Well, as stated I don’t have much time for Tucker Carlson, so I’m not even going to read the quote you’ve left there. As for cultural Marxism vs. Critical Race Theory, they are not equally empty chairs.
Where are the cultural Marxists? I don’t know of anyone who is proud to be such, and it is more of an interpretation by some (mostly on the right) of the uber-woke progressives. In general, I would agree that cultural Marxism is a pretty empty chair.
Critical Race Theory specifically, and Critical Theory in general, are indeed literal chairs at some universities. Lots of journals and academics who espouse these ideas. I’m sure whatever Tucker Carlson and his guests discuss is a caricature of this that only fits niche elements of the overall picture, but these are very real chairs nonetheless. Critics of Critical theory in general are not just engaging in stooped bashing of academics (though of course there will be low level bashing on both sides). Critical Theory must be open to criticism of itself, or it lacks credibility, was my basic point in the comment you responded to. I have also been in school a lot, and there is definitely a problem here.
Jonathan Haidt is an interesting thinker along these lines, in my opinion.
I followed your link through to those hoax papers. This is a funny story actually, it reminds me of the kind of stuff I’d do in HS to mess with my professors. Also reminds me of the cheeky “hang the banana on the wall and sell it at the art auction” deal.
"Following the discovery of the hoax, all four papers were retracted:
Thanks to the Wall Street Journal. The real hoax continues unabated though.
Boghossian, Lindsay, and Pluckrose wrote 20 articles that promoted deliberately absurd ideas or morally questionable acts and submitted them to various peer-reviewed journals. Although they had planned for the project to run until January 2019, the trio admitted to the hoax in October 2018 after journalists from The Wall Street Journal revealed that “Helen Wilson”, the pseudonym used for their article published in Gender, Place & Culture , did not exist.
Sure, like I said they pulled a clever trompe le monde stunt. (Spoiler: guy at art museum ate the banana taped to the wall, claiming he was hungry).
I don’t know what you mean by ‘the real hoax’ but I’ll assume it’s something to do with universities, liberals, the media, the chinese, bidens senility, the left, leftists, cultural marxism, democrats, idenitity politics, maybe a secretive plot to something or other involving pedophiles, etc. You pick today’s angle.
This is a hilarious story, but it is also terrifying in a way (I’m not all Jordan Peterson-style next-stop-the-gulag, but)…
The four you listed went all the way through the process and were published before they were retracted (which only happened when the authors came out, not because the readership saw any problems). Other papers were in the publication pipeline. The ones that were rejected were also submitted to top journals (even I have cited Qualitative Inquiry, their acceptance rate is probably around 1%), and probably these papers could have been submitted to worse journals and been accepted quickly. The world’s highest paid and most respected experts in these areas publish in these journals, which happily publish total shit as has been demonstrated through this hoax.
I agree with the people who conducted this stunt experiment that there is a real problem with criticality in Critical Theory. I believe one of those four you listed was a rewrite of a chapter from Mein Kampf that was rewritten from the perspective of feminists instead of Nazis and it was published. Somebody at some stage in the process should have questioned at least the logic and the academic rigour.
How widespread is this problem? It’s good someone is keeping the critical theorists on their toes, but I feel pieces like these quickly get amplified by the Tucker Carlson’s of the world in an exaggerated manner to represent all of ‘academia’. I know that’s not the point, yes they’re probably right, but you know how this is also a Fox news fantasy news dream come true.
Discrediting universities is something I’m just tired of in general.
EDIT: I guess my ? would also be who is reading any of this stuff in the first place outside of this very small academic niche?
It is so widespread that I can’t give a specific answer. Very.
Not enough. In my experience questioning critical theory leads quickly to accusations of prejudice and privilege, followed by censure. At universities in North America this has become de rigueur in most of the administration, student body, and humanities and social science faculties; STEM fields, at least in the classroom, are largely unaffected. There are movements to push critical theory ideas as mandatory for all learners (and employees, frankly), this is probably what Tucker Carlson is talking about. It is not good that people like Tucker Carlson are the face of opposition to stupid ideas, but I’m only brave enough to do it here where I am anonymous.
Yep. Doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem.
You mean, Critical Theory?
edit: to be fair, I’m sure there are plenty of academics who have studied critical theory in depth and apply it in appropriate and rational ways
Critical theory is a large discipline, it spans what over half a decade so I don’t think it can be presented as a singular thing that is beyond questioning. I can see how if certain orthodoxies of thought within the discipline are challenged, you’re going to see a pushback from a reactionary segment of the left. But these people are really in the vast minority of academics, even in fields where they might read these types of works.
OK, but that doesn’t mean that they’re gonna be reading these extreme outlier texts. I believe it’s reasonable to see these things as extreme, and of course RWers are going to take this and run with it, say this is what academia is about, and next thing you know program money is cut for schools in programs that actually need it.
Agree, but I think we also know that there is a significant motivation for RW to portray academics esp those on the left as loopy pink haired identity politics obsessesed caricatures. These attacks cause far more damage to U.S. life–one which already has an anti-intellectual bent to being with–than a few obnoxious papers that slipped through the cracks.
Honestly, good on them for doing this if they feel its kept their discipline/study honest. But whoever did that should also know they’re fanning the flames of a right wing anti academic narrative that results in real time cuts to school funding in budgets.
I’m sure its the vast majority of them! I work at a University in the U.S., and I must not get all the memos for all the looney tunes intersectional white man hating rallies that are supposedly defining U.S. academic life and thought. Literally no one around me talks or thinks like these people. And they’ve all read their Lit Crit from back in the day.
While you are entirely correct that Critical Theory is a large discipline, that is also why you are wrong to say these people are really in the vast minority of academics. Especially in the social sciences and humanities this is going to be a strong majority. There is a knock on effect, as well, which I could discuss from personal experience but here is a quote from the article I recommended:
Maybe if the left wing didn’t let academics get so bad, it would be easier to defend spending money on it?
This can mean a lot of things, depending on your job and the university (feel free to PM me!)
The vast majority of academics are teaching things like physics, economics, calculus, etc. and would see a lot of very far left critical theory as either too esoteric or too extreme to engage with. (That’s how I feel about it, which may surprise some people here).
I’m sorry I’m going to disagree with you on this one regarding the VFIL (Very Far Intersectional Left), I believe the degree of influence and presence is way amplified. I think we’ll have to look more into this, maybe I’m naive.
Are most academics left wing? I guess by 21st Century American standards yes, but this is another misnomer circulated by the right. Some are certainly, but not all academics are leftists…so I don’t think its fair to say the ‘left’ let academics get bad. It’s probably more reasonable to say that the VFIL have come to occupy a certain space within Critical Theory and people have become afraid to check their ideas/egos, which is NOT good.
I’d speculate that ideologically driven reasons to cut spending on public universities and student loans are behind the majority of attacks on the VFIL.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been to conferences and heard these types of papers so I know it’s a thing, and probably more of a thing than I realize. But I seriously question the degree of prevalance the VFIL type of thinking has on the majority of academic thought.
By Tucker Carlson, it probably is. At the same time, look at the backlash against Jordan Peterson (who I personally don’t believe is a transphobic bigot, although the assumption that he is made him famous). Either way, I stand by my original point that critical theorists are not particularly open to criticism.
I Googled for a Jonathan Haidt reference for this but the LA Times will do
OK, 100% agree there
Well, quite the opposite in my case
We would have to draw lines on what constitutes academic thought, academic work, and academic influence. In my experience at a large research intensive university in Canada, where I was active in more spheres than I care to list here, the prevalence was high.
Maybe. Certainly a medical school or a law school won’t deal with a lot of this day-to-day, STEM as we mentioned. It’ll come through in memos. If you are at a North American school where the student unions and English departments don’t lean Critical Theory, I’d be surprised. Education (my PhD field) has a lot of it, and in Canada we get undergraduates from across the university.
They learn it, but I guess what I’m taking issue with here is the idea that even within the field of critical theory, there are vast disagreements. You’re holding up ‘critical theory’ as one static entity that is oversaturated with wacky VFIL ideas. I would contend, maybe I’m off here, that most critical theorists themselves would look at those papers and call BS on them.
Here’s a story for you, and this goes out to @Dr_Milker: I was teaching a community Ed college English course in NY back in the early 2000s. I had a great rapport with my class, everyone learning a lot etc.
2 guest lecturers came into my class one day, and the topic was something along the lines of indigenous basket weaving. They did their lesson, my students were kind of puzzled by it but went along politely.
At the end, we were asked to give our thoughts about the guest lesson. All the teachers in the program besides me raved about it, it was the most amazing lesson they’d ever seen. I was then asked my opinion.
I told them candidly: “I think this lesson was probably fun and on a theoretical level interesting to consider, but my students are working class people that still don’t know how to tell the Bus driver where they want to get off and need to learn how to go get groceries. This lesson taught them vocabulary they’ll never use, like a native american term for wicker basket. It’s cool that they were exposed to these ideas, but I don’t feel it’s practical”.
Both of my bosses were pretty into some far left politics, and I fell out of favor in the office for telling them how I felt.
The funny thing is, I’m pretty sure you and I agree on most things. My issue is that when it comes to questions of race and gender (which can come up in human relations, you know, from time to time) it is very difficult to have dispassionate conversations.
Well, how many are going to call BS on their own work?
Indigenous stuff, like race and gender, is a minefield in Canada. I think what you experienced in the early 2000s is more widespread than you might think in 2020, and spreading farther still…
(and Tucker Carlson is legit deplorable, no sarcasm, amiright?)
Not that difficult. I think one misnomer is these conversations are all fraught with ‘emotion’. Race and gender can be discussed dispassionately.
This implies all of their work is soaked in VFIL ideology or that they all agree with it and/or are toeing some line.
That wouldn’t surprise me. But I’ll reiterate–most of the academics I know in the states are reasonable political centrists that can read a piece of critical theory, even a VFL one, and be critical of it and hold it in it’s proper place.
He’s a POS
Here’s one last story–this one going out to @BiggusDickus who doesn’t engage with me but might appreciate this story anyways.
I was in an African-American studies course as an undergrad. The speaker was a white pastor from the southern part of the US that had lived through the civil rights movement in the 50’s and 60s. We were discussing slavery, and in all fire and brimstone he denounced all white southerners as EVIL.
Hold on, I objected. I believe that this interpretation slows any kind of bridge to understanding, because I think what motivated poor white southerners in the south was FEAR. They feared the loss of their jobs, livelihoods. That’s not a justification for it, but if you understand that poor southern white confederates were scared, misinformed humans fearing the loss of their livelihood instead of EVIL, then maybe you can reach out to them based on how they are actually thinking to reform their ideas.
He looked back at me: THEY WERE EVIL.
The prof in that class–a white liberal–gave me a very hard time about the fact that I read a lot of Fritz Nietzsche the philosopher. “HES JUST CONCERNED WITH POWER, THATS A WHITE SUPREMACIST CONCEPT”.
“Didn’t Malcolm X say exactly the same thing” I asked him?
He just kind of rolled his eyes. So yeah that dogma element is there. But I still believe it’s not reflective of the majority of US academics.
I think we have an entirely new thread topic here, certainly the science is on pause… (*disclaimer, I do believe that we are all equally human regardless of our birth circumstances)
Yes, but I meant primarily in education, humanities, social sciences, most of the administration, and official student groups. I have a lot of flexibility on details, but yes it implies (and based on my experience, yours may be very different and equally valid)
I’d be more interested to know how many call BS when they see it in a memo on race/gender/etc. (assuming that it is, of course, possible)
Amen brother. Yet somehow, still the most interesting thing on Fox. I guess. I don’t watch Fox.
how do you do that fancy line???
Many of us, a lot of the time?
as an aside, @jdsmith has a Nihilism Thread if you’re feeling frisky
‘Judge not by the colour of the skin but the content of the character’ is a paraphrase that got me in trouble more than once during my PhD, but is an idea I prefer not to compromise on. White privilege my ass.
(it is so interesting how Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt have been thrown together by the culture wars, only the thought of the latter I’m personally interested in)
I think there’s a bit of a false dichotomy in that last one. You can still acknowledge white privilege is a real existent thing that affects real lives in real ways, but maintain: ‘Judge not by the colour of the skin but the content of the character’.
These aren’t opposites, they go hand in hand together.
I have to be frank that I am turned off by the title “Leftism is the New Fundamental Religion” in an era where the good old fashioned Fundamental Right Wing religions are running the show. But I will give it an open and honest listen. I’m very skeptical of JP’s intentions and agree with @yyy that it’s safe to call him far right (If I got his meaning right from the other thread).
“The psychologists I spoke to before Trump was elected overwhelmingly said that the diagnosis they would make based on what they saw is narcissistic personality disorder,” Haidt said. “And I think we’ve seen that continuously since his election, that he tends to make everything about him. And so that is pretty much the opposite of ethical leadership, where it needs to be about the team and our shared interest. I don’t see much of a chance of us really coming together and overcoming our differences before the election. Or, basically, as long as Trump is in office.”
