Wednesday, June 20, 2012
"Craven and Pusillanimous at the Chronicle"
Political correctness stifles legitimate debate.
Of all places, in the academic world, political correctness rules over the truth.
I see that as seriously wrong...
Of all places, in the academic world, political correctness rules over the truth.
I see that as seriously wrong...
PJmedia.com's Roger Kimball recently wrote about that issue:
"When I say that there was nothing new in Ms. Riley’s column, I do not mean to disparage it. No: it is a splendid piece, a public service, really. It performs exactly the same service as the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale 'The Emperor’s New Clothes.' Everyone knows, though few have the temerity to say, that 'Black Studies' is an awful confidence game: an exercise in racial grievance mongering utterly without scholarly merit. In this, I hasten to add, it resembles many other pseudo-disciplines invented since the late 1960s to provide a home for intellectually challenged but politically fermenting denizens of our universities: Women’s Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Transgender Studies, etc. etc. Kingsley Amis once observed that much that was wrong with twentieth century academia could be summed up in the word 'workshop.' 'Studies' is the new 'workshop.' Take a look at the “dissertations” Ms. Riley describes. They are cringe-making in their awfulness. Consider:"
