 1
Let it wither away
Here is my comment on a recent Substack from Lee Jussim called “Unsafe Science”. The author is a professor who is mildly dismayed at some of the extreme behavior coming from academia. Here is my response.
Let me attempt to summarize the author's thesis in this and other recent articles, the way I perceive it. Apologies for any rhetorical excess.
"Academia has gone way overboard in showing its hand. Of course all decent people support the progressive agenda. But we cannot afford to alienate too many people by calling all non-Marxists racist-sexist-homophobic-transphobic-xenophobic-Islamophobic-fascists. We still must put on a friendly face while we pursue our progressive goals."
I am a longtime STEM professor and I have seen it all. I really do hope that the MAGA movement is able to cripple academia, because it is the mission of modern academia to destroy Western civilization. I know that because I have seen the signs on the doors; I have heard the lectures from the hallways; I have read the e-mails from administrators and colleagues. I believe that my colleagues are not mentally healthy, and that they support terrorism. The evidence is overwhelming.
It shocks me that MAGA policy leaders like Christopher Rufo merely want to use federal money as a bargaining chip to enact "reform" in "higher education". I want all federal money removed from academia unconditionally. Then the customer can make a more informed decision, whether he or she wants to spend four years getting yelled at and shamed for alleged "privilege" or "toxicity", then graduating with crushing debt, unable to find a job.
The public is not morally required to subsidize an institution that despises them. When academia decides to return to its original mission of conserving and transmitting Western civilization, then we can talk again.
I will return to this subject shortly.
By all means, stop giving taxpayer money to institutions of "higher" (pot or coke?) learning. Many, especially those of the poison Ivy, have more money than the Fed. I caution not to expect a rapid turn around, even with the elimination of DEI racism. The professors, at least since the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, have been the former members of the SDS and the Weathermen or their wannabe hippie descendants. It may take quite some time for the smell of cannabis and the stain of Progressivism/Marxism to leave the hallowed halls of the universities.
You must be in some peculiar blue state hellhole to come away with such a negative impression. During 2019 there was a debate on the Notices pf the AMS concerning diversity statements, spearheaded by an editorial against by Dr. Abigail Thompson. There were letters to the editor for and against. The letters against diversity statements were cosigned by the top mathematicians, many of whom with names recognizable to myself from their research. The letters for were signed by younger people unknown to me from teaching-oriented institutions. So, to some extent we are looking at a generational shift which will eventually boomerang. What will help a lot is to stop funding woke nonsense. A lot of people opportunisticly pad their CV with external grants that are not about research but about woke activism, and then use that to enter administrative positions. So my recipe ks two fold: decentralize and increase tenure protections and shared governance and then stop funding bullshit; fund the people doing the real work. Reducing indirects. may also nelp to curb the excess administration that is unrelalated to research.