I submit the reason that college presidents are not pushing back against the Maoist coercions of the undergraduate social justice warriors is because the marvelous theater of the gender, race, and “privilege” melodrama is a potent distraction from the sad fact that college has turned into a grotesquely top-heavy and high-paying administrative racket offering boutique courses in fake fields (Dartmouth College: WGSS 65.06 Radical Sexuality: Of Color, Wildness, and Fabulosity… Harvard University: WOMGEN 1424: American Fetish) in order to pander to their young customers (students) conditioned to tragic “oppression” sob stories. All in the service of paying huge salaries + perqs to the dynamic executives running these places"The Elephant Cometh." By James Howard Kunstler, Clusterfuck Nation, 4/18/16. H/t: Zero Hedge.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
The customer is never wrong.
Academic cowardice explained:
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Colonel, I agree. That posting pretty much describes academe at all levels, not just the lofty and hopelessly lost “higher education” regions. I beg the originator that I may insert a clause just before the last sentence that alludes to ‘follow the money.’ I think those “…young customers (students) conditioned to tragic…” were first conditioned by life’s early years without boundaries. I submit that in every human child there is a built-in basic need for boundaries, and the child will search until he/she finds them. Because, along with our Gift of life, we were also awarded the Gift of Volition. In this world after Eden, the natural tendency is to descend to the lesser needs. Boundaries can be taught by parents who truly love their children. Hence, America at its present condition… how to fix it now? I dunno… There’s always the Direction Manual, I suppose, if it weren’t going out of favor so quickly. A great article from Kunstler, by the way. Thanks for mentioning it.
Kunstler grates a little every once in a while. He doesn't appear to like Christians all that much. Still, he's well worth reading, kind of like Paul Craig Roberts. Kunstler is very, very insightful about modern architecture and he wrote a piece on black rejectionism that was brilliant. I think I posted something based on it.
I think he's on the money here on this "customer" business. Academic administrator pusillanimity isn't a new phenomenon. Shelby Steele has written about feeling contempt for the administrator who basically caved in when Steele and the others occupied the administration building. Something like that. Today is different because the suits have abandoned any pretense of standing for liberal values. Thugs disrupting speakers on campus ought to be expelled by the time the campus cops process the booking paperwork but the schools do need the revenue.
Agreed as to boundaries. I never chafed at Army discipline as it was rational and almost always administered by admirable men. I was there voluntarily but the point is that one can live well within known boundaries that are fair and rational. I think the decline in enrollment after the Missouri U. unpleasantness in Columbia is due to prospective students seeing that there are no boundaries there.
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