"While we are deeply skeptical of many DEI initiatives, we recognize that DEI needs to be reformed—and indeed transformed—from within the university itself, with faculty taking the lead. "
Lol. What a joke. That is never going to happen and you know it. If academia wanted its "expertise" and "professional competence" respected by the general public you should have NEVER let things get this far. The time for academia to stand up for (actual) liberal values was ten or twenty years ago. You are running woke indoctrination factories where heretics are aggressively punished. The AP AA history class is a great example of how imbalanced things are but only the tip of the iceberg.
I'm a lifelong Democrat, and DeSantis is not my ideal vehicle for reform, but the status quo is an appalling, complete and utter disgrace, and you had more than chance enough to fix it yourselves. This never should have happened in the first place.
Nothing of this will fix anything. It will just split your country into two even more separate and deaf to each other camps, the woke religion on one side, the reactionary religion on the other, each State building its own walls and going farther and farther away from a sense of the country.
Independent institutions cannot be fixed by making them dependent more than they already are. And they are dependent: on sponsors and all that give them funds, on public opinion, on the student bodies. Indoctrination? it is the kids who mob their heretic professors, they and the administrators who are in largest part previous students who did not find better positions because humanities degrees are overinflated -- and the faculties cringe, bow their heads and toe the line. Indeed, lots of scholars have made a living out of more and more extreme "woke" theories, in good or bad faith (and when something gives you both a salary and acclaim, it is easy to believe in it). But these theories are so widespread because they are POPULAR -- at least among those wealthy enough to go into higher education, and among a large number of minorities who feel they may finally get their heyday, or at least revenge (against a mythical system that has come to embody everything that they are unhappy with).
The kids are not indoctrinated by Universities, as they have the whole of the internet in their phones and can find different theories and explanations whenever they wish. The kids are indoctrinated by their groups echo-chambers on the social media. By the outrage-driven mobs of Twitter. By what sounds so cool and right and righteous on YouTube. Have a read of Jonathan Haidt, folks.
If you think that people like Rufo and DeSantis are the solution to the woke infection, you have already given up on the Enlightenment (two evils do not a good make, and fighting one illiberalism with another will not produce anything but more illiberalism).
It is up to us all who believe in freedom of speech, thought and individual choices, to fight the illiberal tendencies everywhere in society: with our votes, with our wallets, with our words. And if you want the kids not to be indoctrinated, start talking with them and do not desist just because they are whiny and irrational.
You raise a number of good points. Fighting illiberalism with illiberalism will fail as surely as fighting racism with racism.
To stop what is happening we must clearly understand it. For example suggesting that these theories are widespread because they are popular misses a key point imho. Why are they popular? An answer to this question is essential.
Because transgenderism, CRT and DEI are individual heads of the hydra, it is possible to examine one to understand the emergence of all. Let’s look at gender religion. Why is it popular? There has been a concerted well-funded effort to make it popular. It began years ago. Change the language. Push a narrative. Weaponize compassion. Cancel opposing voices. Buy politicians such as Obama who begin to push it mainstream. The sheep in our society jump on the bandwagon. Social media follows. Infiltrate teacher’s union and medical institutions. Begin a serious effort to indoctrinate kids with the ridiculous notion that they can change their sex at will. Engage the greed of big pharma, gender surgeons and gender consultants so the “movement” self-perpetuates. Buy more politicians like Biden who appoint an endless array of administrators to implement “gender affirming care”, an evil practice to drug and mutilate our most vulnerable children. Force psychiatrists with legislation to affirm rather than treat. Young girls react to social contagion at increasingly high levels and declare themselves boys. The medical institutions recommend “chest masculinizing surgery” for girls. And so it goes.
How do we stop it? How do we wake people up to the destruction of gender religion, DEI and CRT so they stop voting for people who have been conned by it? I can understand DeSantis’s urgency to repel the attack because that is what it is, an attack. Is his strategy correct? Will it only divide us further rather than opening the eyes of those who are still capable of critical thought? You may be correct. Look at how many reacted to the media machine’s twisting of DeSantis’s bill to stop teaching young children gender ideology. So many otherwise smart people bought into the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” lie deepening divisions. I expect the same with his current actions.
Sorry for such a long reply but yes, public discourse will help us find the path forward.
Long replies are the best. More words mean more thought put behind them.
I do appreciate your concerns but I have some misgivings about the underlying rationale.
You seem to believe in a form of conspiracy theory about these positions that we do not like and consider damaging. But the thing is, every political movement and belief system proselytizes. It is how these things work and have always worked: people believe in something, band together to push, apply pressure to convince others, make of it a political issue. It is how democracy works. There are no hidden malign forces at play. No secret agendas: the agendas are very clear and out in the open.
The Fascists came to power with a coup of sorts in Italy, but they had consensus enough to keep the power. The Bolsheviks came to power in Russia with a revolution, and if they did not have the support of the majority of the people they would have lost the civil war that followed (then they organised the state to suppress dissent, and it was not any more a matter of consensus). The Nazis came to power through a completely democratic vote and preserved a majority of consensus almost to the end of the war (they had a great propaganda machine and it was somewhat easy, afterwards: but they occupied the state, in the beginning, by convincing people of their ideas, horrible though they were -- because they had a very deep sense of consonance with the dark side of the German soul that at the time came to the surface).
And forgive my excursus, but I am a historian and cannot help.
Our liberal democracies (and that in the US in particular) have never objected to political pressure exercised by interest groups towards their own ends -- just look at the billions that lobbyists spend on politicians and in contributions to political campaigns, amounts of pressure through money that would be considered grounds for prosecution in my native UK. Billions are spent right and left, and you cannot object to the funds going to causes you disagree with, without disagreeing to the funding of causes altogether.
What began years ago is just the open manifestation of something that had happened in the preceding decades among progressives: that a lot of people had come to believe in certain ideas. Mostly from a starting point of goodness, and against a situation of persistent prejudice and discrimination towards certain groups of people. And then the ideas developed into a religious creed, which is what we have today.
But there was no concerted effort by shadow powers (that's a traditional myth of the Left about the evil capitalist/imperialist Chthulu). There were a lot of loud activists. There were (and there are) a lot of young people hungry for black and white (excuse the pun) solutions to problems. There were undoubtedly a lot of conversions, but 'infiltration"? infiltration is secret. None of this was done secretly. And cancel culture as we know it today did not exist until 2010, because it lacked the online mobs on which it feeds.
Then your police killed a black man too many, and the cultural tensions latent in your country exploded and have only gotten worse.
On one side, a number of people who belong to disadvantaged groups, seeking redress with acrimony rather than in a constructive way, together with a vast majority of people who feel guilty of whom they are because there has been evil in the world, because even of the evil that has been in the past, because they personally did not suffer enough, so they need to become the perfect allies and never question anything that comes in name of the oppressed.
And on the other side, a number of people who embrace the most obscurantist tendencies of this culture, who would love to burn books and to forbid speech, who deeply dislike democracy, diversity, everything unfamiliar to them, and who would like individuals to be forced to conform their sexuality and private choices to the dictates of traditional morality.
And between these two hammers, the people who preserve a sense of measure, decency and reason.
I truly disagree with most of your take on gender issues. Much though I dislike the hysterical trans activists and the religious reflex that makes a taboo of questioning some issues, there has been no conspiracy there either. There is the love of people for following loud and repetitive voices (slave mentality, on which Hoffer, that great conservative philosopher with whom one may disagree on several points but is always worth reading, had a lot to say In The True Believer and The passionate State of Mind; and my Huxley as well in On Self Transcendence).
It is not a trick through which the people you mention have been brought into the fold. They were not bought. They were convinced. There is a big difference, although when we hate an idea it makes us feel better if we think that it has been adopted for vile motives or through deceit. Unfortunately, most people simple come to believe in ideas, even the most hideous, without having any base motives and without being deceived: they make sense to them, they fulfil some deep need in their psyche.
(I do not know your country enough, by the way, but I would be grateful if you could point out which legislation in which State forces psychiatrists to provide affirmation instead of psychiatric evaluation -- unless you are talking about the laws against conversion therapy, which of late have been widened to include a bit too much).
Transgender ideology problems are rife indeed, and it is undisputable that trans activists have managed to lead outrage crowds better than almost anybody else and to impose a terrifying orthodoxy of groupthink even on medical institutions.
But it is not the people who believe homosexuals and transexuals and other gender non conforming individuals should be criminalised that will offer solutions to the excessively widespread gender affirmation theories which result in the treatment of minors with body altering drugs and surgeries that in many cases are not warranted. Both Rufo and DeSantis are revoltingly homophobic, which comes out of everything that they write and say. They reflect the sentiment of many of their constituents. It is nevertheless not a good thing, and not a balance against the opposite excesses.
How do you rescue people from the woke religion is how you rescue people from the hatred of diversity religion: you keep talking sensibly, with compassion, and keeping the principles of liberty and objectivity first and foremost. And you do not stop. And you do not endorse illiberal laws, even if they are aimed at something bad.
As you see, I can beat almost anybody with logorrhea. So, bear with me.
Let's examine two of your passages above..."You seem to believe in a form of conspiracy theory about these positions that we do not like and consider damaging. ""me - Yes I believe forces are at work to manipulate the public. It is working."" But the thing is, every political movement and belief system proselytizes. "" me - Agree"". It is how these things work and have always worked: people believe in something, band together to push, apply pressure to convince others, make of it a political issue. It is how democracy works. "" me-Yup."" There are no hidden malign forces at play. "" me-Disagree."" No secret agendas: "" me- yes it is an obvious power play""…the agendas are very clear and out in the open." and "The Nazis came to power through a completely democratic vote and preserved a majority of consensus almost to the end of the war (they had a great propaganda machine and it was somewhat easy, afterwards: but they occupied the state, in the beginning, by convincing people of their ideas, horrible though they were..." "" me- I do not believe this is a correct representation of how Hitler came to power."
Hitler dedicated himself to seizing power. If "conspiracy" can be defined as the act of conspiring together then his assent to power can be labeled as such. From my understanding Hitler never received more than 36% of the popular vote yet became one of the world’s most despicable dictators. Joseph Goebbels was his propagandists during his assent to power and this propaganda was used to swing popular support, ie a conspiracy. Hindeberg appointed Hitler as chancellor to “limit” the Nazi party, a bonehead move if there ever was one. Upon Hindenberg’s death, Hitler used the existing laws to seize power. He never received the majority of the popular vote.
The point is that Hitler’s rise to power was the result of the machinations of a group of individuals hell bent on power. They used every means possible to achieve success including intense propaganda. This group was the catalyst. 36% of the citizens fell for it. It was not some natural progression, it was a dedicated strategy to seize power, ie a conspiracy.
It appears that a group of modern day people also wish to seize power and undermine western principals. Long term strategies have been deployed to achieve the desired goal, strategies that include propaganda, manipulation and massive influxes of cash to control politicians. As with Hitler, a good proportion of the population has fallen prey to the message and the snowball has consistently picked up velocity over the last decade.
The word conspiracy has been tarnished in the age of tin foil hats. But if we go back to the actual definition, yes I do think we are in the midst of a conspiracy, one focused on the dissolution of the middle class with the ultimate goal the attainment of money and power. I certainly do not have all of the answers but one question we all must ask ourselves is “Who’s pawns are we?”.
Yes agree this is how political movements work but as we learned with Hitler, we are better off if some of these movements are stopped. I believe the current progressive movement (or whatever you want to call it, socialism, communism, authoritarianism) is a deadly cancer in our society. Imho, we will be better off if it is eradicated and there is a return to equality, self reliance, dedication to excellence, free speech, elimination of the victim culture, etc etc.
Many states have banned conversion therapy for youth claiming to be transgender. While on one level this sounds like the right thing to do, the unintended consequence is the immediate affirmation of children who have a slew of other mental health conditions and have experienced a rapid onset of gender dysphoria. In practice the psychiatrist cannot or will not probe into these other conditions and affirms. The transgender campaign is a huge subject and have done a lot of research on it. Switching over to Substack and if interested here is my most recent article. Earlier ones are linked and I include a mind numbing amount of back up. https://open.substack.com/pub/sueseboda/p/beliefs-biases-and-bad-ideas?r=87oth&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Banning conversion therapy for one's birth gender while promoting conversion therapy to the opposite gender is really hypocritical, no? Would it not be best to encourage the person to be comfortable in their own body, rather than undergoing permanent life altering surgery and medications?
The medical and psychiatric communities seem to have abandoned rational scientific approaches to this, trying to answer questions like- What are the eventual outcomes for these patients? Why is there such a sudden increase in gender dysphoric teenage girls (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria), the same group who falls into anorexia, bulimia and self-harm? Why do people de-transition if transitioning is the ultimate cure? Why are we pushing gender ideology on young children who need time to process their own childhood and personhood before tackling the complicated issues of sexuality and gender?
I think we're on a very dangerous path here, it will lead to a situation much like the opioid crisis we got ourselves into beginning 20 years ago or so.
The belief that a person "can be born in the wrong body" appears to be shared by a lot of people now. When I bring up the issue of the mental health epidemic among female teenagers and young adults, many people will counter with, "What about the kids who are really born in the wrong body?" The idea that "I am in the wrong body" may be an existing thing for some people who identify as transgender, but an idea is all it is. It is not a concrete reality, like one's body for example.
Claims of being "transgender" have been rare until very recently, and not many health care professionals had experience with patients who presented gender concerns. Locally, the medical and mental health professionals who specialized in "gender issues" were a very small group. Now that more health care professionals are learning about "affirmative care" there is more push-back against it. That is a hopeful sign, but not as much as it would have been a few years ago, before the woke cult had captured most of the healthcare fields.
Yes agree, we are on a very dangerous path. Very good points.
What is happening is insane and while there are plenty of useful idiots who have bought into the gender rhetoric that humans can change their sex and are quite happy to cut off the breasts of teenage girls, those who pushed this snowball down the hill initially had a reason for doing so. What is it?
Hopefully as we confront the consequences of this agenda and stop our kids from being brainwashed, drugged and mutilated, we will stop the driving force behind it as well. It is not a grassroots phenomenon.
I do not believe that anyone in the U.S. or elsewhere will stop buying iPhones because Apple has gone woke. And half of the country continues to vote for woke politicians, even when they are demented or brain damaged. At some point it becomes necessary to recognize enemies as such, and consider the idea that their agenda is to annihilate everything that makes life worth living for the other half of us. What Governor DeSantis is trying to do is fight the correctly identified enemy with legal strategies. He is after all, a lawyer.
I am old enough to have been an adult in 1978 when Jim Jones of the Peoples' Temple led 900 of his followers to a mass suicide and homicide in Guyana. If you think that the woke cult is not capable of doing similar things, then you are underestimating what we are facing.
I do recognise the enemies as such, my friend. I also have seen ideologies wreck nations, and studied their effect and course. Aside from the closer horrors, just the religion wars among Christians halved the population of Europe in the 17th century. People do this, it is in our nature to suffer these ideological intoxications. The way to respond is reason, otherwise the alternative is further intoxication.
I recognise the enemies but I do not believe that the enemies of my enemies are my friends.
What this attitude brings about is just illiberalism against illiberalism, a situation in which red States and blue States will become bastions of opposing ideology, prosecuting dissenters and killing liberties. You may then like it more in Florida and I might like it more in Callifornia if I lived there, but it does not bode well for your country, which may not survive as a unity. It does not bode well for democracy, the liberal ideals and civil society. Not at all.
Thank you for your response Mr. Outis, I read it with interest. My maternal ancestors came to the U.S. from Wurttemberg, where the 17th century death rate reached up to 90% in the area where they lived. My family settled in a German American neighborhood in Pennsylvania, where they continued the Reformation battles. Every family in the neighborhood was from the southern German states, and the Roman Catholic families were in the majority as they had been in Europe. I recall frequent warnings from my grandmother about avoiding the Catholic kids because they outnumbered us and would attack us. (They did too, probably in reaction to similar messages in their own families).
I am aware that any alliance I might initiate with "enemies of my enemies" would likely be temporary and fragile. But is that not the case with most such alliances?
The main problem with using reasoning to resolve conflicts with the woke is that they explicitly reject reasoning. It's a "white male, cisgender, heteronormative" thing, you know. Likewise, they reject all debate. In my state they impose their ideology by legislating what will or will not be taught in public schools, and what will or will not be recommended in physicians' consults with patients. It is far more comprehensive and totalitarian than anything that Mr. DeSantis has come up with so far. I live in a one-party state, so my vote seldom counts. The thought that I could sue someone if they abused me in a mandatory DIE session sounds very good to me. I doubt if anything like that will come to pass here, though, at least not in my lifetime.
I live in Portland, Oregon. California has nothing more woke than this. The counties in the eastern part of my state are trying to secede. They have been discussing it for years but it is getting more serious now. The Democrats will never allow it, for reasons that aren't clear. The only liberal places in Oregon are a few cities, mostly within an hour of the Pacific Coast.
You sound like you still imagine that there could be hope of the U.S. remaining intact. I doubt that it will. It's a matter of how long it will take to break up in my opinion. I never thought it would get to this point within my lifetime, and our social contract with each other is coming apart with incredible speed.
I hear what you say and think that I understand why you say it. And admittedly, most of my knowledge of the USA is based on reading and speaking to my American wife and our relatives and friends, aside from the couple years I lived in San Francisco. So your view on it all may have a closer and more informed angle.
Just a few last points. When I talk of reasoning to resolve conflicts, I do not so much talk about hoping to convince the activists (that is, like McWorther says, almost completely impossible), but rather to convince all of those who may still hear reason, who are still capable of going beyond the automatic response of serving the dogma... and they are always many. I know this because I spent my early youth fighting (not physically) with Trotskyists in student unions, and part of my early mature years in supporting dialogue and compromise in Ireland during the Troubles. People become fanatics pretty easily, especially when they believe that they possess the way to the "greater good" or the grace of God. The persistence of reason requires an immense and constant effort, but it is the only way to change people's minds, little by little. The other methods simply substitute one evil with another.
And for me, this remains the major issue. I see that the Democrats in the US, like the Liberals/NDP/Greens in Canada and Labour/Greens/some LibDems in the UK, are very sensitive to the demands of the race&gender activists that influence a large part of their electorate, also because of their commitment to initially good ideas that have gone bad on that side. But I see the Republicans being bent on not just countering the woke gospel but on dismantling many rights and safeties that are simply a matter of civilisation, and on doing so through criminal law and heavy-handed intervention of the State. So for me there is where two wrongs do not make a right.
And yes, I still have hope for the future of the USA as a country. I have seen ideological frenzies come and pass before -- and according to polls, the majority of the American public remains decently moderate. A tragically high percentage do not vote -- but the question is whether they would be in agreement with splitting the country, moreover into a medley of borders. You have had a civil war before, on positions much more irreconcilable than the present, and while you have a lot of guns, you also have the strongest military in the world, which has always been committed to the defence of the Union. And your corporations, big and small, will bend this way and that only so long as it does not hurt their profits -- which the crumbling of the Union would certainly do.
So for these reasons I still have hopes that, even through much trouble and confrontation and maybe even some violence, reason will prevail over time.
To pursue that, we cannot and should not give up reason, reasoning, and the efforts to reasonably counter illiberalism on all sides. If we do, we have lost already, whoever wins among the enemies of the Enlightenment.
You have made some valid points as a remote observer Mr Otis. Interestingly, the concept of reason and logic in this country was possible because the initial proponents, while maybe philosophically different, were very similar in background and education-White, Elite, Male, European.
In the intervening years, the country has changed significantly with immigration, increasingly Hispanic and Asian influx, with the relatively static Black slave descendant population. It appears though, that many of the same players, White, Elite, mostly European, but also now women, are leading the charge against logic and reason into sectionalizing by race, gender, and religion, and the push for equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. I think your point is well taken about gathering the forces of reason against those of illiberal tendencies, and would agree that is a viable route, and recommend against any kind of violence if possible. Part of the problem in this country is the significant control the Left-leaning portion has on the media, universities and political arena. What remains for the more reasonable is to "shock the system" with legal or political means, a kind of non-destructive Boston Tea Party, except as you point out, it sets the stage for more illiberalism rather than less.
I don't know the answer, but until the forces for freedom and equality are gathered and gain more control in the public realm, this may be what we are left with.
With respect to my geographic perspective, as I said, I live and work in one of the epicenters of the woke hive. I am constantly surrounded by people at the extreme edge of ideological conviction. There is relentless policing of my speech, by neighbors, by colleagues, and by people who are much younger and less accomplished than I am.
I remember what it was like to live in a normal American social environment, because even Portland was much more normal just a few years ago. People and politicians in Oregon were known for decades as independent thinkers, not traditional partisans let alone one-minded cultists. This used to be an "anything goes" environment. There were pockets of political correctness that were very extreme, but they were mostly contained within minority subcultures.
So I actually don't have a well informed sense of what life is like currently in other parts of the U.S. From what I read in the news, some of the people who live in Republican controlled states still feel like they can speak freely about their politics, patriotism, and normal beliefs about human bodies and sexuality and so on. That is not true where I live. I feel at risk of losing my livelihood for stating any number of "opinions" that have until now been regarded as obvious facts by every sane person. I never felt this way until a couple of years ago.
I am relieved to hear that your emphasis on reason is in the context of dialogue with people who are not ideologically committed to the woke cult. I have read a number of articles recently by "liberal" authors who have advocated reason, open-mindedness and efforts to dialogue with woke activists. In my opinion these writers do not understand what a cult is, and that the so-called "Progressive Democrats" in the U.S. have joined one. I do agree with your stated position that many people can be influenced away from woke beliefs if they are not completely committed. I don't know what percentage of the U.S. population can still be influenced, because the percentage is smaller in my locale.
During the summer of 2020, after nightly riots had been going on nightly for months, one of the local media companies (I don't recall which one) conducted a poll measuring support among Portlanders for the rioters. These are not the exact numbers, but the city was divided roughly into thirds, with one third supporting the rioters, one third opposing them and one third who said they didn't know or didn't care. After all the damage that had been down to Portland's downtown civic center area, to buildings, outdoor sculptures, to small businesses, and to people, including police officers and opposing protesters and rioters, for there to be only a third of the citizens polled who wanted to enforce the law eroded my hope substantially. I know that I am immersed in one of the most extreme woke environments in this country, and probably in the world. It makes sense that my perspective is if anything, more dark than most Americans, but the woke ideologues have stated their intention to force their views on everyone, so I think that as Portland goes, so goes the country.
Your reference to getting into non-fistfights with Trotskyists brought to mind a personal memory of a college friend showing up with a slightly battered face following an actual fistfight in with "a Trot." This event was reported as having taken place in the middle of a campus radical meeting. I was never interested enough in political philosophy to try to understand the differences between Trotskyists, Leninists and so on, but I take it that Trotskyists must be a particularly provoking subgroup of Marxists.
I do appreciate your relatively optimistic viewpoint on the future of the U.S.A., Mr. Outis. It is a bit encouraging, and I hope that you are right.
I have been saying for years that the U.S. is bound to split into cooperative regions-- Northeast, Great Lakes, High Plains, etc. We are sorting ourselves into blocks of interests groups and my blue Michigan state has more in common with blue Minnesota or even red Ohio than California. That, I think, will be how the "united" states ends.
If the authors have an alternative, other than writing outraged essays, I should be very interested to see it- but it is clear to anyone in academia that this problem is not going to fix itself. Despite a few high-profile dissents, academics have made no serious efforts to dismantle DEI regimes, and their institutional strangulation continues apace.
How? It isn't only the DEI regime but the 'assessment' empire and all the wheel-spinning, paper-pumping deanlets and administerettes in return for service credit and little perks.
CRT itself fosters racism to combat racism. Is DeSantis doing the same with the cult of DEI? How do we break the cult without an intervention? Like the author I am uncomfortable getting down with the dogs on this one. On the other hand consider this...the author states, "While we are deeply skeptical of many DEI initiatives, we recognize that DEI needs to be reformed—and indeed transformed—from within the university itself, with faculty taking the lead." How is that strategy working so far on campuses that "reeducate" those who do not conform to the DEI cult and silence any opposing view? It isn't working. Professors who speak up are canceled and fired.
Minorities are undermined via victim ideology. Division not inclusion is fostered with marxist oppressor victim ideology and division frankly is the goal. It is disastrous for our culture, our future and the future of the disadvantaged people this ideology claims to help. It is all smoke. Those who have bought into it, are the useful idiots of our times.
The author also states "Expertise and competence don’t appear to count for much in DeSantis’ top-down, directives-driven program for higher education reform." DEI and CRT are themselves top down narratives forced on the population. They are no more grassroots than the transgender campaign which is also a very well funded initiative.
If we truly care about the future of our country and want to help minorities, concepts of equity, DEI, CRT, government dependence have to go and be replaced with equal opportunity for all regardless of race, color or sex, forward looking self reliance, meritocracy, dedication to achievement. Most important our public schools must actually teach kids. We can help those who start short of the starting line with opportunity not handouts.
So what is to be done when so many universities have fallen prey to the DEI cult? How do we shock some balance back into the system? How do we ensure critical thought is encouraged not squashed? Is DeSantis's approach correct? Time will tell. We must do something however to help this generation of kids learn how to think and get all ideology out of the schools at every level.
Would we have to hear any nonsense about 'academic freedom' and/or 'faculty autonomy' if University of Florida was racially discriminating against Hispanics or blacks? Of course, not. UOF is funded by taxpayers and should be held accountable. DEI is racism and the people of Florida should not support it, even when it hides behind 'academic freedom' and 'faculty autonomy'.
"While we are deeply skeptical of many DEI initiatives, we recognize that DEI needs to be reformed—and indeed transformed—from within the university itself, with faculty taking the lead. "
DEI is the implementation side of the critical theory fake scholarship toxic mind virus that started in the 1960s and 70s as communism crashed and burned and the collectivists needed to shift to a new cultural revolution ideology to break up the much more successful liberal democratic countries from inside. Since then, the postmodernist movement led by 3rd wave Marxist feminists went whole hog on the juunk and initiated their project... the pandemic was their call to go all in. DEI is part of it... it is the brainchild of the critical theory masters and the leaders of woke that hatch from this campus programming that has been purposely and incrementally injected into K-12 content, curriculum and teaching methods.
DEI has zero benevolent intent. It serves as a social and cultural deconstruction tool for the radical Marxists who, except for the most dense of their cohort, know exactly that it will never improve anything material in the outcomes of minorities it attempts to claim as its advocacy.
The crappiest consideration of CT and DEI and Woke on the campuses, is that education is and always should be an experience of critical thinking development that is backed by an objective measure of growth in capability. Education in many ways is the pure meritocracy... students striving for excellence in academic achievement... seeking the highest grades and GPA... being challenged with difficult subjects that they can master. And then take this achievement with them into the working world to get the best start they can while continuing on that same path to grow their skills and value to organizations that would pay them for their contribution to the organization's mission.
Our advancement to Civil Rights 2.0 should have been this... a color/race/gender/sexual orientation - blind meritocracy. Just think what the US would be like today having attained that. We were on our way after Republicans passed our landmark Civil Rights Act. But then beginning in the mid to late 70s a series of post-Cold War stupidity in policy from our moneyed and academic elites screwed the pooch.
China in the WTO, CRA, out of control Fed fighting inflation but really working for the current administration to artificially boost the economy for politics. NAFTA. Out of control immigration. All these things and more served to export American working class prosperity while importing other country's poverty. And all of this started right at the time that blacks were poised to migrate to the middle class. But the doors shut and it broke families and sent the kids to gangs, drugs and crime. Now corporate consolidation. Collusion between Wall Street to consolidate more business into giant mega-corporations. Crashing small business starts. Exploding labor surplus areas in minority communities. But hey, we will send ya'll more Biden dollars.... get you more hooked on dependency and less able to forge an independent good life. And you are angry about it, right? Well that is because of racist cops and white supremacy and we are going all DEI and woke to show that WE care about you blacks and will fix these problems.
Right.
DEI needs to be destroyed as there is nothing beneficial in the agenda backing it. And destroying it requires getting the critical theory junk removed from anything that K-12 students get exposed to in their education.
Democrats should support what DeSantis is doing for moral and ethical reasons... and if they care about the future of the country. But even if Democrats cannon wrap their heads around that... they should support getting the CT, woke, DEI nonsense out of the K-12 system to save public education from being destroyed by a mass of choice legislation that is coming like a freight train.
This essay makes no sense. DEI, which I liken to discrimination, extortion, and indoctrination has no place in education or anyplace else. Allowing it to persist is un-American. Sure, you're personally free to think whatever you want, but offering this as a freedom of speech option is ludicrous. Certainly any institution that receives public funding should be banned from indoctrinating students and faculty with this nonsense.
I agree with the opinion that we are dealing with limitations within our species. And human evolution does not appear to me to be speeding up in a direction I would prefer to see.
Based on one of your previous posts to me, your parents were engaged in the struggle to stop the Nazis, then the totalitarian communists in Europe. Attempts at reasonable communication with members and officials of these movements were apparently not fruitful, based on the known history of outcomes. Based on your familial experience, what does one do rather than "go to" fascists or communists?
The woke cult in the U.S. has gotten very far, with little or no effective opposition, at least not on a larger than local scale. They are still accelerating in my state. Their power is so welded with the upper socioeconomic demographics in the U.S. that they are easily able to become the state religion here, while at the same time not being called a religion. This appears to me to be a "mostly" silent coup that was enabled by the consent of our ruling class. The woke ideology has a lot of Marxist ideas in it, but it is mostly junk philosophy, not anything well thought out. The woke are definitely, consistently authoritarian and fanatical.
When I think about reasoning with people, I have an agenda of ringing an alarm bell and mobilizing an effective resistance.
Glad you guys are “deeply skeptical of many DEI initiatives…” How you propose to reverse these trends, you don’t say. You fear that if a state government puts pressure on state schools, it will take away academic freedom. But how else do you fight such deeply entrenched, anti-liberal ideology spewed by universities? What DeSantis is doing is what many of us anti-Wokies have hoped for: cut taxpayer funding of woke initiatives, from DEI administrators to expanding grievance studies programs. Even better, it’s in his job description to do so. If woke professors or AAUP want to fight DeSantis in court, so much the better. We need more legal battles — like Oberlin vs Gibson bakery — to bring the woke excesses to the public.
I would also point out, as many others have, that we do not have academic freedom at the present time in our colleges and universities. Both the faculty and the students are harassed, disciplined and sometimes fired for honest expression of ideas, and for pursuing lines of research that are scientifically valid topics to pursue. The universities have been taken over by an authoritarian cult in which many of the students are active participants.
We should stay focused on how to restore freedoms we used to have and have lost. I hope that the Supreme Court will start ruling against the discriminatory practices of "DEI initiatives." I would be very relieved to see judicial support for the civil rights of all Americans.
I know little about university administration or funding, so perhaps I naively wonder if what some states may want to consider doing is be very selective in directing their funding. For example, you might give state universities money just to support certain (say STEM) classes and students (I am suggesting this as an easy example, there are many subjects that would be worth funding). STEM graduates would get reduced tuition or a rebate. State governments would not be involved in increasing unattractive bloat and would not be encouraging DEI initiatives. There would be a lot of details to finagle (maybe these select students would not be forced to take or pay for any DEI initiatives).
If donors and wealthy parents want to pay extra tuition for an overly large administration and fluff classes, the cost would not be subsidized by the taxpayers.
My aim would be to make it expensive to the University and DEI supporters to run their large administrations with DEI programs, and not pass on those costs on to taxpayers.
I'm troubled by your phrase "deeply conservative political agenda." I likely get your meaning, but I think it badly misuses the word "conservative." I feel there's plenty of room in this crazy debate for liberal opinions and values, and for conservative opinions and values, which in general are only minimally in conflict with each other. I'd say the current grotesque political theater is between illiberal Progressives and illiberal Right-populists.
A lot of these comments are sounding like "This enemy is so evil and so dangerous that of course we have to violate our principles to fight them, you'd have to be a naive idiot not to see it." Which sounds like what America tried after 9/11. How'd that work out?
While FIRE does fine work, winning a few lawsuits does nothing to create real institutional change. The problem is inherent to the current governance of academia, and once one structure is disallowed by a lawsuit, an alternative soon comes in to fill its place and exercise the same function.
If the purpose of state funded higher education is to provide productive citizens for the state, then conflict between politicians and academics is inevitable. There is perceived to be a vast difference in how politicians and academics would define, if they were asked, what is a well educated, productive citizen. Once we get past the demagoguery and entrenched interests, there would not be that much difference in their definitions as understood by a non-biased arbitrator in a position to make decisions. Is there room in our society for non-biased arbitrators to make decisions about anything?
I would be more concerned were Rufo and DeSantis to have said what they expect the universities to teach and to promulgate. All I heard in the Rufo video linked to was how he and DeSantis are going to fight the progressives. It may well be that they'll make the institutions more illiberal -- or leave then as illiberal but with a different bent -- but that's not obvious from what I've read.
I'm curious about the reference to the 1915 report, which says that professors hold primary responsibility for the matters that shape the university. Is that the situation today? I have the impression that the administrators run things and the professors are largely afraid to run afoul of them, of the students and of the press.
"While we are deeply skeptical of many DEI initiatives, we recognize that DEI needs to be reformed—and indeed transformed—from within the university itself, with faculty taking the lead. "
Lol. What a joke. That is never going to happen and you know it. If academia wanted its "expertise" and "professional competence" respected by the general public you should have NEVER let things get this far. The time for academia to stand up for (actual) liberal values was ten or twenty years ago. You are running woke indoctrination factories where heretics are aggressively punished. The AP AA history class is a great example of how imbalanced things are but only the tip of the iceberg.
I'm a lifelong Democrat, and DeSantis is not my ideal vehicle for reform, but the status quo is an appalling, complete and utter disgrace, and you had more than chance enough to fix it yourselves. This never should have happened in the first place.
Exactly. Is DeSantis's method the right way to shock the system? I don't know. I only know that something must be done.
Spot on.
Agree 100%.
Nothing of this will fix anything. It will just split your country into two even more separate and deaf to each other camps, the woke religion on one side, the reactionary religion on the other, each State building its own walls and going farther and farther away from a sense of the country.
Independent institutions cannot be fixed by making them dependent more than they already are. And they are dependent: on sponsors and all that give them funds, on public opinion, on the student bodies. Indoctrination? it is the kids who mob their heretic professors, they and the administrators who are in largest part previous students who did not find better positions because humanities degrees are overinflated -- and the faculties cringe, bow their heads and toe the line. Indeed, lots of scholars have made a living out of more and more extreme "woke" theories, in good or bad faith (and when something gives you both a salary and acclaim, it is easy to believe in it). But these theories are so widespread because they are POPULAR -- at least among those wealthy enough to go into higher education, and among a large number of minorities who feel they may finally get their heyday, or at least revenge (against a mythical system that has come to embody everything that they are unhappy with).
The kids are not indoctrinated by Universities, as they have the whole of the internet in their phones and can find different theories and explanations whenever they wish. The kids are indoctrinated by their groups echo-chambers on the social media. By the outrage-driven mobs of Twitter. By what sounds so cool and right and righteous on YouTube. Have a read of Jonathan Haidt, folks.
If you think that people like Rufo and DeSantis are the solution to the woke infection, you have already given up on the Enlightenment (two evils do not a good make, and fighting one illiberalism with another will not produce anything but more illiberalism).
It is up to us all who believe in freedom of speech, thought and individual choices, to fight the illiberal tendencies everywhere in society: with our votes, with our wallets, with our words. And if you want the kids not to be indoctrinated, start talking with them and do not desist just because they are whiny and irrational.
You raise a number of good points. Fighting illiberalism with illiberalism will fail as surely as fighting racism with racism.
To stop what is happening we must clearly understand it. For example suggesting that these theories are widespread because they are popular misses a key point imho. Why are they popular? An answer to this question is essential.
Because transgenderism, CRT and DEI are individual heads of the hydra, it is possible to examine one to understand the emergence of all. Let’s look at gender religion. Why is it popular? There has been a concerted well-funded effort to make it popular. It began years ago. Change the language. Push a narrative. Weaponize compassion. Cancel opposing voices. Buy politicians such as Obama who begin to push it mainstream. The sheep in our society jump on the bandwagon. Social media follows. Infiltrate teacher’s union and medical institutions. Begin a serious effort to indoctrinate kids with the ridiculous notion that they can change their sex at will. Engage the greed of big pharma, gender surgeons and gender consultants so the “movement” self-perpetuates. Buy more politicians like Biden who appoint an endless array of administrators to implement “gender affirming care”, an evil practice to drug and mutilate our most vulnerable children. Force psychiatrists with legislation to affirm rather than treat. Young girls react to social contagion at increasingly high levels and declare themselves boys. The medical institutions recommend “chest masculinizing surgery” for girls. And so it goes.
How do we stop it? How do we wake people up to the destruction of gender religion, DEI and CRT so they stop voting for people who have been conned by it? I can understand DeSantis’s urgency to repel the attack because that is what it is, an attack. Is his strategy correct? Will it only divide us further rather than opening the eyes of those who are still capable of critical thought? You may be correct. Look at how many reacted to the media machine’s twisting of DeSantis’s bill to stop teaching young children gender ideology. So many otherwise smart people bought into the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” lie deepening divisions. I expect the same with his current actions.
Sorry for such a long reply but yes, public discourse will help us find the path forward.
Long replies are the best. More words mean more thought put behind them.
I do appreciate your concerns but I have some misgivings about the underlying rationale.
You seem to believe in a form of conspiracy theory about these positions that we do not like and consider damaging. But the thing is, every political movement and belief system proselytizes. It is how these things work and have always worked: people believe in something, band together to push, apply pressure to convince others, make of it a political issue. It is how democracy works. There are no hidden malign forces at play. No secret agendas: the agendas are very clear and out in the open.
The Fascists came to power with a coup of sorts in Italy, but they had consensus enough to keep the power. The Bolsheviks came to power in Russia with a revolution, and if they did not have the support of the majority of the people they would have lost the civil war that followed (then they organised the state to suppress dissent, and it was not any more a matter of consensus). The Nazis came to power through a completely democratic vote and preserved a majority of consensus almost to the end of the war (they had a great propaganda machine and it was somewhat easy, afterwards: but they occupied the state, in the beginning, by convincing people of their ideas, horrible though they were -- because they had a very deep sense of consonance with the dark side of the German soul that at the time came to the surface).
And forgive my excursus, but I am a historian and cannot help.
Our liberal democracies (and that in the US in particular) have never objected to political pressure exercised by interest groups towards their own ends -- just look at the billions that lobbyists spend on politicians and in contributions to political campaigns, amounts of pressure through money that would be considered grounds for prosecution in my native UK. Billions are spent right and left, and you cannot object to the funds going to causes you disagree with, without disagreeing to the funding of causes altogether.
What began years ago is just the open manifestation of something that had happened in the preceding decades among progressives: that a lot of people had come to believe in certain ideas. Mostly from a starting point of goodness, and against a situation of persistent prejudice and discrimination towards certain groups of people. And then the ideas developed into a religious creed, which is what we have today.
But there was no concerted effort by shadow powers (that's a traditional myth of the Left about the evil capitalist/imperialist Chthulu). There were a lot of loud activists. There were (and there are) a lot of young people hungry for black and white (excuse the pun) solutions to problems. There were undoubtedly a lot of conversions, but 'infiltration"? infiltration is secret. None of this was done secretly. And cancel culture as we know it today did not exist until 2010, because it lacked the online mobs on which it feeds.
Then your police killed a black man too many, and the cultural tensions latent in your country exploded and have only gotten worse.
On one side, a number of people who belong to disadvantaged groups, seeking redress with acrimony rather than in a constructive way, together with a vast majority of people who feel guilty of whom they are because there has been evil in the world, because even of the evil that has been in the past, because they personally did not suffer enough, so they need to become the perfect allies and never question anything that comes in name of the oppressed.
And on the other side, a number of people who embrace the most obscurantist tendencies of this culture, who would love to burn books and to forbid speech, who deeply dislike democracy, diversity, everything unfamiliar to them, and who would like individuals to be forced to conform their sexuality and private choices to the dictates of traditional morality.
And between these two hammers, the people who preserve a sense of measure, decency and reason.
I truly disagree with most of your take on gender issues. Much though I dislike the hysterical trans activists and the religious reflex that makes a taboo of questioning some issues, there has been no conspiracy there either. There is the love of people for following loud and repetitive voices (slave mentality, on which Hoffer, that great conservative philosopher with whom one may disagree on several points but is always worth reading, had a lot to say In The True Believer and The passionate State of Mind; and my Huxley as well in On Self Transcendence).
It is not a trick through which the people you mention have been brought into the fold. They were not bought. They were convinced. There is a big difference, although when we hate an idea it makes us feel better if we think that it has been adopted for vile motives or through deceit. Unfortunately, most people simple come to believe in ideas, even the most hideous, without having any base motives and without being deceived: they make sense to them, they fulfil some deep need in their psyche.
(I do not know your country enough, by the way, but I would be grateful if you could point out which legislation in which State forces psychiatrists to provide affirmation instead of psychiatric evaluation -- unless you are talking about the laws against conversion therapy, which of late have been widened to include a bit too much).
Transgender ideology problems are rife indeed, and it is undisputable that trans activists have managed to lead outrage crowds better than almost anybody else and to impose a terrifying orthodoxy of groupthink even on medical institutions.
But it is not the people who believe homosexuals and transexuals and other gender non conforming individuals should be criminalised that will offer solutions to the excessively widespread gender affirmation theories which result in the treatment of minors with body altering drugs and surgeries that in many cases are not warranted. Both Rufo and DeSantis are revoltingly homophobic, which comes out of everything that they write and say. They reflect the sentiment of many of their constituents. It is nevertheless not a good thing, and not a balance against the opposite excesses.
How do you rescue people from the woke religion is how you rescue people from the hatred of diversity religion: you keep talking sensibly, with compassion, and keeping the principles of liberty and objectivity first and foremost. And you do not stop. And you do not endorse illiberal laws, even if they are aimed at something bad.
As you see, I can beat almost anybody with logorrhea. So, bear with me.
Let's examine two of your passages above..."You seem to believe in a form of conspiracy theory about these positions that we do not like and consider damaging. ""me - Yes I believe forces are at work to manipulate the public. It is working."" But the thing is, every political movement and belief system proselytizes. "" me - Agree"". It is how these things work and have always worked: people believe in something, band together to push, apply pressure to convince others, make of it a political issue. It is how democracy works. "" me-Yup."" There are no hidden malign forces at play. "" me-Disagree."" No secret agendas: "" me- yes it is an obvious power play""…the agendas are very clear and out in the open." and "The Nazis came to power through a completely democratic vote and preserved a majority of consensus almost to the end of the war (they had a great propaganda machine and it was somewhat easy, afterwards: but they occupied the state, in the beginning, by convincing people of their ideas, horrible though they were..." "" me- I do not believe this is a correct representation of how Hitler came to power."
Hitler dedicated himself to seizing power. If "conspiracy" can be defined as the act of conspiring together then his assent to power can be labeled as such. From my understanding Hitler never received more than 36% of the popular vote yet became one of the world’s most despicable dictators. Joseph Goebbels was his propagandists during his assent to power and this propaganda was used to swing popular support, ie a conspiracy. Hindeberg appointed Hitler as chancellor to “limit” the Nazi party, a bonehead move if there ever was one. Upon Hindenberg’s death, Hitler used the existing laws to seize power. He never received the majority of the popular vote.
The point is that Hitler’s rise to power was the result of the machinations of a group of individuals hell bent on power. They used every means possible to achieve success including intense propaganda. This group was the catalyst. 36% of the citizens fell for it. It was not some natural progression, it was a dedicated strategy to seize power, ie a conspiracy.
It appears that a group of modern day people also wish to seize power and undermine western principals. Long term strategies have been deployed to achieve the desired goal, strategies that include propaganda, manipulation and massive influxes of cash to control politicians. As with Hitler, a good proportion of the population has fallen prey to the message and the snowball has consistently picked up velocity over the last decade.
The word conspiracy has been tarnished in the age of tin foil hats. But if we go back to the actual definition, yes I do think we are in the midst of a conspiracy, one focused on the dissolution of the middle class with the ultimate goal the attainment of money and power. I certainly do not have all of the answers but one question we all must ask ourselves is “Who’s pawns are we?”.
Yes agree this is how political movements work but as we learned with Hitler, we are better off if some of these movements are stopped. I believe the current progressive movement (or whatever you want to call it, socialism, communism, authoritarianism) is a deadly cancer in our society. Imho, we will be better off if it is eradicated and there is a return to equality, self reliance, dedication to excellence, free speech, elimination of the victim culture, etc etc.
Many states have banned conversion therapy for youth claiming to be transgender. While on one level this sounds like the right thing to do, the unintended consequence is the immediate affirmation of children who have a slew of other mental health conditions and have experienced a rapid onset of gender dysphoria. In practice the psychiatrist cannot or will not probe into these other conditions and affirms. The transgender campaign is a huge subject and have done a lot of research on it. Switching over to Substack and if interested here is my most recent article. Earlier ones are linked and I include a mind numbing amount of back up. https://open.substack.com/pub/sueseboda/p/beliefs-biases-and-bad-ideas?r=87oth&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Banning conversion therapy for one's birth gender while promoting conversion therapy to the opposite gender is really hypocritical, no? Would it not be best to encourage the person to be comfortable in their own body, rather than undergoing permanent life altering surgery and medications?
The medical and psychiatric communities seem to have abandoned rational scientific approaches to this, trying to answer questions like- What are the eventual outcomes for these patients? Why is there such a sudden increase in gender dysphoric teenage girls (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria), the same group who falls into anorexia, bulimia and self-harm? Why do people de-transition if transitioning is the ultimate cure? Why are we pushing gender ideology on young children who need time to process their own childhood and personhood before tackling the complicated issues of sexuality and gender?
I think we're on a very dangerous path here, it will lead to a situation much like the opioid crisis we got ourselves into beginning 20 years ago or so.
The belief that a person "can be born in the wrong body" appears to be shared by a lot of people now. When I bring up the issue of the mental health epidemic among female teenagers and young adults, many people will counter with, "What about the kids who are really born in the wrong body?" The idea that "I am in the wrong body" may be an existing thing for some people who identify as transgender, but an idea is all it is. It is not a concrete reality, like one's body for example.
Claims of being "transgender" have been rare until very recently, and not many health care professionals had experience with patients who presented gender concerns. Locally, the medical and mental health professionals who specialized in "gender issues" were a very small group. Now that more health care professionals are learning about "affirmative care" there is more push-back against it. That is a hopeful sign, but not as much as it would have been a few years ago, before the woke cult had captured most of the healthcare fields.
Yes agree, we are on a very dangerous path. Very good points.
What is happening is insane and while there are plenty of useful idiots who have bought into the gender rhetoric that humans can change their sex and are quite happy to cut off the breasts of teenage girls, those who pushed this snowball down the hill initially had a reason for doing so. What is it?
Hopefully as we confront the consequences of this agenda and stop our kids from being brainwashed, drugged and mutilated, we will stop the driving force behind it as well. It is not a grassroots phenomenon.
Lol yes. Will digest and respond. There is a lot in there!
I do not believe that anyone in the U.S. or elsewhere will stop buying iPhones because Apple has gone woke. And half of the country continues to vote for woke politicians, even when they are demented or brain damaged. At some point it becomes necessary to recognize enemies as such, and consider the idea that their agenda is to annihilate everything that makes life worth living for the other half of us. What Governor DeSantis is trying to do is fight the correctly identified enemy with legal strategies. He is after all, a lawyer.
I am old enough to have been an adult in 1978 when Jim Jones of the Peoples' Temple led 900 of his followers to a mass suicide and homicide in Guyana. If you think that the woke cult is not capable of doing similar things, then you are underestimating what we are facing.
I do recognise the enemies as such, my friend. I also have seen ideologies wreck nations, and studied their effect and course. Aside from the closer horrors, just the religion wars among Christians halved the population of Europe in the 17th century. People do this, it is in our nature to suffer these ideological intoxications. The way to respond is reason, otherwise the alternative is further intoxication.
I recognise the enemies but I do not believe that the enemies of my enemies are my friends.
What this attitude brings about is just illiberalism against illiberalism, a situation in which red States and blue States will become bastions of opposing ideology, prosecuting dissenters and killing liberties. You may then like it more in Florida and I might like it more in Callifornia if I lived there, but it does not bode well for your country, which may not survive as a unity. It does not bode well for democracy, the liberal ideals and civil society. Not at all.
Thank you for your response Mr. Outis, I read it with interest. My maternal ancestors came to the U.S. from Wurttemberg, where the 17th century death rate reached up to 90% in the area where they lived. My family settled in a German American neighborhood in Pennsylvania, where they continued the Reformation battles. Every family in the neighborhood was from the southern German states, and the Roman Catholic families were in the majority as they had been in Europe. I recall frequent warnings from my grandmother about avoiding the Catholic kids because they outnumbered us and would attack us. (They did too, probably in reaction to similar messages in their own families).
I am aware that any alliance I might initiate with "enemies of my enemies" would likely be temporary and fragile. But is that not the case with most such alliances?
The main problem with using reasoning to resolve conflicts with the woke is that they explicitly reject reasoning. It's a "white male, cisgender, heteronormative" thing, you know. Likewise, they reject all debate. In my state they impose their ideology by legislating what will or will not be taught in public schools, and what will or will not be recommended in physicians' consults with patients. It is far more comprehensive and totalitarian than anything that Mr. DeSantis has come up with so far. I live in a one-party state, so my vote seldom counts. The thought that I could sue someone if they abused me in a mandatory DIE session sounds very good to me. I doubt if anything like that will come to pass here, though, at least not in my lifetime.
I live in Portland, Oregon. California has nothing more woke than this. The counties in the eastern part of my state are trying to secede. They have been discussing it for years but it is getting more serious now. The Democrats will never allow it, for reasons that aren't clear. The only liberal places in Oregon are a few cities, mostly within an hour of the Pacific Coast.
You sound like you still imagine that there could be hope of the U.S. remaining intact. I doubt that it will. It's a matter of how long it will take to break up in my opinion. I never thought it would get to this point within my lifetime, and our social contract with each other is coming apart with incredible speed.
I hear what you say and think that I understand why you say it. And admittedly, most of my knowledge of the USA is based on reading and speaking to my American wife and our relatives and friends, aside from the couple years I lived in San Francisco. So your view on it all may have a closer and more informed angle.
Just a few last points. When I talk of reasoning to resolve conflicts, I do not so much talk about hoping to convince the activists (that is, like McWorther says, almost completely impossible), but rather to convince all of those who may still hear reason, who are still capable of going beyond the automatic response of serving the dogma... and they are always many. I know this because I spent my early youth fighting (not physically) with Trotskyists in student unions, and part of my early mature years in supporting dialogue and compromise in Ireland during the Troubles. People become fanatics pretty easily, especially when they believe that they possess the way to the "greater good" or the grace of God. The persistence of reason requires an immense and constant effort, but it is the only way to change people's minds, little by little. The other methods simply substitute one evil with another.
And for me, this remains the major issue. I see that the Democrats in the US, like the Liberals/NDP/Greens in Canada and Labour/Greens/some LibDems in the UK, are very sensitive to the demands of the race&gender activists that influence a large part of their electorate, also because of their commitment to initially good ideas that have gone bad on that side. But I see the Republicans being bent on not just countering the woke gospel but on dismantling many rights and safeties that are simply a matter of civilisation, and on doing so through criminal law and heavy-handed intervention of the State. So for me there is where two wrongs do not make a right.
And yes, I still have hope for the future of the USA as a country. I have seen ideological frenzies come and pass before -- and according to polls, the majority of the American public remains decently moderate. A tragically high percentage do not vote -- but the question is whether they would be in agreement with splitting the country, moreover into a medley of borders. You have had a civil war before, on positions much more irreconcilable than the present, and while you have a lot of guns, you also have the strongest military in the world, which has always been committed to the defence of the Union. And your corporations, big and small, will bend this way and that only so long as it does not hurt their profits -- which the crumbling of the Union would certainly do.
So for these reasons I still have hopes that, even through much trouble and confrontation and maybe even some violence, reason will prevail over time.
To pursue that, we cannot and should not give up reason, reasoning, and the efforts to reasonably counter illiberalism on all sides. If we do, we have lost already, whoever wins among the enemies of the Enlightenment.
You have made some valid points as a remote observer Mr Otis. Interestingly, the concept of reason and logic in this country was possible because the initial proponents, while maybe philosophically different, were very similar in background and education-White, Elite, Male, European.
In the intervening years, the country has changed significantly with immigration, increasingly Hispanic and Asian influx, with the relatively static Black slave descendant population. It appears though, that many of the same players, White, Elite, mostly European, but also now women, are leading the charge against logic and reason into sectionalizing by race, gender, and religion, and the push for equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. I think your point is well taken about gathering the forces of reason against those of illiberal tendencies, and would agree that is a viable route, and recommend against any kind of violence if possible. Part of the problem in this country is the significant control the Left-leaning portion has on the media, universities and political arena. What remains for the more reasonable is to "shock the system" with legal or political means, a kind of non-destructive Boston Tea Party, except as you point out, it sets the stage for more illiberalism rather than less.
I don't know the answer, but until the forces for freedom and equality are gathered and gain more control in the public realm, this may be what we are left with.
Thank you for your thoughtful and fair post!
With respect to my geographic perspective, as I said, I live and work in one of the epicenters of the woke hive. I am constantly surrounded by people at the extreme edge of ideological conviction. There is relentless policing of my speech, by neighbors, by colleagues, and by people who are much younger and less accomplished than I am.
I remember what it was like to live in a normal American social environment, because even Portland was much more normal just a few years ago. People and politicians in Oregon were known for decades as independent thinkers, not traditional partisans let alone one-minded cultists. This used to be an "anything goes" environment. There were pockets of political correctness that were very extreme, but they were mostly contained within minority subcultures.
So I actually don't have a well informed sense of what life is like currently in other parts of the U.S. From what I read in the news, some of the people who live in Republican controlled states still feel like they can speak freely about their politics, patriotism, and normal beliefs about human bodies and sexuality and so on. That is not true where I live. I feel at risk of losing my livelihood for stating any number of "opinions" that have until now been regarded as obvious facts by every sane person. I never felt this way until a couple of years ago.
I am relieved to hear that your emphasis on reason is in the context of dialogue with people who are not ideologically committed to the woke cult. I have read a number of articles recently by "liberal" authors who have advocated reason, open-mindedness and efforts to dialogue with woke activists. In my opinion these writers do not understand what a cult is, and that the so-called "Progressive Democrats" in the U.S. have joined one. I do agree with your stated position that many people can be influenced away from woke beliefs if they are not completely committed. I don't know what percentage of the U.S. population can still be influenced, because the percentage is smaller in my locale.
During the summer of 2020, after nightly riots had been going on nightly for months, one of the local media companies (I don't recall which one) conducted a poll measuring support among Portlanders for the rioters. These are not the exact numbers, but the city was divided roughly into thirds, with one third supporting the rioters, one third opposing them and one third who said they didn't know or didn't care. After all the damage that had been down to Portland's downtown civic center area, to buildings, outdoor sculptures, to small businesses, and to people, including police officers and opposing protesters and rioters, for there to be only a third of the citizens polled who wanted to enforce the law eroded my hope substantially. I know that I am immersed in one of the most extreme woke environments in this country, and probably in the world. It makes sense that my perspective is if anything, more dark than most Americans, but the woke ideologues have stated their intention to force their views on everyone, so I think that as Portland goes, so goes the country.
Your reference to getting into non-fistfights with Trotskyists brought to mind a personal memory of a college friend showing up with a slightly battered face following an actual fistfight in with "a Trot." This event was reported as having taken place in the middle of a campus radical meeting. I was never interested enough in political philosophy to try to understand the differences between Trotskyists, Leninists and so on, but I take it that Trotskyists must be a particularly provoking subgroup of Marxists.
I do appreciate your relatively optimistic viewpoint on the future of the U.S.A., Mr. Outis. It is a bit encouraging, and I hope that you are right.
I have been saying for years that the U.S. is bound to split into cooperative regions-- Northeast, Great Lakes, High Plains, etc. We are sorting ourselves into blocks of interests groups and my blue Michigan state has more in common with blue Minnesota or even red Ohio than California. That, I think, will be how the "united" states ends.
Your "blueness" in Michigan predominates in a few urban/academic areas. I think much of the rest is solidly red.
If the authors have an alternative, other than writing outraged essays, I should be very interested to see it- but it is clear to anyone in academia that this problem is not going to fix itself. Despite a few high-profile dissents, academics have made no serious efforts to dismantle DEI regimes, and their institutional strangulation continues apace.
How? It isn't only the DEI regime but the 'assessment' empire and all the wheel-spinning, paper-pumping deanlets and administerettes in return for service credit and little perks.
We are in a difficult place in our country. I recommend reading this article by Rufo as a companion piece to the above, https://www.city-journal.org/the-university-of-south-floridas-diversity-cult.
CRT itself fosters racism to combat racism. Is DeSantis doing the same with the cult of DEI? How do we break the cult without an intervention? Like the author I am uncomfortable getting down with the dogs on this one. On the other hand consider this...the author states, "While we are deeply skeptical of many DEI initiatives, we recognize that DEI needs to be reformed—and indeed transformed—from within the university itself, with faculty taking the lead." How is that strategy working so far on campuses that "reeducate" those who do not conform to the DEI cult and silence any opposing view? It isn't working. Professors who speak up are canceled and fired.
Minorities are undermined via victim ideology. Division not inclusion is fostered with marxist oppressor victim ideology and division frankly is the goal. It is disastrous for our culture, our future and the future of the disadvantaged people this ideology claims to help. It is all smoke. Those who have bought into it, are the useful idiots of our times.
The author also states "Expertise and competence don’t appear to count for much in DeSantis’ top-down, directives-driven program for higher education reform." DEI and CRT are themselves top down narratives forced on the population. They are no more grassroots than the transgender campaign which is also a very well funded initiative.
If we truly care about the future of our country and want to help minorities, concepts of equity, DEI, CRT, government dependence have to go and be replaced with equal opportunity for all regardless of race, color or sex, forward looking self reliance, meritocracy, dedication to achievement. Most important our public schools must actually teach kids. We can help those who start short of the starting line with opportunity not handouts.
So what is to be done when so many universities have fallen prey to the DEI cult? How do we shock some balance back into the system? How do we ensure critical thought is encouraged not squashed? Is DeSantis's approach correct? Time will tell. We must do something however to help this generation of kids learn how to think and get all ideology out of the schools at every level.
Would we have to hear any nonsense about 'academic freedom' and/or 'faculty autonomy' if University of Florida was racially discriminating against Hispanics or blacks? Of course, not. UOF is funded by taxpayers and should be held accountable. DEI is racism and the people of Florida should not support it, even when it hides behind 'academic freedom' and 'faculty autonomy'.
Great point. The hypocrisy is mind bobbling.
"While we are deeply skeptical of many DEI initiatives, we recognize that DEI needs to be reformed—and indeed transformed—from within the university itself, with faculty taking the lead. "
DEI is the implementation side of the critical theory fake scholarship toxic mind virus that started in the 1960s and 70s as communism crashed and burned and the collectivists needed to shift to a new cultural revolution ideology to break up the much more successful liberal democratic countries from inside. Since then, the postmodernist movement led by 3rd wave Marxist feminists went whole hog on the juunk and initiated their project... the pandemic was their call to go all in. DEI is part of it... it is the brainchild of the critical theory masters and the leaders of woke that hatch from this campus programming that has been purposely and incrementally injected into K-12 content, curriculum and teaching methods.
DEI has zero benevolent intent. It serves as a social and cultural deconstruction tool for the radical Marxists who, except for the most dense of their cohort, know exactly that it will never improve anything material in the outcomes of minorities it attempts to claim as its advocacy.
The crappiest consideration of CT and DEI and Woke on the campuses, is that education is and always should be an experience of critical thinking development that is backed by an objective measure of growth in capability. Education in many ways is the pure meritocracy... students striving for excellence in academic achievement... seeking the highest grades and GPA... being challenged with difficult subjects that they can master. And then take this achievement with them into the working world to get the best start they can while continuing on that same path to grow their skills and value to organizations that would pay them for their contribution to the organization's mission.
Our advancement to Civil Rights 2.0 should have been this... a color/race/gender/sexual orientation - blind meritocracy. Just think what the US would be like today having attained that. We were on our way after Republicans passed our landmark Civil Rights Act. But then beginning in the mid to late 70s a series of post-Cold War stupidity in policy from our moneyed and academic elites screwed the pooch.
China in the WTO, CRA, out of control Fed fighting inflation but really working for the current administration to artificially boost the economy for politics. NAFTA. Out of control immigration. All these things and more served to export American working class prosperity while importing other country's poverty. And all of this started right at the time that blacks were poised to migrate to the middle class. But the doors shut and it broke families and sent the kids to gangs, drugs and crime. Now corporate consolidation. Collusion between Wall Street to consolidate more business into giant mega-corporations. Crashing small business starts. Exploding labor surplus areas in minority communities. But hey, we will send ya'll more Biden dollars.... get you more hooked on dependency and less able to forge an independent good life. And you are angry about it, right? Well that is because of racist cops and white supremacy and we are going all DEI and woke to show that WE care about you blacks and will fix these problems.
Right.
DEI needs to be destroyed as there is nothing beneficial in the agenda backing it. And destroying it requires getting the critical theory junk removed from anything that K-12 students get exposed to in their education.
Democrats should support what DeSantis is doing for moral and ethical reasons... and if they care about the future of the country. But even if Democrats cannon wrap their heads around that... they should support getting the CT, woke, DEI nonsense out of the K-12 system to save public education from being destroyed by a mass of choice legislation that is coming like a freight train.
What Conservatives have been forced into is basically fighting fire with fire. No more mucking around.
Agree
Yeah. Well. Read this and get back to us. https://www.thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-was-saving-trans-kids/comments
Problem is, these people cannot be reasoned with, logic and common sense are not only lacking, but ignored.
Such a great article. All of these narratives are connected and funded. Those who gobble them up like candy have been conned.
This essay makes no sense. DEI, which I liken to discrimination, extortion, and indoctrination has no place in education or anyplace else. Allowing it to persist is un-American. Sure, you're personally free to think whatever you want, but offering this as a freedom of speech option is ludicrous. Certainly any institution that receives public funding should be banned from indoctrinating students and faculty with this nonsense.
I find myself in Agreement with the critics of this article. I hope to hear the author respond.
Me too. Can’t say I have ever seen that happen on Persuasion. I think the best we can hope for us that the author carefully considers the comments.
Going to the Fascists because of the Communists. Going to the Communists because of the Fascists. One hundred years ago, in Europe, same dance.
Nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change. Humans do not learn, humans like ideologies too much, to feel righteous, to have an enemy.
Good night, reason.
I agree with the opinion that we are dealing with limitations within our species. And human evolution does not appear to me to be speeding up in a direction I would prefer to see.
Based on one of your previous posts to me, your parents were engaged in the struggle to stop the Nazis, then the totalitarian communists in Europe. Attempts at reasonable communication with members and officials of these movements were apparently not fruitful, based on the known history of outcomes. Based on your familial experience, what does one do rather than "go to" fascists or communists?
The woke cult in the U.S. has gotten very far, with little or no effective opposition, at least not on a larger than local scale. They are still accelerating in my state. Their power is so welded with the upper socioeconomic demographics in the U.S. that they are easily able to become the state religion here, while at the same time not being called a religion. This appears to me to be a "mostly" silent coup that was enabled by the consent of our ruling class. The woke ideology has a lot of Marxist ideas in it, but it is mostly junk philosophy, not anything well thought out. The woke are definitely, consistently authoritarian and fanatical.
When I think about reasoning with people, I have an agenda of ringing an alarm bell and mobilizing an effective resistance.
Glad you guys are “deeply skeptical of many DEI initiatives…” How you propose to reverse these trends, you don’t say. You fear that if a state government puts pressure on state schools, it will take away academic freedom. But how else do you fight such deeply entrenched, anti-liberal ideology spewed by universities? What DeSantis is doing is what many of us anti-Wokies have hoped for: cut taxpayer funding of woke initiatives, from DEI administrators to expanding grievance studies programs. Even better, it’s in his job description to do so. If woke professors or AAUP want to fight DeSantis in court, so much the better. We need more legal battles — like Oberlin vs Gibson bakery — to bring the woke excesses to the public.
PS. Here in VA, a bill to track DEI costs at Va. colleges was recently struck down 17 Jan 2023 https://richmond.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/bill-to-track-dei-costs-at-va-colleges-is-struck-down/article_58874e46-9688-11ed-b752-c7168baeee65.html
I agree strongly!
I would also point out, as many others have, that we do not have academic freedom at the present time in our colleges and universities. Both the faculty and the students are harassed, disciplined and sometimes fired for honest expression of ideas, and for pursuing lines of research that are scientifically valid topics to pursue. The universities have been taken over by an authoritarian cult in which many of the students are active participants.
We should stay focused on how to restore freedoms we used to have and have lost. I hope that the Supreme Court will start ruling against the discriminatory practices of "DEI initiatives." I would be very relieved to see judicial support for the civil rights of all Americans.
I know little about university administration or funding, so perhaps I naively wonder if what some states may want to consider doing is be very selective in directing their funding. For example, you might give state universities money just to support certain (say STEM) classes and students (I am suggesting this as an easy example, there are many subjects that would be worth funding). STEM graduates would get reduced tuition or a rebate. State governments would not be involved in increasing unattractive bloat and would not be encouraging DEI initiatives. There would be a lot of details to finagle (maybe these select students would not be forced to take or pay for any DEI initiatives).
If donors and wealthy parents want to pay extra tuition for an overly large administration and fluff classes, the cost would not be subsidized by the taxpayers.
My aim would be to make it expensive to the University and DEI supporters to run their large administrations with DEI programs, and not pass on those costs on to taxpayers.
I'm troubled by your phrase "deeply conservative political agenda." I likely get your meaning, but I think it badly misuses the word "conservative." I feel there's plenty of room in this crazy debate for liberal opinions and values, and for conservative opinions and values, which in general are only minimally in conflict with each other. I'd say the current grotesque political theater is between illiberal Progressives and illiberal Right-populists.
A lot of these comments are sounding like "This enemy is so evil and so dangerous that of course we have to violate our principles to fight them, you'd have to be a naive idiot not to see it." Which sounds like what America tried after 9/11. How'd that work out?
Again, if you have an idea short of being outraged on the Internet, I’d love to hear it.
What FIRE is doing, defending people who the orthodoxy comes after, would be a good place to start.
While FIRE does fine work, winning a few lawsuits does nothing to create real institutional change. The problem is inherent to the current governance of academia, and once one structure is disallowed by a lawsuit, an alternative soon comes in to fill its place and exercise the same function.
If the purpose of state funded higher education is to provide productive citizens for the state, then conflict between politicians and academics is inevitable. There is perceived to be a vast difference in how politicians and academics would define, if they were asked, what is a well educated, productive citizen. Once we get past the demagoguery and entrenched interests, there would not be that much difference in their definitions as understood by a non-biased arbitrator in a position to make decisions. Is there room in our society for non-biased arbitrators to make decisions about anything?
Wokeness is a social cancer. So mocking it is a moral purpose.
I would be more concerned were Rufo and DeSantis to have said what they expect the universities to teach and to promulgate. All I heard in the Rufo video linked to was how he and DeSantis are going to fight the progressives. It may well be that they'll make the institutions more illiberal -- or leave then as illiberal but with a different bent -- but that's not obvious from what I've read.
I'm curious about the reference to the 1915 report, which says that professors hold primary responsibility for the matters that shape the university. Is that the situation today? I have the impression that the administrators run things and the professors are largely afraid to run afoul of them, of the students and of the press.