Another Victim of the Ultra Liberal PC Police in Academia.

Naomi Schaefer Riley: The Academic Mob Rules

Instead of encouraging wide discussion, the Chronicle of Higher Education fires a blogger.

By NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY

Recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a cover story called "Black Studies: 'Swaggering Into the Future,'" in which the reporter described how "young black-studies scholars . . . are less consumed than their predecessors with the need to validate the field or explain why they are pursuing doctorates in their discipline." The "5 Up-and-Coming Ph.D. Candidates" described in the piece's sidebar "are rewriting the history of race." While the article suggested some are skeptical of black studies as a discipline, the reporter neglected to quote anyone who is.

Like me. So last week, on the Chronicle's "Brainstorm" blog (where I was paid to be a regular contributor), I suggested that the dissertation topics of the graduate students mentioned were obscure at best and "a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap," at worst.

For instance, the author of a dissertation on the history of black midwifery began her research, she told the Chronicle, because she "noticed that nonwhite women's experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature." Another graduate student blamed the housing crisis in America on institutional racism. And a third argued that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and John McWhorter have "played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them."

The reaction to my blog post ranged from puerile to vitriolic. The graduate students I mentioned and the senior faculty who advise them at Northwestern University accused me (in guest blogs posted by the Chronicle editors) of bigotry and cowardice. The former wrote that "in a bid to not be 'out-niggered' [their word] by her right-wing cohort, Riley found some black women graduate students to beat up on." (I confess I don't actually know what that means.) One fellow blogger (and hundreds of commenters) called my post "racist."

Gina Barreca, a teacher of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut, composed a poem mocking me. (It begins "A certain white chick—Schaefer Riley/ decided to do something wily.") MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry spewed a four-minute rant about my post, invoking the memory of Trayvon Martin and accusing me of "small-mindedness."

Scores of critics on the site complained that I had not read the dissertations in full before daring to write about them—an absurd standard for a 500-word blog post. A number of the dissertations aren't even available. Which didn't seem to stop the Chronicle reporter, though. And 6,500 academics signed a petition online demanding that I be fired.

At first, the Chronicle stood its ground, suggesting that my post was an "invitation to debate." But that stance lasted for little more than a weekend. In a note that reads like a confession at a re-education camp, the Chronicle's editor, Liz McMillen announced her decision on Monday to fire me: "We've heard you," she tells my critics. "And we have taken to heart what you said. We now agree that Ms. Riley's blog posting did not meet The Chronicle's basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles."

When I asked Ms. McMillen whether the poem by fellow blogger Ms. Barreca, for instance, lived up to such standards, she said they were "reviewing" the other content on the site. So far, however, that blogger has not been fired. Other ad hominem attacks against me seem to have passed editorial muster as well.

In her Monday mea culpa, Ms. McMillen wrote that her previous "editor's note last week inviting [readers] to debate the posting also seemed to elevate it to the level of informed opinion, which it was not." I have been a journalist writing about higher education for close to 15 years now, having visited dozens of colleges and universities and interviewed hundreds of faculty, students and administrators. My work has been published in every major newspaper in the country, most often this one, and I have written two widely reviewed books on higher education as well.

As I wrote in the book I published shortly before the Chronicle hired me, "It is not merely that [many] departments approach African-American studies from a particular perspective—an Africa-centered one in which blacks residing in America today are still deeply hobbled by the legacy of slavery. It's that course and department descriptions often appear to be a series of axes that faculty members would like to grind."

But why take my word for it? Scholars more learned than I have been saying the same thing for decades. In 1974, Thomas Sowell wrote that from the beginnings of the discipline, "the demands for black studies differed from demands for other forms of new academic studies in that they . . . restricted the philosophical and political positions acceptable, even from black scholars in such programs."

Thirty-five years later in a piece for the Minding the Campus website, former Berkeley Prof. John McWhorter noted that little had changed: "Too often the curriculum of African-American Studies departments gives the impression that racism and disadvantage are the most important things to note and study about being black."

My critics have suggested that I do not believe the black experience in America is worthy of study. That is not true. It's just that the best of this work rarely comes out of black studies departments. Scholars like Roland Fryer in Harvard's economics department have done pathbreaking research on the causes of economic disparities between blacks and whites. And Eugene Genovese's work on slavery and the role of religion in black American history retains its seminal role in the field decades after its publication.

But a substantive critique about the content of academic disciplines is simply impossible in the closed bubble of higher education. If you want to know why almost all of the responses to my original post consist of personal attacks on me, along with irrelevant mentions of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and George Zimmerman, it is because black studies is a cause, not a course of study. By doubting the academic worthiness of black studies, my critics conclude, I am opposed to racial justice—and therefore a racist.

As Ellen Schrecker, a Yeshiva University historian, writes in her book "The Lost Soul of Higher Education," political ends were the goals of the founders of black studies. Ms. Schrecker—who is, by the way, sympathetic to these political goals—explains that the discipline's proponents "viewed these programs as contributions to the continuing struggle for racial justice, not as conventional academic courses of study."

My longtime familiarity with the absurdities of higher education did not, I confess, prepare me for this most absurd of results. The content of my post, after all, is hardly shocking; the same thing could have been written 30 years ago. And perhaps that's the most depressing part of all this. Despite the real social and economic advancement that has been made by blacks in this country, the American faculty is still stuck in the 1960s.

Ms. Riley, a former Journal editor, is author of "The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won't Get the College Education You Pay For" (Ivan, R. Dee, 2011) and "God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America" (St. Martin's, 2005).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304363104577391842133259230.html

 

If someone takes issue with your views on black studies they are messing with the status quo food chain.

Face it, there's probably no grant money for writing the truth or disparaging other academia.

 

Riley's point is very valid. Although I've taken only an intro class for African studies, I have taken many Women's studies and Asian studies classes. Although the names of these fields would suggest that they study the history and contemporary conditions of these respective groups, Riley hits the nail on the head. Women's studies, and from what Riley has said, African studies focus more on promoting a cause and rigid stances on specific issues that these groups face, or perceive themselves as facing. On the other hand, Asian studies actually IS about the study of different Asian cultures and Asian American cultures. It takes the approach of their cultures not being thoroughly and critically examined, not promoting the wants of certain groups within Asian communities. However, clearly, in this post it seems that I am promoting Asian studies as being academically superior, but I would like to remind you that I am just sharing my experiences on this matter.

 

You drew first blood, Riley. "Claptrap"? Really, you wrote that, with The Chronicle behind you? Stoopid.

 

Typical leftist reaction. They know they can't win a debate on the merits, so they censor opposing views. Don't toe the party line, lose your job. Pretty simple. Then they tell us that academia has to have tenure, etc to protect intellectual freedom. What a joke.

Everyone knows these ethnic and gender studies departments were just created to give affirmative action students a way to slide through college. Who in their right mind would hire someone with one of these joke degrees? Government, that's the only possible employer. Or go to law school and become Michele Obama.

 

Claptrap.

 

Its seems just like a climatology degree or kineisology for people on athletic scholarships.

 

The position that liberals have staked out for dealing with problems in the minority community are quite literally the exact opposite of what most problem solvers would say is the best way to solve an issue.

Most guys like Anthony Robins or other psychologists will tell you that it is pointless to dwell on the past, and instead, you should deal with what you can fix at the present moment.

Instead the way that liberals want to deal with the problems facing minorities, is put all of the focus on atrocities of the past, and gloss over, or outright ignore all of the problems which are happening in the present, as if the problems will somehow fix themselves, if we only tell people that their poor decisions are not their fault.

So what we end up with is a culture that simply justifies bad behaviour, and then liberals scratch their head when we keep getting the same results.

 

if liberals have their way, being michele obama will actually be considered a legitimate career aspiration.

 

Yes, however the solution is always a government program to redistribute money to, or affirmative-action in, the esteemed victims. It's the politics of hate and nothing else, the intellectual veneer that the academics put on their droppings is so thin that you can see the shit right through the polish.