"Legutko: Enemy Of The Politruks"

[Yooper]

This interview/article is from back in April. Only getting around to posting it (don't think anyone else has. Sorry, if so).

Ryszard Legutko is a Polish economist who was invited to Middlebury College (Vermont) to give a talk, but was disinvited by the school AFTER HE ARRIVED ON CAMPUS because the school admin couldn't guarantee his safety!

What happened and Legutko's take on the incident is both necessary and cringe-inducing reading.

Bottom line, this interview says everything about the current state of affairs at the university (in particular) and in our culture (in general) far better than I ever could. Worth the entire <10 minutes it will take you to read and digest.

Link: "Legutko: Enemy Of The Politruks"

Here's are two snips to whet your appetite:

The paradox is that in today’s liberal democracy there are more thought crimes than in communism: racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, ageism, binarism, Eurocentrism, white supremacy, and many others which a person like myself long ceased to keep up with. They give the latter-day Bolsheviks enormous power and countless instruments to silence all opponents. The only way to avoid any of these accusations is to capitulate, body and soul, to the prevailing ideologies and to participate in all ritualistic dances that express either absolute approval of the ideological gods or absolute condemnation of the enemies.

The original sin of the academic institutions in the entire Western world was, I think, to open them to highly political and ideological disciplines (or rather, pseudo-disciplines) such as gender studies, feminist studies, etc., which quickly infected all humanities and social sciences.

First, they killed the academic culture of research because all of them start not with questions, but with conclusions – one and the same in all matters that are being discussed – and then bend the arguments to justify those conclusions. It is always about how men discriminate against women, heterosexuals against homosexuals, white people against black people, Europeans against non-Europeans, etc.; all effort is to provide additional proofs or present another variation of the same story. Consequently, they turned the schools into the training camps; young minds are shaped in such a way that they cannot but perceive the intellectual inquiry as leading to or away from desired political and ideological ends. This unfortunately spilled over to the departments of literature, history, social and political sciences.

Second, they changed the demographic structure of the universities, giving the representative of these pseudo-disciplines an unusually big influence – considering the dubious quality of their work – on academic and scholarly matters. They created the atmosphere of suspicion and vigilance. No wonder that they too often start performing a function of a thought police, or, to use a Soviet term, of politruks. The latter word stems from the Russian polititcheskyi rukovodityielmeaning “a political guide” (literally, “somebody who leads others politically by the hand”) and it denoted those who watched the purity of the communist doctrine in what people said and in what they thought.

--- End of line (MCP)

 

[BOP]

Who knew the books "Fahrenheit 451," "1984," and the movie "Idiocracy" would be taken as both how-to guides and gold standards to which to aspire.

 

[BernieP]

Syracuse U: U.S. Constitution is 'exclusionary' to some students

• Syracuse University has refused to grant a Young Americans for Freedom group status as a Registered Student Organization (RSO).
• The school said that "requiring students to agree in the superiority of the U.S. Constitution is exclusionary to international students and other individuals.”

Syracuse University denied an application for Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) to become a Registered Student Organization (RSO), stating, as one of its reasons for doing so, that requiring students to believe in the U.S. Constitution is “exclusionary to international students.”
The Syracuse Office of Student Activities denied YAF’s application, in part because members must support the “Sharon Statement,” which is a statement of support for the U.S. Constitution. Syracuse took issue with the Sharon Statement, alleging that adhering to it violates the college’s policy of non-discrimination.
"Requiring students to agree in the superiority of the U.S. Constitution is exclusionary" Tweet This
“The Board considers the ‘Sharon Statement’ to be contradictory to Article XI Statement of Non-Discrimination,” Syracuse's RSO Review Board stated in its rejection email to the group, according to documents obtained by Campus Reform. “Additionally, requiring students to agree in the superiority of the U.S. Constitution is exclusionary to international students and other individuals.”

and we are worried about the Russians stealing an election.

 

[BernieP]