“Universities are madrassas for woke stupidity.” -James Delingpole When I first encountered the discipline of Philosophy as an undergraduate at West Point some twenty years ago, I was put into a state of awe. Encountering the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hume, Berkeley and Russell for the very first time felt like I was being let in on some ancient and esoteric form of knowledge, some sort of secret language invisible to the uninitiated. Leaving the classroom each day, debating and conversing with other students over these new and earth-shattering concepts and questions felt like a kind of drug trip; like I was Neo being shown the code for the
Great essay. Incidentally, it was Upton Sinclair who said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Congratulations on a “kick-arse” missive, that succinctly and even poetically distils so many of the contradictions and hypocrises passing for academic discourse today. I read this wonderful piece as shared on a Heterodox Academy FB page in Australia. And I ask - how far might you agree to this piece of poetry being shared? I can imagine it gaining some notoriety, even “going viral” - are you open to that? Are you open to raising your head above the parapet? a la Jordan Peterson (whom, I guess, only really wanted there to be no legal restraint over his own use of pronouns)? For much as I think your short essay deserves wider publication (not that I can deliver that - I’m only a local doctor) I’m also cognisant that public notoriety can be more burden that gift, especially for an academic. I would hate for you to regret your missive, and by implication discourage others from similarly speaking their minds.
I'm a high school teacher. I've taught all grade levels in the course of 30 years. I've taught the advanced placement kids, the college prep kids, and kids in need of remediation. I have a masters degree plus 15. I am an excellent writer and can sound really, really, smart when I want to. In fact, I was invited several times to pursue a doctoral degree. But by then I had caught a whiff of the pompous stench that is academia and I have to admit, a bit of it was wafting from within. I then decided that henceforth, any further study would be for pure enjoyment -- perhaps a course in Canning Peaches 101 or puppy-training. Make no mistake: I still love my students, I still love my content area, but alas, I never thought I'd live, much less teach, to see the day, where Orwell is no longer fiction. Thus, for the last 15 years or so, when asked, I advise my students to consider trade or technical schools. In short: Fuck Academia and its Commie Indoctrination Campuses.
I am an academic and completely understand what is being described here. I have now taken a stand, and have done so in a very public fashion, setting up a website (www.markavis.org) where I am pushing back against Wokism. It is only a month old, so not yet consequential and not yet noticed enough for any retribution. I just wish there were more academics willing to stand up for the classical liberal values that built the universities in the first place. We might stand a chance if more pushed back.
I feel the exact same way, its so refreshing and encouraging to read your story. I feel like I'm not alone in thinking these things. I signed up for a PhD idealistically and in good faith in 2010, I was determined to make the most out of my life, I thought the PhD was a great honor, given that my family have an immigrant background with no high school diplomas. I was also a centrist liberal who voted for Obama. However, halfway through my PhD the entire cultural climate shifted, right after Trump woke-ism swept through the whole academy, and the same academics who for years criticized the Bush-Clinton neoliberal/neocon apparatus were quick to turn around support Hillary in her bid for presidency. Any dissent was met with ice cold glares and harassment. To dissent was to be a fascist. There was no room to conduct research outside of race/gender/sexuality/identity, that was the only acceptable form of research that you could publish without perishing. Every canonical work of literature in philosophy and politics must be interpreted through it is merely the oppressive system of "dead white males". I then came to realize that this was not a small cadre of pomo intellectuals in the English department, but was in fact undergirding the whole education system. The whole higher education edifice was crumbling before my eyes. I was enjoying cocktails on the Titanic, unaware that there was a massive iceberg on the horizon. I finished my PhD, but immediately decided to leave academia, however with debt, and with vague notions as to how to apply a PhD in philosophy in the real word. Its saddening because I had dreams, I really believed in it, and gave my life for it, my youth, for the life of the mind at a small liberal arts college, which is a beautiful life. But now those days are long gone. Silly me for having ingested Dead Poets Society as a vision in my youth.
Taught at university for 35 years. Everything you write is absolutely accurate. Between the cowards and careerists there is virtually nothing left to save. Social engineering never works, but for those pushing a woke argument to get it they would actually have to risk something existentially significant, and as it stands now all the risk is on the other side. Bravo, Michael.
More substantively: I think the word that comes to mind after reading your essay is: Courage (either the possession or lack of it). I am near the end of my career and I have little to risk speaking my mind. But that's not being courageous. Being courageous means risking something meaningful -- not just a remote risk either. And that is where the virtue of courage is shown to be lacking. We need more men and women of courage to speak up against this cancer in academia (and in the media, in business, and in other institutions).
To quote H.L. Menken, “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” That quote does sound Menkenesque (or even Twainesque) but it was actually Upton Sinclair who said that in 1934 (when writing about his run for California governor).
Thanks Michael Robillard - - I'll spread the word about your crisp and refreshing essay as well as I can.
Peterson is the one waving the Flag. One of his dear insights to me is, that there is something deeply wrong with mainstream feminism.
Goethe once remarked, that women tend to look out for exceptions as soon as there are laws - installed, mostly, by - - old men.
Women and the young have a natural inclination against laws, that was Goethe's insight in his Maxims and Reflections (a very insightful book, vastly underestimated, btw.)..
Another writer I love is Jean Paul. I found this quote here today: "He loves the women all down the line up to the herrings and - crabs." (I think of lobsters, now, of course...).
(In - Jean Paul, Ideengewimmel, No. 1087)
I should add one more thought, not least, since you are a philosopher. The best remedy against the philosophical shortcomings of postmodernism and deconstructivism I know of is: "The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity" (1986) by Jürgen Habermas (once a friend of Richard Rorty).
Brilliant essay. I was once incredibly progressive myself but once social justice crossed the line into cultish tyranny territory, I decided to oppose it with all my body and soul.
Millions of others have come to this awakening, many have decided to fight it, and many have decided to go along with it. Unfortunately, many would rather be in the majority than be right.
If any of you ever wondered how Hitler, Mao, and Stalin or Lenin came to power, this is how.
This is a cultural, Marxist revolution happening in our own territory. If we’re lucky, if enough people decide to oppose it, we may save the west and this period in our history will be another McCarthyist re-emergence, the “White Scare.”
If not… it’s going to be the Second Cultural Revolution and it’s going to be a fucking dark few centuries. There may be no ending to it in fact. The west is the last bastion of freedom, there’s no where else to run to.
Also a vet, although an EM. I got my PhD late-- and university teaching was very preferable to the business world in which I'd been immersed. The state college at which I taught was working class enough that woke wasn't a big deal-- this is more of an artifact of elite schools. Also, having been a 70s radical after the Army, I knew enough theory to know how woke is nutty. Retired happily.
I love it except for the part where you quit at the end. In order to fix this people need to be saying this from INSIDE the university. To the faces of the cultural marxists. Daring to upend the HR department and filing complaints and police reports for every threat.
This does no one any good man. The university now has less spine to hold against these people and you have less power than ever to affect change. You need to be getting the entire STEM department to walk into admin and raise hell.
Great essay. Incidentally, it was Upton Sinclair who said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Michael.
Congratulations on a “kick-arse” missive, that succinctly and even poetically distils so many of the contradictions and hypocrises passing for academic discourse today. I read this wonderful piece as shared on a Heterodox Academy FB page in Australia. And I ask - how far might you agree to this piece of poetry being shared? I can imagine it gaining some notoriety, even “going viral” - are you open to that? Are you open to raising your head above the parapet? a la Jordan Peterson (whom, I guess, only really wanted there to be no legal restraint over his own use of pronouns)? For much as I think your short essay deserves wider publication (not that I can deliver that - I’m only a local doctor) I’m also cognisant that public notoriety can be more burden that gift, especially for an academic. I would hate for you to regret your missive, and by implication discourage others from similarly speaking their minds.
I'm a high school teacher. I've taught all grade levels in the course of 30 years. I've taught the advanced placement kids, the college prep kids, and kids in need of remediation. I have a masters degree plus 15. I am an excellent writer and can sound really, really, smart when I want to. In fact, I was invited several times to pursue a doctoral degree. But by then I had caught a whiff of the pompous stench that is academia and I have to admit, a bit of it was wafting from within. I then decided that henceforth, any further study would be for pure enjoyment -- perhaps a course in Canning Peaches 101 or puppy-training. Make no mistake: I still love my students, I still love my content area, but alas, I never thought I'd live, much less teach, to see the day, where Orwell is no longer fiction. Thus, for the last 15 years or so, when asked, I advise my students to consider trade or technical schools. In short: Fuck Academia and its Commie Indoctrination Campuses.
I am an academic and completely understand what is being described here. I have now taken a stand, and have done so in a very public fashion, setting up a website (www.markavis.org) where I am pushing back against Wokism. It is only a month old, so not yet consequential and not yet noticed enough for any retribution. I just wish there were more academics willing to stand up for the classical liberal values that built the universities in the first place. We might stand a chance if more pushed back.
As a former academic I THANK YOU for speaking the truth. 👏🏻
Thank you Michael,
I feel the exact same way, its so refreshing and encouraging to read your story. I feel like I'm not alone in thinking these things. I signed up for a PhD idealistically and in good faith in 2010, I was determined to make the most out of my life, I thought the PhD was a great honor, given that my family have an immigrant background with no high school diplomas. I was also a centrist liberal who voted for Obama. However, halfway through my PhD the entire cultural climate shifted, right after Trump woke-ism swept through the whole academy, and the same academics who for years criticized the Bush-Clinton neoliberal/neocon apparatus were quick to turn around support Hillary in her bid for presidency. Any dissent was met with ice cold glares and harassment. To dissent was to be a fascist. There was no room to conduct research outside of race/gender/sexuality/identity, that was the only acceptable form of research that you could publish without perishing. Every canonical work of literature in philosophy and politics must be interpreted through it is merely the oppressive system of "dead white males". I then came to realize that this was not a small cadre of pomo intellectuals in the English department, but was in fact undergirding the whole education system. The whole higher education edifice was crumbling before my eyes. I was enjoying cocktails on the Titanic, unaware that there was a massive iceberg on the horizon. I finished my PhD, but immediately decided to leave academia, however with debt, and with vague notions as to how to apply a PhD in philosophy in the real word. Its saddening because I had dreams, I really believed in it, and gave my life for it, my youth, for the life of the mind at a small liberal arts college, which is a beautiful life. But now those days are long gone. Silly me for having ingested Dead Poets Society as a vision in my youth.
Taught at university for 35 years. Everything you write is absolutely accurate. Between the cowards and careerists there is virtually nothing left to save. Social engineering never works, but for those pushing a woke argument to get it they would actually have to risk something existentially significant, and as it stands now all the risk is on the other side. Bravo, Michael.
More substantively: I think the word that comes to mind after reading your essay is: Courage (either the possession or lack of it). I am near the end of my career and I have little to risk speaking my mind. But that's not being courageous. Being courageous means risking something meaningful -- not just a remote risk either. And that is where the virtue of courage is shown to be lacking. We need more men and women of courage to speak up against this cancer in academia (and in the media, in business, and in other institutions).
To quote H.L. Menken, “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” That quote does sound Menkenesque (or even Twainesque) but it was actually Upton Sinclair who said that in 1934 (when writing about his run for California governor).
Thanks Michael Robillard - - I'll spread the word about your crisp and refreshing essay as well as I can.
Peterson is the one waving the Flag. One of his dear insights to me is, that there is something deeply wrong with mainstream feminism.
Goethe once remarked, that women tend to look out for exceptions as soon as there are laws - installed, mostly, by - - old men.
Women and the young have a natural inclination against laws, that was Goethe's insight in his Maxims and Reflections (a very insightful book, vastly underestimated, btw.)..
Another writer I love is Jean Paul. I found this quote here today: "He loves the women all down the line up to the herrings and - crabs." (I think of lobsters, now, of course...).
(In - Jean Paul, Ideengewimmel, No. 1087)
I should add one more thought, not least, since you are a philosopher. The best remedy against the philosophical shortcomings of postmodernism and deconstructivism I know of is: "The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity" (1986) by Jürgen Habermas (once a friend of Richard Rorty).
Based. From another academic, I very much appreciate this piece.
Well said Michael. I applaud your courage and integrity in speaking out about this seriously under appreciated problem.
Brilliant essay. I was once incredibly progressive myself but once social justice crossed the line into cultish tyranny territory, I decided to oppose it with all my body and soul.
Millions of others have come to this awakening, many have decided to fight it, and many have decided to go along with it. Unfortunately, many would rather be in the majority than be right.
If any of you ever wondered how Hitler, Mao, and Stalin or Lenin came to power, this is how.
This is a cultural, Marxist revolution happening in our own territory. If we’re lucky, if enough people decide to oppose it, we may save the west and this period in our history will be another McCarthyist re-emergence, the “White Scare.”
If not… it’s going to be the Second Cultural Revolution and it’s going to be a fucking dark few centuries. There may be no ending to it in fact. The west is the last bastion of freedom, there’s no where else to run to.
We MUST win, we MUST.
Also a vet, although an EM. I got my PhD late-- and university teaching was very preferable to the business world in which I'd been immersed. The state college at which I taught was working class enough that woke wasn't a big deal-- this is more of an artifact of elite schools. Also, having been a 70s radical after the Army, I knew enough theory to know how woke is nutty. Retired happily.
I love it except for the part where you quit at the end. In order to fix this people need to be saying this from INSIDE the university. To the faces of the cultural marxists. Daring to upend the HR department and filing complaints and police reports for every threat.
This does no one any good man. The university now has less spine to hold against these people and you have less power than ever to affect change. You need to be getting the entire STEM department to walk into admin and raise hell.
Based and Redpilled.