Posted January 6, 2017, by Mary Grabar: Happy New Year! After a hiatus for the Winter Holidays and Solstice the Chronicle of Higher Education is back in circulation, pumping out must-read news about the advances in the academy, as professors and administrators lead in the forward march into a bright future of peace, love, and justice, once every white male is emasculated through re-education, er, "critically self-reflecting and dialoguing" on "masculinity" through courses like one being offered at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
How quickly progress is being made! Each semester the initiatives get bolder. Back in 2013, it was expected that those of us teaching English and other subjects in the humanities would impart such lessons. Now we have an entire six-week course dedicated to the subject!
What will be next? In the past, there have been pharmaceutical and surgical procedures to alleviate masculinity. What if intensive on-campus group therapy does not have the intended effect of having all male students renounce their masculinity? We shudder to think.
Masculinity often manifests as "misogyny." At Princeton, for the crime of sending misogynistic and racist emails to each other on their email list the swim and diving team are having their season cancelled
But...Rating the looks of girls is considered a far worse offense than wishing for "white genocide," as a professor told the world via Twitter on Christmas Eve. The latter case has been deemed "protected speech" by the professor's employer, Drexel University. The professor, George Ciccariello-Maher, who teaches politics and global studies, explained to the Philadelphia Inquirer:
On Christmas Eve, I sent a satirical tweet about an imaginary concept, 'white genocide,' he said in an e-mail. 'For those who haven't bothered to do their research, 'white genocide' is an idea invented by white supremacists and used to denounce everything from interracial relationships to multicultural policies (and most recently, against a tweet by State Farm Insurance). It is a figment of the racist imagination, it should be mocked, and I'm glad to have mocked it.
Can undergraduates hampered by their masculinity do the research, though? Even this Ph.D. would not know which book or website to consult.
What about sportsmen at Harvard, Columbia, and Amherst? They too have been unsported for their thought and language crimes.
The fact that the two news items--about girls who rate a 1 or a 10 and about genocide--in proximity of each other in the same issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education is no doubt due to the editorial judgment of the Chronicle editors. That no irony is seen must be due to the credentials of the genocide-advocating professor, which are listed, in part, on his university web page:
Ciccariello-Maher, PhD, is an expert and frequent media commentator on social movements, particularly in Latin America. His most recent book, We Created Chávez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution (Duke University Press, 2013), examines social movements and revolutionary groups active before and during the era of late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Ciccariello-Maher also teaches, researches and writes about race, racism, prisons and policing in the U.S. and internationally, including how race is associated with suspicion and guilt.. . .
Why we need free college, which New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed, while sharing the stage with Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders. Cuomo used the argument of job preparation for the poor children in households making $125,000 or less. As the Atliantic reported:
he said he hoped the New York proposal would be 'a wake-up call to this nation' if the United States wants to be competitive globally. In recent years, the United States has fallen behind other countries in the percentage of students who complete degrees, and there are sizable gaps in college completion between white students and students of color, who make up a growing portion of the nation’s young people.
An even more important reason was articulated by someone from the New York Public Interest Research Group on one of the those "in-depth" programs public radio is known for producing. College provides one with "citizenship skills," i.e., the ability to spot all the "fake news" floating around there that impelled the undeducated rubes to vote for Donald Trump.
Starbucks barristas need to learn about social justice in order to educate customers via coffee cups. Those like Ciccariello-Maher are very much needed to educate the barristas of 2020. College educated barristas would not only be certified in their ability to spell the names of the fancy coffee concoctions on the cups, but would know which uplifting and instructive social justice message to write alongside such things as "dark roast frappiopo, extra soy."
There is speculation that this display of generosity is the opening bid for the Governor's presidential run in 2020. He will need more professors like Ciccariello-Maher in the classroom in the four years leading up to that election to advise young voters.
A President Cuomo would also likely carry on the fight of the present administation, a project given special attention by Vice President Joe Biden, at eliminating sexual assault on campuses by hapless freshmen who might believe that nakedness implies consent. The story about the letter sent to all college presidents is in the Chronicle of Higher Education (though not the photo, thank you, Washington Examiner).
With help from Comrade Bill Ayers as well. Seems that Bill Ayers has even more time to blog and agitate now that he is retired from re-educating future teachers (all thanks to the wealth distributors of Illinois). One of his latest efforts is to circulate a petition encouraging Governor Cuomo not to succumb to pressure to go back on his promise to provide clemency to Judith Clark, getaway driver in the 1981 Brinks armored car robbery that left a security guard and two police officers dead. Comrade Ayers claims that Clark has done "amazing" work in prison with mothers and those who are HIV-positive. As Joseph Klein demonstrates in Front Page, poetry is considered to be part of such "amazing" work (though not giving information on fellow domestic terrorists). Governor Cuomo reportedly met with Ms. Clark in prison. Wonder if Ayers has his ear? We know how much he likes to assist Democrats in the White House.
Speaking of the White House: Friend and former colleague Mark Bauerlein has very good advice on higher education for President-Elect Donald J. Trump in CNN. Read it here.
Set your calendars for April 20 & 21: I am delighted to be on the list of speakers at Grove City College's Annual Conference, this year noting the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The theme is "The God That Failed: Communism & Socialism Then and Now." Here is the list of participants. My topic is "Poetry for the Proletariat: Langston Hughes vs. George Schuyler."
