You know, she could have said, "Competitive debates aren't my style--or my strength. I get nervous. I prefer a relaxed exchange of ideas, when I'm not under pressure to win."
Everyone would have understood. Many would have sympathized.
Or she could have grasped that she had a personal insecurity and a weakness--in debating--and resolved to become better at it.
Instead, she declared that her insecurity and weakness was "a function of imperialist capitalist white supremacist cis heteropatriarchal technique"--
--a soppy gumbo of meaningless, passé buzzwords that serve only to make it clear she's entirely incapable of the original thought required of an academic.
At the same time she revealed she had no command--at all--of the basic history of her culture.
People like this need to be tossed out of the academy. This isn't scholarly. This isn't professional. This isn't defensible. It's perverse rent-seeking that's crowding out opportunities for the talented, the curious, and the hardworking.
It disgraces academia at precisely the moment we need strong and trustworthy institutions.
Academia needs a no-tolerance policy for this kind of bullshit.
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