Is their a Leftist Agenda in Academia?

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Prof calls on art teachers to reject ‘geometry of whiteness’

-In a chapter for a new "Handbook of Race and Arts in Education," a University of North Texas art education professor argues that K-12 teachers should work to combat "geometries of whiteness."

-Tyson Lewis contends that "whiteness is a kind of one-dimensional way of being in the world," suggesting that educators incorporate "critical whiteness studies" to advance the "social justice agenda" of art education.

Tyson E. Lewis, who teaches classes on critical pedagogy and aesthetic theory, contributed a chapter on “Art Education and Whiteness as Style” for a new guide aimed at other educators, The Palgrave Handbook of Race and Arts in Education.

"Because whiteness and maleness are geometric styles, aesthetic questions are intrinsically political and political questions are inherently aesthetic." . . .

“Race is lived through an aesthetic geometry of lines and angles that connect and disconnect bodies on a pre-conscious level,” Lewis asserts, adding that “whiteness is a kind of one-dimensional way of being in the world.”

Summarizing another critical race scholar, Lewis adds that “whiteness is a myopically destructive form of living that fundamentally denies the multiple dimensions of experience beyond, or in contradictions with, whiteness.”

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11157

Homogeneous: The Political Affiliations of Elite Liberal Arts College Faculty - National Association of Scholars

Mitchell Langbert is associate professor of business management at Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY 11210; [email protected]. The author thanks the Searle Freedom Trust for its financial support, Brooklyn College for a year of faculty leave, and Glenda R. McGee for research assistance. The author also thanks James Dalton, Ward Elliott, Bruce Fleming, J. Philip Gleason, Lee Jussim, Daniel B. Klein, and David O’Brien for institutional background and other information.

UGA Dean attacked on Twitter for having GOP friend

-The dean of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia recently issued an apology to those he had "offended" with a tweet congratulating a childhood friend on becoming the state’s Republican candidate for governor.

-Charles Davis faced an intense backlash from liberals, who accused Davis of being a "racist" blind to his own "privilege" for daring to suggest that Brian Kemp is "a nice guy."

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11170

Most academics are very openly Leftist and definitely motivated by ideology. This results in other Leftist professors being hired preferentially, which in turn results in Leftist professors being tenured.

Emails Reveal High School Teachers Plotting To Hide Their Political Bias From Parents
The Left is abusing American high school education in its struggle to gain and retain political power. We only found out about this incident by accident. How many more?

Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, a group of public school history teachers in the posh Boston suburb of Newton pledged to reject the “call for objectivity” in the classroom, bully conservative students for their beliefs, and serve as “liberal propagandist[s]” for the cause of social justice.

This informal pact was made in an exchange of emails among history teachers at Newton North High School, part of a very rich but academically mediocre public school district with an annual budget of $200 million, a median home price of almost half a million, and a median household income of more than $120,000.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/07/ema ... s-parents/

No, there is not. I can see why people think there is but those people are making assumptions. If most professors are liberally minded, that doesn't mean that there is an agenda against conservatives. Most conservatives would just rather leave and find their own ventures. I think liberals are more likely to pursue academic ventures, and I don't know of many liberals who aren't uncomfortable when discussing far right / extremist politics.

I actually think that due to the mass hysteria over universities, it's actually becoming the opposite. I even had a lecturer who seemed to feel the need to say "I'm not going on a leftist rant or anything", which is actually concerning me that this rumour is starting to get a little out of hand.

LOL: The University of California at Davis is sponsoring a multi-year program called "Racial Capitalism." They will be asking profound questions like:
--"Which came first, capitalism or racism?"
--"Can there be capitalism without racism?"
--"Is capitalism always racial?"

(You know their answers in advance.)

Meanwhile, actual social survey research shows that people who are opposed to capitalism (i.e., socialists) are empirically: more racist, more angry, less happy, less generous, and more prone to revenge:

https://reason.com/volokh/2018/08/20/ca ... out-racism

Sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.

UPenn Women's Center targeted in federal Title IX complaint

The nation’s oldest men’s nonprofit has filed a Title IX complaint against the University of Pennsylvania, alleging that 22 of the school’s programs unlawfully exclude men, including the Women's Center.

According to a complaint filed on June 22, the National Coalition for Men requests that the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) launch a formal probe into certain women-only scholarships and programs at the Ivy League school.

"Men are beginning to face significant problems in the workplace due to this disparity in terms of college degree attainment."

Programs that directly exclude men include The Penn Forum for Women Faculty, The Penn Women’s Support Group, and the Trustees Council of Penn Women, according to the complaint.

But the complaint also takes aim at programs with ambiguous membership rules, such as the Women’s Studies Department, the Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality, and Women, and various other initiatives to “support women” in STEM and academia.

Though these programs might not bar men from joining, per se, NCFM alleges that many of these programs indirectly bar men. In many cases, the group cites the absolute lack, or near lack, of male participants to justify its claims.

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11252

UCLA's infatuation with diversity is a costly diversion from its true mission

If Albert Einstein applied for a professorship at UCLA today, would he be hired? The answer is not clear. Starting this fall, all faculty applicants to UCLA must document their contributions to “equity, diversity and inclusion.” (Next year, existing UCLA faculty will also have to submit an “equity, diversity and inclusion statement” in order to be considered for promotion, following the lead of five other UC campuses.) The mandatory statements will be credited in the same manner as the rest of an applicant’s portfolio, according to UCLA’s equity, diversity and inclusion office.

A contemporary Einstein may not meet the suggested evaluation criteria. Would his “job talk” — a presentation of one’s scholarly accomplishments — reflect his contributions to equity, diversity and inclusion? Unlikely. Would his research show, in the words of the evaluation template, the “potential to understand the barriers facing women and racial/ethnic minorities?” Also unlikely. Would he have participated in “service that applies up-to-date knowledge to problems, issues and concerns of groups historically underrepresented in higher education?” Sadly, he may have been focusing on the theory of general relativity instead. What about “utilizing pedagogies addressing different learning styles” or demonstrating the ability to “effectively teach and attract students from underrepresented communities”? Again, not at all guaranteed.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la ... story.html

This is really good - Michael Schermer interviewing Jonathan Haidt. Haidt's explaining that there's a moral panic really on both sides. In one sense yes, the right loves this problem and is overembellishing it to make it look as though it's happening everywhere, and the left is underplaying it in their own similar fashion.

Jonathan offers right up front at the start of the interview that there are some very specific criteria on where this is showing up:

a) Top 100 schools
b) The generation born after 1995

Jonathan's suggesting that in most other places it's either not happening or happening to a much more limited degree but where it's happening it's quite pronounced.

I just started this so it should be interesting, particularly as Michael started the interview suggesting that he's at Chapman and they haven't seen any of this - ie. it's pretty much business as usual culturally.

How a Social Justice Mob Fired a Tenured Professor

The fall semester is off to a fiery start. We have Brown University’s decision to distance itself from Professor Lisa Littman’s research paper; the decision by the New York Journal of Mathematics journal to un-publish Professor Theodore Hill’s study; the University of Chicago’s refusal to defend Professor Rachel Fulton Brown from scurrilous attack led by a Brandeis professor; and the rush to give NYU Professor Avital Ronell a free pass for having harassed and sexually assaulted a gay graduate student.

These four cases have received a fair amount of attention—to the degree that I can name them without having to explain the details. For those who need a prompt to keep the cases in mind:

--Littman showed that some teenagers’ claims to trans-sexuality were likely influenced by the desire to win popularity with their in-groups.
--Hill offered a mathematical model to explain why males are so much more variable than females.
--Brown believes medieval studies should focus on medieval Europe, an opinion which her critics say makes her a racist.
--Ronell is a celebrated leftist literary theorist, which her defenders say absolves her culpability in her sexual exploitation of her former graduate student.

Political correctness continues to explore new frontiers. The common theme in these four cases is the supreme confidence of the academic left. It quashes any views it dislikes without a moment’s hesitation and feels little call to explain or justify its actions. Rather, it relies on the readiness of the academy at large to applaud the effort to keep thinkers-of-dangerous-thoughts in their cages.

--Littman’s dangerous thought is that some self-identified trans-sexual individuals may not have been “born that way.”
--Hill’s dangerous thought is that male virtuosity in some intellectual realms might have a biological basis.
--Brown’s dangerous thought is that Western civilization has a legitimate claim to attention in its own right.
--Ronell’s accuser, Nimrod Reitman, offered the dangerous thought that a feminist icon could also be a sexual predator.

https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2018/0 ... professor/

The market steps in and makes a correction. As they say, "Get Woke, Go Broke."

Evergreen State sees 'catastrophic' drop in enrollment after social justice meltdown

Evergreen State College enrollment plummeted after fallout from the controversial “Day of Absence” in May 2017 when all white people were asked to leave the campus.

The publicly funded college – committed to social justice – became the poster child of a campus overrun by hyper-political correctness when students shut down the campus and shouted down then-evolutionary biology professor Bret Weinstein for merely questioning the event kicking white people off campus.

Weinstein, who describes himself as “deeply progressive,” ultimately lost his job and was labeled a “racist” and “white supremacist.”

Although just estimates, a representative from Evergreen said they expect around 350 freshman this fall, with a total of 3,000-3,100 total enrollment, both of which “do represent significant decreases as compared to before the 2017 unrest.”

“It’s a catastrophic drop, but I’m hoping we’ll recover,” Evergreen Professor Mike Paros told Fox News.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/09/12/ev ... tdown.html

This is an interview from July with a student from Evergreen. I think what becomes clear is that they're sort of anarchistic model of education (ie. let the students and teachers hash it all out without much top-down from admin) set things on course, and obviously things did get worse with a lot of help from the president.

What this maybe shows in microcosm is just how difficult it is to do society, just how much everyone has to eat it to varying degrees when accepting to live in a society, but when you then try to have as much inclusion and freedom for everyone it seems like someone, somewhere, will be able to make a persuasive claim on why they should be able to establish a tyrrany over everyone else - and in that sort of environment people for whatever reason don't have the social or internal resource/mechanisms to say no or when a critical boundary has been crossed between a reasonable request vs 'I've been through x therefor I'll be the law here'.