Thread by @wordpaley

Read. this.

And if you think the program you went on (or work for) is immune to this kind of abuse and gaslighting because there’s no creepy guy on staff, think again. The power imbalance on these “future leaders” programs is a feature, not a bug.

A thread: (1/24)

https://twitter.com/avigayiln/status/1450447765033693188

Many, if not most, adolescents have a hard time wrapping their head around complex philosophical and sociopolitical issues without taking a emotion-driven hardline stance, no matter how smart they are. It’s a developmental thing, not an intelligence thing.
urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/c…

This is why teenagers tend to love grand unified theories and simplistic explanations of things. It allows them to sidestep the complexity of reality, which they generally try to avoid because they don’t need more confusing and dissonant emotions than they already have.

So these programs that promise to “expand their minds” are really taking advantage of an intellectually and emotionally volatile period in their lives to instill them with totalizing ideological perspectives that promise easy answers to the most difficult questions in life.

Unless the adults who run these programs are exceptionally intentional about how they do things, and explicitly promise to present all of the relevant perspectives with intellectual honesty, you’re just getting a pretentious version of their ideology dressed in objectivity.

Think about it: does a kid who’s smart and resourceful enough to be considered a future leader (and most of these kids go to Ivies) really need an adult they’ve never met before to tell them what to read or think? The point of these programs is to limit thinking, not expand it.

These programs have huge amounts of money. They can pay any academic, any media celebrity to talk about any topic they want. But importantly, they *rarely* ask participants what they’re actually interested in. It’s a carefully curated curriculum. Does that not seem fishy to you?

We all know they love to talk about the excesses of “culture”, “Judeo-Christian values”, the “Hebraic origins of America”, blah blah blah. It’s far more telling to look at who they’re NOT inviting to teach, and what they’re NOT talking about.

If I want to read “Great Books”, I can go to the library. I don’t need a recent Yeshiva University graduate or a professor from a small Christian college in Michigan to give me a reading list that includes two women and not a single author of color.

If I want to understand politics, I can read books and newspapers with a variety of perspectives. I don’t need a WASPy Brookings or Hudson Institute guy to lecture me on the dangers of wokeism for the 50th time without even mentioning poverty or corporate greed, let alone racism.

I can get a more complete, honest picture of the I-P conflict from following Israelis and Palestinians on Twitter than from listening to a former ambassador or general “destroy” the Palestinian case for a homeland with straw men, convenient ignorance of history, and hand-waving.

If this were really about knowledge, not ideology, the limits of what kinds of thinkers and thinking the participants were exposed to would be a lot looser. But topics like the hazards of capitalism, racism, and the patriarchal nature of history are not even on their radar.

Look, we’re all ideological. But that’s not what teaching is supposed to do. A teacher is supposed to give a student tools to interpret. To point out as many ways to read a text as they can think of. If they’re not showing all their cards, there’s an ideological reason for that.

Is that idea itself ideological? Maybe, but if so, it’s one of the most milquetoast and universally accepted ideological positions out there. The only thing it assumes is the right of a person to determine their own ideology, and the teacher’s responsibility to uphold that right.

If a teacher denies that right to a student, what, other than ideology, is compelling them to do so? The teacher either 1. has an ideology that values the promulgation of that ideology above intellectual independence, or 2. views the student as a threat to their own ideology.

The corollary of this position is that knowledge does not belong to anyone, but to everyone. Knowledge is a natural resource that anyone can mine, but once they do, they take on a responsibility to share it with others.

A teacher who denies another’s intellectual self-determination, therefore, is essentially denying their equal right to knowledge. Knowledge *must* come through the teacher or via means sanctioned by the teacher, and if not, it is not knowledge. This is the definition of ideology.

This is what I mean when I talk about an imbalance of power. The teachers on these programs do not view knowledge as bestowing a responsibility to share it with others. They view it as an acquisition that they “give” to their students. This ability to give is itself powerful.

And you can only give a gift to so many people, or else it will feel like you never really owned it and it was never yours to give. This is why these programs are so exclusive. This only intensifies the power imbalance. “You’re lucky to be here, and we can kick you off anytime.”

Programs further exacerbate this imbalance by encouraging vulnerability and close mentor-student relationships, as in the article. But my point is that these are natural extensions of the unhealthy power dynamic that these programs require. *Ideology* requires it.

In reality, knowledge belongs to everyone. No one has any more right to knowledge because of their age or how much they’ve studied. You didn’t decide to be born before them. And your student could far surpass you in every way. So what are you doing pretending you have the keys?

And if you’re of the age to participate in these programs, think carefully about what you’re getting into. Consider other ways to expand your intellectual horizons. Learn more Torah. Start a book club with friends. Take out all the books in the library. You don’t need the adults.

The complexity you will encounter can be scary. It can be confusing, even depressing. But you don’t need to do it alone. Find a teacher who knows you well and respects your individuality. Sort through it with friends. Write. Create art. Be an intellectual creator, not a consumer.

And I know these programs look great on a resume. But think about why they look good. It’s precisely their exclusive nature that allows the institutions that run them to maintain power over the community. They only have as much power as we let them. Let them know you’re not down.