The university’s not just dead…
…it’s been zombified.
I’ve written before about the death of the university from the virus of pressure of special interest groups favored by the left. The phenomenon seems to have really caught on during the late 60s, when university administrations capitulated to, fed the beast, and joined the chorus of leftist voices. But the process has only accelerated and strengthened since then.
The latest manifestation, this time at Fordham, is a neat combination of both Kafkaesque and Orwellian. From Professor Doron Ben-Atar:
During an emotional meeting convened to discuss the appropriate response to the measure, I stated that should Fordham’s program fail to distance itself from the boycott, I will resign from the program and fight against it until it took a firm stand against bigotry. The program’s director, Michelle McGee, in turn filed a complaint against me with the Title IX office, charging that I threatened to destroy the program. (As if I could? And what does this have to do with Title IX?) This spurious complaint (the meeting’s minutes demonstrated that I did not make such a threat) ushered me into a bruising summer that taught me much about my colleagues, the university, and the price I must be willing to pay for taking on the rising tide of anti-Zionism on American campuses…
It was a sobering summer. I have had to defend my reputation against baseless, ever-evolving charges, ranging from sex discrimination to religious discrimination. I went through a Kafkaesque process in which I was never told exactly what I supposedly did wrong, nor was I ever shown anything in writing. Eventually I learned that the charge was religious discrimination born of my opposition to anti-Semitism. The implication is that anti-Semitism needs to be tolerated at Fordham, and that those who dare to fight it run afoul of university rules.
Administrators and colleagues failed to protect my First Amendment rights, and fed the assault on my character. A person utterly unqualified to understand anti-Semitism sat in judgment of a scholar who publishes on and teaches the subject. A report has been issued without letting me even defend myself. My choice to have legal representation has been cited as proof of my guilt. Most painful was realizing that my commitment to fighting anti-Semitism, so central to who I am, has been used against me in a most unethical manner not only by the member of the faculty who filed the baseless charge, but also by the office of the University Counsel.
Fordham remains my intellectual home. Some colleagues, appalled by the charge and proceedings, turned out to be actual loyal friends who supported me through the ordeal. But I also learned about another part of the university where colleagues resort to legal bullying to settle political scores; where heartfelt utterings at faculty brainstorming become evidence for politically motivated character assassinations; where those charged with protecting women against real abuses engage in a politically motivated witch-hunt; where fighting against the oldest hatred””anti-Semitism””makes one a pariah.
The university has long been on the front lines of the war the left has been waging for the hearts and minds of American youth, and has had no small effect on it. Fighting against the left’s influence has always been dangerous, but it has become more so as they’ve grown in power.
[NOTE: More at Legal Insurrection, including some tweets that show the overwhelming hypocrisy of the woman who launched the changes against Professor Ben-Atar, Micki McGee.]
The Society of Jesus founded Fordham. Jesus was a Jew.
This is insane.
This stuff, apparently massively widespread leaves me gasping a hard as early November 2012 did. My God.
These people will not stop. They will continue to destroy lives until they achieve totalitarian control. They are a cancer in the body politic and ethically are no better than rabid dogs.
They are hypocrites and you know the old saying that hypocrites are people that lie to themselves.
Activist game.
1960s and 1970s: there’s no slippery slope. That’s a fallacy.
They are a cancer in the body politic and ethically are no better than rabid dogs.
And yet ironically you make excuses for the Regime by saying they aren’t collaborators and aren’t morally equivalent to Nazis.
I “make excuses for the Regime by saying they aren’t collaborators and aren’t morally equivalent to Nazis.”?
I yield second place to no one as a critic of this administration and the left. Please, knock yourself out, find even one specific instance of me acting as an apologist for this administration.
Equating my resistance to characterizing everyone on the left from slightly liberal to hard core left with the same broad brush and my insistence that many liberals are well meaning but duped, indoctrinated and ignorant is not acting as an apologist for this administration either but it is refusing to yield to fanaticism.
So unless you can show where I’ve made “excuses for the Regime by saying they aren’t collaborators and aren’t morally equivalent to Nazis” or even implied it, then you are just dishonestly making up strawman arguments out of some personal animosity.
Evidently because I had the audacity to mildly state that I couldn’t buy into an characterization you’d made, which is when these little snide personal attacks began and is really quite petty and small minded of you. That it appears to have motivated you into accusing me of taking positions I’ve never advocated, reveals an insecure, egotistical character on your part as well.
Don’t look now, but the city of Houston is subpoenaing Churches for their sermons….
A man feels strong among his friends, but when they burn into fiends his grief intends that he turns the ancient verses learned.
It’s going to take outside groups to rescue the universities; people coming in who have less at stake than expulsion. We can’t give up on them, not while they remain a staple of American life.
Aux barricades!
I wish Dr. Ben-Atar all the luck. He’ll need it.
This reminds me a bit of C.P. Snow’s novel (q.v.) about faculty intrigue at Christ College, Cambridge: The Masters.
Set in 1937. The protagonist is adamantly against appeasing Nazi Germany.
That novel is part of Snow’s series “Strangers and Brothers,” which deals with, inter alia, “questions of political and personal integrity, and the mechanics of exercising power.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangers_and_Brothers
“When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.”
–C.P. Snow, scientist and novelist
Oh, and as far as the myrmidons of Fordham are concerned? Eff ’em!!
That’s the only proper response: tell them all to sod off.
It is hard to accept that millions of our fellow citizens are actually evil but that is exactly what this article describes – evil. For some reason evil people tend to gravitate towards anti-Semitism – every time. It is truly amazing.
What first woke me up to the fact that we are not just fighting a battle of ideas but are in an actual moral battle between good and evil was when the left began calling the Tea Party “racists” rather than dealing with the issues that united the Tea Party. Ever since the Huron Statement racism has been one of the few things which all leftists can perceive as evil. Therefore, when the new left want to label anyone evil, worthy only to be eliminated or killed, they call them racist. The evil on the left is not racism per say but specifically white racism. Black racism or brown racism is just fine and dandy because the true motivation of the left is a lust for power and the bourgeoisie white middle class has been the barrier between the left and the absolute power they crave.
Because the left have rejected the authority of the good God of Judaism and Christianity they have no intellectual basis for any coherent moral system. And yet the left are an extremely moral even puritanical cult. The difference between the morality of the left and that of traditional Puritans is that the Puritans based their morality on traditional values which have been tried and tested for generations which included a rational moral system based on the authority of the good God. The morality of the left is the morality of the lynch mob – completely irrational – which can change instantly depending of the whims of the moment – but which is always directed towards absolute power for the left.
Don’t forget that Nazis are just as evil to the Left and just as commonly agreed upon ever since Stalin got betrayed by Hitler during the non aggression pact.
They called, thus, Bush and his supporters “Nazis” for waging war on Iraq and Afghanistan, which had a dictator they liked and wanted to elect to power (Saddam Hussein).
So now they got another Hussein of theirs, and they are happy. But Bush is still the devil and Sarah Palin is still why America is ugly, and Bush is still responsible for Ebola and economic issues.
Humans have a natural inclination to obey authority of some type, because humans are born social animals (with some exceptions like sociopaths or psychopaths) with a desire to belong to a social hierarchy that has specific duties for specific ranks and roles. Humans wish to be use to their small or extended communities, in order to feel pride for having status and resource rewards. A human that betrays his clan or group, that eats food while children starve, guilt is their reward. Guilty consciences demand that they obey authorities and atone for their guilt.
What the Left did was destroy the normal authorities in various American groups, leaving only the gov as the Divine Authority to be obeyed. Fathers, boyfriends, lovers, husbands, brothers, anyone that could have obtained a leadership position and determined the punishment or atonement process, were wiped out, ridiculed, or replaced. Gov is your sugar daddy now. Gov is your lover, Hussein the messianic lover even. Gov is your father and brother. The Big Father with the Big Brother.
Women have daddy issues? Men have father and role model issues? All part of the process.
Because more than half of society’s social harmony was destroyed or supplanted, the other half became dysfunctional. Without a social model to access, to learn from, people became lost. They still had relationships deemed approved by the Left, but pleasure was the only role model and the gov the only source of punishment and morality.
To put it another way, when women and young girls are raped and sexually indoctrinated at a young age, they tend to express promiscuity and attempt to either appease males around them or avoid them via lesbian self configuration. They are then attracted to male power by using sexuality as their shield and leverage, or too afraid of males to be around them in a sexual environment. The gov, having excised the authorities that would have protected these women, then allow the bad people to take over. Like in Rotter, for example. The bad people then take over, manage the resources (slave girls), and provide tribute to the gov (social Democrat votes).
In a normal society, fathers and brothers would kill and use their very lives as shields for the women in their tribe or sometimes extended tribe. They would do so Without Any Authorities telling them this, because they know it in their blood. If they lose their women or their women are damaged mentally, the life of the tribe is cut short as the next generation becomes completely F ed up.
To the gov, however, they can always breed more women. After all, many of them call females of child birthing inclination “breeders” after all… what did you think they meant by that?
The gov becomes the Divine Authority, yet has no interest or desire to protect you.
Another example is feminist’s rape and enslavement of women. The first was perhaps an example of the Left’s antagonism towards male protector roles in a society. They prefer rapists like Clinton, child killers like Reno, rapist protectors like Hillary, or rich rapists like the Kennedies.
The modern feminist crowd hijacked the organization from the original feminists that had to be better than men to be recognized by society in much of anything besides feminine crafts. The modern feminist leaders enslave women with pleasure, birth control, and various other welfare like benefits and “social support”.
Women normally wouldn’t need Hollywood or the Left’s social support, since they would obey and admire other people in their family, especially the male protectors in a leadership role. Originally and biologically, women would not support foreigners, no matter how good they are, over their clan’s patriarchal leadership. The same reason why single women won’t vote against Hussein O, for reasons of sexual attraction. Hussein O is their protector. Anyone else is a predator. To the original biological and social hierarchy construct, women didn’t invest their trust in foreigners or Hussein O leaders outside the pack. They only believed in the people they grew up with.
Thus a likely reason single women believe and trust Hussein O, over anything reasonable, is because they lack any kind of protection or social support in their private lives. They have pleasure from feminists, but this pleasure does not give them safety or the feeling of being good. They are taught to alternatively hate and fear males, while becoming like males so that they hate themselves.
The feminists in Britain wanted equal voting rights, but one individual kept getting arrested whenever she spoke in public. So the women formed a personal protection squad via training in Judo from the Far East. A very close analogy to the Black Panthers, who sometimes provide bodyguards to the Sharptons and Jacksons, even though it was likely Nation of Islam that killed MLK and Malcom X for disagreeing with Nation of Islam fanatics.
In another case example, some child actors go sexually crazy in Hollywood, after puberty. But there are some that are protected by this, through their intense loyalty and hierarchical fidelity, to their family. So they are constantly surrounded by their fathers or brothers, who are with them. They are close, they support each other, so the girls don’t desire to go out meeting Hollywood males for sexual promiscuity.
The DUck Dynasty clan feels similar on this level, as they have a high fame and high money access through a Hollywood derived corporation, yet can continue to Refuse to Obey Authority and resists corruption.
Legitimate AUthority isn’t actual authority. It’s called being protected by the group leader, being cared for by the group members, and desiring to pull your weight in the group. That’s legitimate authority. The US Regime exerts what can be known as illegitimate authority, aka rape.
Ymarsakar Says:
“Don’t forget that Nazis are just as evil to the Left and just as commonly agreed upon ever since Stalin got betrayed by Hitler during the non aggression pact.”
Excellent point. Strange how the left embraces anti-Semitism while denouncing Hitler. But you have nailed it. They hated Hitler because he betrayed Stalin their demigod not because he was anti-Semitic. Well done.
The Left can flip a trigger using propaganda, and their loyalists will obey, even reconfigure their memories. That’s why the Soviet secret police ordered people from saying “The Western capitalists the Germans are our friends” to telling people to think and say that “The German fascists are pigs and need to be killed”.
It’s a pretty neat trick. Like Democrats saying Sarah Palin is corrupt while saying Ted Kennedy, Reid, PillowC, and Hussein O are pure.
Or perhaps even closer, how they praise Democrat blacks, but the moment one of em gets off the reservation and goes Republican like Sowell or Thomas, they’ll crucify them like their Democrat KKK ancestors did when hanging blacks and whites that were against Democrat slavery.
1) In any large collection of people, the motivations will vary. Some on the left are cognizant of their actions, motivations and effects. These people are evil.
Others only focus on their goals, which may be only coincidentally evil.
2) This ties in with the old saw of Kissinger’s (or Paul Sayre’s, depending on who you believe) that “The reason that university politics is so vicious is that the stakes are so small.”
Some of these academics are motivated by turf wars or in-group loyalty. They don’t see that their actions coincidentally lead to the same outcomes as totalitarianism.
Per our other discussions, I’m not a fan of mind-reading intent. The actions should be judged on their effects. However, just because we have trouble divining intent doesn’t mean there isn’t a truth at stake.