"West Coast [progressivism] is the cowboy version: more rebellious, less civilised, and also completely incoherent. On the one hand, it’s the same schoolmarmish, nanny-state liberalism you can find in any blue state: bans on plastic straws, quotas for women on corporate boards, mandated gender neutral toy aisles. On the other, it’s the exact inverse: permissiveness verging on criminal negligence. 🧵 2/

"In SF, for instance, it’s illegal not to compost your food scraps. But you can smoke meth outside a playground and suffer little more than glares from passersby. In California, college students are required by law to obtain repeated, vocal permission from their partners for a sexual encounter to be deemed not rape. But pimps can openly sex traffic minors on city streets in broad daylight, and the police can do little about it. All of these disparate approaches to perceived social problems are regarded as 'progressive.'

Colleges "decolonize" curricula even as they ax foreign languages. Why? I think (1) colleges want to appear to value "diversity" without scaring off students by requiring hard work; and profs urge decolonization/diversity only to advance (2a) their own parochial interests, or (2b) nakedly political agendas (see 2a). No one actually cares about "decolonization" or "diversity." If they did, they'd be advocating for much more rather than less language study. 🧵 2/

"Serious efforts to decolonize the American college curriculum cannot take place amid waning support for the study of world languages. Yet that is precisely what we are witnessing today: American colleges and universities eliminate language programs while continuing to trumpet their commitment to curricular diversity and 'inclusive excellence.'

My college's Board of Trustees rejected a request by SJP/JVP to divest from Boeing, Elbit Systems, Caterpillar, and Lockheed Martin.

Student paper reached out for comment. Here's what I said.

"I endorse the decision of the Board of Trustees regarding the divestment proposal.🧵 2/

"The Board gave several reasons for their decision, the most important of which is, in my view, the consideration that 'taking a position on a complex geopolitical situation would potentially chill the expression of diverse opinions, undermine the expression of pluralism, ...

"In itself the outcome would seem to vindicate a fundamental American principle, that no citizen is beyond the reach of justice. Yet over the long run this prosecution will probably do more to weaken than affirm the rule of law. 🧵 2/

"Legal experts have cited numerous avenues for credible appeal, and any appeal will not be resolved until long after the November election. That will make it all the easier for Mr Trump’s supporters to embrace his arguments that he is the victim of a biased judge and jury.

DEVASTATING review of 𝘊𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘈𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘚𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘴:

"The authors of the volume...appear not to be ‘scholars,’ but rather ideologues and political activists, interested in changing political reality rather than in studying the ancient world. ..."

🧵

2/

"Several months ago, when I was walking along Hills Road in Cambridge on a Sunday afternoon, I saw something unheard-of in Poland. Two students were standing on the pavement, holding up a poster of Lenin and distributing leaflets encouraging people to ‘join the Communists’.

"wokeness is not the cause of the collapse of the humanities. It’s a symptom of it"

There's a lot that I agree with in this 🧵:

https://twitter.com/Tyler_A_Harper/status/1737124773279215917

2/

Were I most deeply disagree with @Tyler_A_Harper is that I think wokeness in the Humanities is largely endogenous. It arose organically out of the pursuit of "the next new theory." The professional life and death of Humanists depends on their ability to find a new theory. ...

"Thumbing through the literature of contemporary critical social science, one cannot avoid being struck by the astonishing powers that are attributed to 'neoliberalism.' Appalled by the lack of leg-room in economy class airline seats? Apparently neoliberalism is to blame. ... 🧵 2/

"It is difficult to find any feature of modern life that has not been blamed on neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is everywhere, and yet strangely, nowhere. Unlike most intellectual movements, which are openly endorsed, the neoliberal revolution has been perpetrated by stealth.

The dereliction of duty of public K-12 schools counts as systemic racism if anything does.

In contrast, Defense Dept "schools had the highest outcomes in the country for Black and Hispanic students, whose 8th-grade reading scores outpaced nat'l averages for white students." 🧵 2/

Oregon leads the nation in degrading K-12 and abandoning kids:

"By eliminating the standardized test, OR ... has given up on bringing all its students, and particularly those from marginalized communities, up to basic educational standards."

Details:
bit.ly/3QqRJpd

"The antisemitism of my classmates did not develop in a vacuum. It is the result of obfuscations by our professors, many of whom have portrayed Hamas as merely a 'resistance group,' as well as the refusal of our universities to denounce the terror. 🧵 2/

"As a Jew and university student in Washington, D.C., I watched as thousands marched in support of the 'martyred militants' of Hamas, an organization whose charter explicitly calls for the genocide of Jewry. Dispersed among the crowds were many of my classmates.

FULL video and transcript of Prof. @RickfordRussell's remarks. Many in my replies are justifying his words as reasonable and empathetic:

"What has Hamas done? Hamas has shifted the balance of power. Hamas has punctured the illusion of invincibility, that's what they've done. 🧵 @RickfordRussell 2/

"You don't have to be a Hamas supporter to recognize that. Hamas has changed the terms of debate. Israeli officials are right. Nothing will be the same again. Nothing will be the same again.

Hamas has challenged the monopoly of violence.

California Community College system "is implementing new DEI rules, mandated by state bureaucrats, that trample on free speech while coercing faculty members on how to teach their subjects, which scholarly conclusions to reach, and even what political positions to advocate." 🧵 @CalCommColleges @conor64 @TheAtlantic 2/

"Some faculty members say they feel like they must choose between their job and their conscience.

All community-college employees will be evaluated in a way that places 'significant emphasis' on 'antiracist' and 'DEIA competencies.' (The A stands for 'accessibility.')

"The Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry argue that universities have a *special fiduciary duty* to foster freedom of thought for the benefit of the societies that sustain them."

New principles that go beyond Chicago Principles of Free Expression (2014). 🧵 2/

"The American university is a historic achievement for many reasons, not least of which is that it provides a haven for free inquiry and the pursuit of truth. Its unique culture has made it a world leader in advancing the frontiers of practical and theoretical knowledge.

"The Western elite culture of transgression is an example of antinomianism. Derived from the Greek words meaning 'against' and 'norm,' the term antinomianism refers to the view that all norms are oppressive, and that the act of transgression in itself is virtuous, if not holy. 🧵 2/

"At the moment, the fashionable justifications invoked by the elite antinomian vandals attacking Western society from within are climate change, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, and 'anti-fascism' as a catchall category.

"Was asking us to apply DEI standards to every aspect of our work a radical piece of over-reach? I think it was, and is. 

But I also see the move as part of a larger pattern of enforcing discipline. The good people who came up with this are softly tyrannizing us." 🧵 2/

"What they are up to isn’t only a university matter. It is happening in corporations, medical centers, primary and secondary schools, foundations, and NGOs. Surveillance and discipline, carried out almost exclusively by *good people*, are becoming pervasive.

I was Antifa in the 1980s. (Tho' we didn't call it that).

A 🧵 on how I got into far-left ideology, on the most destructive rioting I participated in—it was reported in the New York Times—and how I came to my senses. My story is a parable showing there's hope for all extremists. 2/

The story begins in India, where I was raised in a cult, on an ashram. We were taught that our guru was a god, that we are not our bodies or our minds, and that our sense of self, our ego, must be wiped away to reach enlightenment.

My friend's film:

"American society is losing its capacity to trust. We’re losing our trust in government, the economy, media, a slew of institutions, and one another. Our political division & extremism, our rejection of faith & tradition, and our social isolation are connected to waning trust."🧵 @Commentary @AbeGreenwald 2/

"Francis Fukuyama defines trust as 'the expectation that arises within a community of regular, honest, and cooperative behavior, based on commonly shared norms, on the part of other members of that community.'"

On a hiring committee, I asked the Affirmation Action rep—a sociologist—how to protect not only Title VII candidates but also those with heterodox views. She shrugged as if to say, "Not my problem."

Unless we get our house in order, we can expect more states to do like FL & TX. 2/

I'm not endorsing what FL & TX are doing to higher ed. I'm saying to stop it, academics need to self-reflect, recognize they've created an ideological cul-de-sac, and strive to remake the academy into a place where all Americans see themselves reflected. Legitimacy only thus.

"@TheFIREorg is deeply concerned by @NewCollegeofFL's decision not to renew Prof Erik Wallenberg’s contract, apparently due to his teaching, views, and criticism of university leadership. Retaliating against public college faculty for their 1A-protected expression is unlawful." 2/

"While a public institution may generally decline to renew a contract for a good reason, an unwise reason, or no reason at all, it cannot do so for a *retaliatory* reason—including for the expression of protected speech."

I hyperventilate when I hear "book ban," so this 🧵 with deflationary takes is my therapy:

"Since the 1960s, the stories are literally never about bans on the sale of books, never mind the possession of them. That matters. That’s what countries that actually ban books do." 2/

"Americans have been wildly irrational about 'book bans' for decades. Whenever you look into it, it turns out that ~98% of the cases are about libraries or schools being pressured by parents or school boards that object to some controversial book that’s not age appropriate."

NHS England will no longer prescribe puberty blockers to treat children and teens with "gender incongruence," but only "as part of clinical research."

Is this because NHS is transphobic?

Or because they have carefully assessed the available evidence?
england.nhs.uk/commissioning/… 2/

England joins Finland (2020), Sweden (2022), and Norway (2023). (See here: archive.ph/VdZ8L)

Did I miss any countries?

https://twitter.com/wesyang/status/1667231940519272460

"Anti-meritocratic rhetoric functions as a signal to distinguish educated elite whites from hoi polloi (relatively uneducated whites); and, second, it functions as a justification for the large disparities in prestige between these elites and hoi polloi."
aporiamagazine.com/p/why-elites-w… 2/

"Elites deserve their status not because they are necessarily smarter or more talented than hoi polloi but rather because they're fully aware of their own wickedness. The world of progressive institutions is in fact a kind of meritocracy; it is a meritocracy of moral wisdom."