I wish it was just the colleges. I’m withdrawing my son from the once-great private high school that we’d devoted so much time and energy to get him into. They have completely prostrated themselves to this illiberal, intolerant, neoracist orthodoxy and created a hostile learning environment.
In the end, the only thing that can hurt them is loss of dollars. I attended the University of St. Thomas and they have complexity abandoned their Catholic roots. Lots of alumni stopped donations but as long as you have foundations and benefactors who can be bullied in the name of SJ, these small dollars will not be missed. Tuition payments on the other hand, that is a different story. Good for you!
Our kids are one and two years out of their Jesuit HS, but spouse still works there. It got very woke last year but a large group of parents organized and are pushing back....big time....and that includes a billionaire (no joke) donor and former board member. Just last week two of the prominent admin removed their pronouns from their communications. The BLM posters have come down (albeit they used a lame excuse--but who cares--they're gone)! Push back is the only way and sometimes that means taking your tuition dollars elsewhere.
That's good to hear. It might be encouraging for people to realize that a lot, a LOT of the admins and presidents are totally amoral, self-serving status seekers who aren't especially committed to anything other than their own advancement.
Kind of amusing to realize we're in a situation where it's a *relief* to find your childrens' schools are run by "totally amoral self-serving status seekers", but here we are.
To your point my spouse overheard an admin saying (as they were removing the plaque of the billionaire donor) "we don't need this bastard's money anyway". I laughed when I heard that because he's too stupid to realize that without the money from donors and tuition paying families, the school literally doesn't exist.
This is a heart breaker. We were fortunate to have our kid in private schools before this insanity hit but a private alternative to public education appears to be in trouble. If CA passes it's racist Marxist indoctrination Ethnic Studies Curriculum they will most likely add a clause that for students to attend a CA University they will have to comply and take the curriculum. That means that all alternatives nationwide including home schooling will be forced to role this out if they want to attend a University of CA. Some of us are pushing back locally supporting orgs, attending school boards etc. but the overall lack of involvement by fellow citizens is disturbing. The China model appears to be fine with many.
So bummed, as a parent of a PSU student. The school is off the rails. Parents at orientation literally heard 10+ minutes of pronoun introductions (of every single tour guide) and zero minutes of "our commitment to excellence in academics, art, and/or athletics".
Peter was a bright spot. Fortunately, my kid is in the Computer Science program which is still excellent, probably because computer code doesn't compile if it is fed gibberish.
Still a great computer school. I have let the administration know multiple times about my disillusionment. They are still more likely to listen to paying customers than randos.
PSU forces kids to learn C++ using only vi as an editor for the first two years (they get a peek of an IDE in a java unit). They are hard core... more so than many schools. I've been a software engineer since the 80s, as they have well chosen, difficult but reasonable problems to solve.
Possibly because they are a primary feeder school to Intel.
This is the only thing that makes me happy about my kids' education there. The city has gone to literal shit and broken glass since his enrollment. The liberal arts side, based on a zoom call which had mono-thought and many synchronized nodding heads could be from a 1984 sound stage.
Hardest popular language to do well. Write standard library code, handling exceptions, without leaking memory... if you don't think that's hard, you're probably doing it wrong. As far as binary... check my middle name.
It depends on what problems you are trying to solve. A lot of IT projects need little or no math, ditto system administration, whereas engineering and scientific problems require loads of it, as well as a good understanding of your tools, including the computing system you are using. And those "math" problems often need programming for execution efficiency, not coding convenience. Hence the need for coding in C or Fortran... sometimes even Assembler.
You need those forms of math to engineer bridges. Software requires a different set of engineering skills. Its math is logic, not calculus.
In my 55 years in IT, I have had to assist many engineers of your type who don't know the first thing about computational logic. There is nothing wrong with their brains; it's just not a part of their field.
Can you explain that for someone who doesn't know anything about agile? Genuinely interested in what you mean and want to understand it. I literally know nothing other than it's a jargon word I've heard.
This isn't my experience of Agile. I grew up in the "Software Craftsmanship" school of development, but have been working in the Agile environment for several years with my current employer. I think that the main benefit that management sees with Agile is that they thing "everyone should know how to do everything". Tasks are thin sliced and passed around to whomever needs something to do at the moment. I can't tell you how wasteful of human effort this involves in the amount of rework that has to be done to get a stable product. No one on the team works on anything long enough to gain expertise in an area. I could go on and on, but the standard answer to any complaint about the methodology is that "you're doing it wrong". Well, I've never seen it "done right" and those who specialize in training and leading in this methodology tend not to hang around long enough to see the problems in the first place.
Good description, I’m a software developer and I didn’t know the history prior to the early 2000s blend of extreme and agile into agile. Problem with the trendy things is that while they often become trendy for good reasons, they’re never a silver bullet to solve every problem. And even when it’s the right solution, implementing a good thing in a sloppy or ill-advised manner will still produce a stupid outcome.
There really aren’t any shortcuts to doing it right, even if trendy buzzwords tend to make management happy.
Every semester I ensure that my kid knows we would support a transfer away from the nonsense. Again, not much nonsense in CS... too much code to write. The forced elective choices have some nonsense.
That’s why I love code - lack of nonsense. There are always a multitude of ways to create something, to solve a problem, and it can be more unconstrained and creative than most people realize. But you can’t pretend your way to a solution. At the end of the day, the code runs or it doesn’t, the application solves the problem or it doesn’t. Good luck to your kiddo! I think this is such an exciting time to be starting in computer science.
I commend you for speaking out. However, remain vigilant. Rather than cite them all, I would encourage you to google "anti racist software engineering". It, too, will soon be subject to the woke rules.
I've looked at every CS assignment and it lacks any social justice dimension. I do think my kid will have a one-credit "ethics in programming" class... whatever... real world wants results.
That is good to hear! Again, I commend you on your vigilance.
I do disagree with you slightly on what the "real world" wants. It's a bit complicated, but here it goes. (FWIW, I have a CS degree and work in software engineering).
At most large tech companies, the machine of profit is running at such magnitude that it is actually hard to stop it even if you wanted to. This affords them tremendous latitude on rank-and-file engineers. Add to this that today public companies are increasingly placing "wokeness" ahead of the classic "shareholder value" objective, and you have a recipe for a less competent, woke engineer being more (or just as) valuable than an unwoke more competent engineer.
Moreover, engineering managers are getting pummeled with woke objectives that have nothing to do with engineering proper. I see and hear about it every week.
Startups are a bit different. They still need results. In bigger companies, I'm not saying that competence isn't required or valued; rather, I'm suggesting that the story is more complicated and not as clear cut.
Mr. Boghossain you show true valor and bravery. Years from now history will be very kind to but for now this virus of wokeness has overcome so many of our institutions.
I spent 18 years in higher ed and would jokingly tell my friends how you could get caught stealing from them and get a slap on the wrist. But violate PC and out the door you go no matter how many years you were with the University.
Sadly higher ed no longer represents freedom to think. Just like NPR no longer represents unbiased reporting or the ACLU standing up for free speech. All of these institutions are gone from their roots.
You are correct! One university at which I worked, did have a very high level professor steal from them. He was caught padding his expense reports from his travels with all of his wife’s expenses. To the tune of about $38,000. All they did was hush it up, make him pay it back, and then it was just the dirty little secret of the University. Unbelievable!
Bet you a steak dinner the provost got no more than a paragraph into that before chucking it in the wastebin with a triumphant laugh and beginning the search for his black trans lesbian disabled replacement.
I thank the writer for his heartfelt, sincere, letter of resignation. Unfortunately, it is just that kind of reasoned honesty that has no place in the Woke world. I’m sure the recipient is having a good laugh at this poor prof’s well-meaning naïveté. How humiliating!
This is not a war that will be won by reasoned argument, but by fighting fire with fire. Until the enlightened are willing to fight the fascists at the voting booth and the HR dept (and I don’t see a lot of evidence of that here) the Woke nihilists will continue to do what has been working for them so well. The cavalry is assuredly NOT coming—the good guys are going to have to do it themselves
I have to strongly disagree with your belief that voting will make any difference, but that's for another post. Here's the calvary: 1) Create alternatives - the opportunities are staring us in the face. My bet is that smart people are already developing alternatives and there is already venture capital behind them and 2) It may be a long game , but the woke universities will devolve to mediocrity. As more and more parents (and kids) realize this, the cream will rise to the top (i.e., will gravitate to the non-woke universities and there are more of those than most people realize).
Yes, create alternatives. People will gravitate to the good ones. Universities, having abdicated their responsibility to instill the ability to question and think in their students, have lost their monopoly on “higher learning”. They just don’t realize it yet.
Google "non-woke universities" and you will get quite a few. Off the top of my head, I would say Chapman (Orange County CA) and Valparaiso University (Valparaiso, IN). Bot very good schools.
Yes, both great schools and neither made the list on criticalrace.org. Chapman is pretty expensive though---had a niece graduate from there. Valpo is a terrific school.
Good points by Gordon Freeman. This culture is not evolving from a rational/well-reasoned debate. Nor is the battle for sanity a "one approach" battle, but one which needs fighting on multiple fronts. It includes who you vote for, but also where you direct your resources, where your kids go to school and which teachers you refuse to tutor your own.
One can recognize woke values are often irrational and bigoted. And get cancelled for it.
But there are places which one can avoid this sort of silliness and succeed in life. So battle on, and don't subsidize the other side. They need these subsidies because otherwise, they'll be the ones who'll graduate with degrees in gender studies -- and wonder why they are always in debt while spending their life asking people "would you like fries with that?"
While I was familiar with Dr. Boghossian and some of his work, I was unaware of the workplace harassment he was enduring. While I was not surprised, it still angers me that academic institutions seemed to have so swiftly turned their backs on what are supposedly their core values.
This is really sad. I was a Accounting student back in early 90's at University of Texas, but we had to take Philosophy as a required class. I will tell you that I still remember Professor Baker and what he taught us about critical thinking, forming opinions, Socrates, Plato, ethics, etc. . I can say I never knew what "he" thought of the present day topics he would bring up that we would then write and apply this type of logic to, but just gave us tools to think for ourselves. It was one of THE best classes I took at UT. Sounds like this guy was teaching much in that same vein. Pity they are running these people out of the Universities. Critical thinking, ethics, how to form your own opinion by applying these skills, but still asking questions respectfully and listening to the others point of view...such an important skillset to have. I hope he can find another place to land...we still need these Professors.
I had the same experience in Prof. Ed Garlan's philosophy class across the river, at Reed College in the 1960's. He taught each philosopher so convincingly that the students were certain that Prof. Garlan subscribed wholly to that school of thought, until the next lecture when we came away convinced that he subscribed to that day's different school.
I dread to think what a hotbed of woke cult fanaticism Reed must be today.
What a truly horrific, yet all too common, story. The vast majority of our universities operate exactly like this today. If this doesn't change--and frankly I don't see it happening--we are finished as a nation. Anyone paying $60K+ to send their kid(s) to places like like Portland State needs to have their head examined. What a colossal waste of money.
About 12 years ago, my third daughter wanted to tour Antioch College near Dayton OH. Skipping to the point, the college had become a cesspool of weirdos. Enrollment was down to about 400 students. There were still some faculty who seemed sincerely interested in teaching -but the overwhelming counter culture was tearing it down. It was so full of radical leftists signs about “revolution” were everywhere including on hats and T-shirts sold in the bookstore. It was as if an insane mob had taken over the ruins of an institution. Wealthy alumni, who apparently had not been to the school in a long time, were raising millions to bail it out. I was stunned they could have 400 people who were paying to be there.
The only way this will stop is if alumni stop donating en masse. Most probably don't realize it's going on, but it is. Oh yes, it truly is--everywhere.
I can only imagine the smarminess and cringe that drips off the "Dear Alumni, Our school is facing some of the greatest challenges in its proud history..." letters.
But I can't really imagine alumni being so divorced from current affairs as to be unaware of the situation on our campuses, except for the really senile ones. And frankly, if my parents were donating any of MY inheritance to Evergreen State or Antioch, I would take action to prevent it.
We just had this conversation in my house about paying ridiculous sums for college tuition for our kids to learn this junk? No thanks. When all instructors like Boghossian leave the universities who will be left?
The key is for businesses to stop valuing the degrees from places that are teaching BS. If you are hiring an employee who is going to be dissatisfied and work against your organization or create woke waves, they are not as valuable as the degree implied 7-8 years ago.
And really I think maybe not requiring a college degree for some jobs might be a good start. I used to work for a big media company and believe me, entry level people had problems even doing simple math at times, and they all went to college. Same with writing a clear email.
Unfortunately, the university system is part of the Cathedral now. Only when the Cathedral collapses will it collapse as well. Until then, alternative lifestyles are the only way forward for a lot of us.
Peter, this is what true courage looks like. You are willing to sacrifice your career and security to stand against this madness that has infected our institutions of higher learning. Thank you. Sincerely, thank you.
Oh and BTW, thank you for sharing that amazing Penis article! I am still smiling at your elegant hoax. For example, "2.2 Climate Change and the Conceptual Penis: Nowhere are the consequences of hypermasculine machismo braggadocio isomorphic identification
with the conceptual penis more problematic than concerning the issue of climate change." Beautiful! I can picture these humorless, self-satisfied, hyper-sensitive, self-described "intellectuals" lapping this up while not even remotely realizing they are swallowing the bait hook, line, and sinker. Well done, sir.
It was courageous for him to stand up to it in the first place, knowing, to some degree, what would be the response. Compare to his colleagues, many of whom see this nonsense for what it is, yet choose to keep heads down, parrot some of the crap and limp along to retirement. Yeah, if you don't call it courageous, I feel you're missing something. Maybe now, if he tries to continue to earn a living, you can call him a "grifter"?
Think of the University System we could have if all the good ones resigned and pooled their resources to develop a "new" type of education system that values critical thinking...
I attended grad school at PSU and wrote a letter of support for Dr. Boghossian when the pitchfork mob were first after him for the Grievance Hoax papers. I am sad to see that PSU is losing a professor who has been a supporter of free speech. I am heartened to know that having faced down this mob for so long, he will have the pluck to find new arenas. Good luck Dr. Boghossian, I send you much support.
Peter, I thought of you and your brave, principled, and eloquent statement this morning as I took a long bike ride, and what came to mind, curiously, was the recent CNN rebroadcast of "9/11," a documentary by the Naudet brothers. They and their crew happened to tag along with the NY firefighters who were first inside the Twin Towers: brave men, all. Even as the handful of fire chiefs established a command post in the lobby and sent their men up the stairs, people were starting to jump from the burning building, a hundred stories above. We never saw their bodies hit the ground, but we heard, and cringed in disbelief and horror, at the astonishingly loud explosions: the sound of bodies disintegrating. Each explosion was a person who, confronted with the licking flames and the slow voiding of all possible means of escape, finally chose how to die. It's a terrible choice. So is the choice made by those fire chiefs to send their men up the stairs, and the choice made by those firemen to actually make the long trip into god knows what future. I view the choice you made--or at least this was my thought while cycling--as essentially a combination of those terrible choices. You did your damndest, as long as you could, to come to the rescue, to think things through, to make the long trek required to save people, and thought systems, that needed saving. You ended up on the roof of a burning building, in increasing pain, with all routes of escape having finally been cut off. The choice to jump is a nervy choice. I mean those words more literally than metaphorically, and I'm thinking of Albert Murray's memorable statement in "Stomping the Blues," something about how what must be avoided at all costs is "a failure of nerve." Murry was a fan of Hemingway and was channeling the grace-under-pressure ethos. Regardless: I see the opposite of a failure of nerve here. I see a principled choice made under great pressure, as an absolute last resort. It's inspiring. You tried as hard as you could to warn people that the building was burning, to smell the smoke, to make that long walk with you up the stairs. You'll land on your feet like the cat you are. Keep making trouble.
A professor leaving Portland State University is like a traveler deciding to disembark from the Titanic before if leaves port. In the future, he will look back and think this was the wisest decision of his life.
The Education Industry deplores free thinkers like this brave soul. Being taught by nuns, Jesuits, and Holy Cross Fathers, the Socratic method was the template for all their instruction. That is a method used for thousand of years. We abandon free thinking at our peril, as did Germany in the 1930's.
I'm not certain Big Education "deplores" all free thinkers.
It just deplores the ones who won't keep their heads down and their mouths shut.
So we have Brett Weinstein and Jordan Peterson similarly hounded, either of whom can produce a grocery list with more rigorous thought and sound logic than most of what passes for academic research in the social sciences.
And now Prof. Boghossian. Not bad company to keep.
And so it begins. Hurrah!! The time is nigh to build new institutions of learning and learned. The time is nigh to starve those old institutions of good fruit and wise sage. Huzzah!
Sadly, this is how “they” take over. Organize with fellow travelers to make life hell for those who would resist their propaganda. As those who resist dwindle away, they can be more radical and destructive. They now openly state their goal “Burn this all down.” At first I thought “they” were socialists or communists out to convert us to their anti-freedom ideology. Now I think “they” just want us to be at each other’s throats so our country, and other Western countries, destroy ourselves from within.
I wish it was just the colleges. I’m withdrawing my son from the once-great private high school that we’d devoted so much time and energy to get him into. They have completely prostrated themselves to this illiberal, intolerant, neoracist orthodoxy and created a hostile learning environment.
In the end, the only thing that can hurt them is loss of dollars. I attended the University of St. Thomas and they have complexity abandoned their Catholic roots. Lots of alumni stopped donations but as long as you have foundations and benefactors who can be bullied in the name of SJ, these small dollars will not be missed. Tuition payments on the other hand, that is a different story. Good for you!
100%! My brother and SIL are grads of St. Thomas and they have joined your ranks.
Our kids are one and two years out of their Jesuit HS, but spouse still works there. It got very woke last year but a large group of parents organized and are pushing back....big time....and that includes a billionaire (no joke) donor and former board member. Just last week two of the prominent admin removed their pronouns from their communications. The BLM posters have come down (albeit they used a lame excuse--but who cares--they're gone)! Push back is the only way and sometimes that means taking your tuition dollars elsewhere.
That's good to hear. It might be encouraging for people to realize that a lot, a LOT of the admins and presidents are totally amoral, self-serving status seekers who aren't especially committed to anything other than their own advancement.
Kind of amusing to realize we're in a situation where it's a *relief* to find your childrens' schools are run by "totally amoral self-serving status seekers", but here we are.
To your point my spouse overheard an admin saying (as they were removing the plaque of the billionaire donor) "we don't need this bastard's money anyway". I laughed when I heard that because he's too stupid to realize that without the money from donors and tuition paying families, the school literally doesn't exist.
This is a heart breaker. We were fortunate to have our kid in private schools before this insanity hit but a private alternative to public education appears to be in trouble. If CA passes it's racist Marxist indoctrination Ethnic Studies Curriculum they will most likely add a clause that for students to attend a CA University they will have to comply and take the curriculum. That means that all alternatives nationwide including home schooling will be forced to role this out if they want to attend a University of CA. Some of us are pushing back locally supporting orgs, attending school boards etc. but the overall lack of involvement by fellow citizens is disturbing. The China model appears to be fine with many.
And now to just volunteer in a public library in CA
one has to study and pass a "woke" course and test.
So bummed, as a parent of a PSU student. The school is off the rails. Parents at orientation literally heard 10+ minutes of pronoun introductions (of every single tour guide) and zero minutes of "our commitment to excellence in academics, art, and/or athletics".
Peter was a bright spot. Fortunately, my kid is in the Computer Science program which is still excellent, probably because computer code doesn't compile if it is fed gibberish.
You’re helping fund the nonsense however.
Still a great computer school. I have let the administration know multiple times about my disillusionment. They are still more likely to listen to paying customers than randos.
Just wait until your kid gets out in the corporate world.
PSU forces kids to learn C++ using only vi as an editor for the first two years (they get a peek of an IDE in a java unit). They are hard core... more so than many schools. I've been a software engineer since the 80s, as they have well chosen, difficult but reasonable problems to solve.
Possibly because they are a primary feeder school to Intel.
This is the only thing that makes me happy about my kids' education there. The city has gone to literal shit and broken glass since his enrollment. The liberal arts side, based on a zoom call which had mono-thought and many synchronized nodding heads could be from a 1984 sound stage.
It's "potatoe, potahto".
Hardest popular language to do well. Write standard library code, handling exceptions, without leaking memory... if you don't think that's hard, you're probably doing it wrong. As far as binary... check my middle name.
It depends on what problems you are trying to solve. A lot of IT projects need little or no math, ditto system administration, whereas engineering and scientific problems require loads of it, as well as a good understanding of your tools, including the computing system you are using. And those "math" problems often need programming for execution efficiency, not coding convenience. Hence the need for coding in C or Fortran... sometimes even Assembler.
You need those forms of math to engineer bridges. Software requires a different set of engineering skills. Its math is logic, not calculus.
In my 55 years in IT, I have had to assist many engineers of your type who don't know the first thing about computational logic. There is nothing wrong with their brains; it's just not a part of their field.
Can you explain that for someone who doesn't know anything about agile? Genuinely interested in what you mean and want to understand it. I literally know nothing other than it's a jargon word I've heard.
This isn't my experience of Agile. I grew up in the "Software Craftsmanship" school of development, but have been working in the Agile environment for several years with my current employer. I think that the main benefit that management sees with Agile is that they thing "everyone should know how to do everything". Tasks are thin sliced and passed around to whomever needs something to do at the moment. I can't tell you how wasteful of human effort this involves in the amount of rework that has to be done to get a stable product. No one on the team works on anything long enough to gain expertise in an area. I could go on and on, but the standard answer to any complaint about the methodology is that "you're doing it wrong". Well, I've never seen it "done right" and those who specialize in training and leading in this methodology tend not to hang around long enough to see the problems in the first place.
Good description, I’m a software developer and I didn’t know the history prior to the early 2000s blend of extreme and agile into agile. Problem with the trendy things is that while they often become trendy for good reasons, they’re never a silver bullet to solve every problem. And even when it’s the right solution, implementing a good thing in a sloppy or ill-advised manner will still produce a stupid outcome.
There really aren’t any shortcuts to doing it right, even if trendy buzzwords tend to make management happy.
Thanks for this background Smith 🙌🏻
That was GREAT, Smith.
lol, Smith.
Every semester I ensure that my kid knows we would support a transfer away from the nonsense. Again, not much nonsense in CS... too much code to write. The forced elective choices have some nonsense.
That’s why I love code - lack of nonsense. There are always a multitude of ways to create something, to solve a problem, and it can be more unconstrained and creative than most people realize. But you can’t pretend your way to a solution. At the end of the day, the code runs or it doesn’t, the application solves the problem or it doesn’t. Good luck to your kiddo! I think this is such an exciting time to be starting in computer science.
I heard there are 53 different bit values on the spectrum between 0 and 1.
Good one, Rich! And did you know there are 10 kinds of people in this world? Those who understand binary and those who don’t.
I commend you for speaking out. However, remain vigilant. Rather than cite them all, I would encourage you to google "anti racist software engineering". It, too, will soon be subject to the woke rules.
I've looked at every CS assignment and it lacks any social justice dimension. I do think my kid will have a one-credit "ethics in programming" class... whatever... real world wants results.
That is good to hear! Again, I commend you on your vigilance.
I do disagree with you slightly on what the "real world" wants. It's a bit complicated, but here it goes. (FWIW, I have a CS degree and work in software engineering).
At most large tech companies, the machine of profit is running at such magnitude that it is actually hard to stop it even if you wanted to. This affords them tremendous latitude on rank-and-file engineers. Add to this that today public companies are increasingly placing "wokeness" ahead of the classic "shareholder value" objective, and you have a recipe for a less competent, woke engineer being more (or just as) valuable than an unwoke more competent engineer.
Moreover, engineering managers are getting pummeled with woke objectives that have nothing to do with engineering proper. I see and hear about it every week.
Startups are a bit different. They still need results. In bigger companies, I'm not saying that competence isn't required or valued; rather, I'm suggesting that the story is more complicated and not as clear cut.
Until they say that learning to code is racist. Yes, it’s coming.
The academic Maoists have already decided that astronomy is 'colonialist', so racist code may be coming even sooner than you thik.
Mr. Boghossain you show true valor and bravery. Years from now history will be very kind to but for now this virus of wokeness has overcome so many of our institutions.
I spent 18 years in higher ed and would jokingly tell my friends how you could get caught stealing from them and get a slap on the wrist. But violate PC and out the door you go no matter how many years you were with the University.
Sadly higher ed no longer represents freedom to think. Just like NPR no longer represents unbiased reporting or the ACLU standing up for free speech. All of these institutions are gone from their roots.
You are correct! One university at which I worked, did have a very high level professor steal from them. He was caught padding his expense reports from his travels with all of his wife’s expenses. To the tune of about $38,000. All they did was hush it up, make him pay it back, and then it was just the dirty little secret of the University. Unbelievable!
Bet you a steak dinner the provost got no more than a paragraph into that before chucking it in the wastebin with a triumphant laugh and beginning the search for his black trans lesbian disabled replacement.
I wish I didn't LOL at Guttermouth's comment. Because now I feel guilty about it.
That's what they want you to feel so you'll stop laughing, speaking, and feeling.
Laugh your ASS off at them. It's the only non-lethal weapon worth a damn in this war.
'twas being sarcastic about the feeling guilty part. Your comment was genuinely funny. And a bit too close to the truth.
LOL IRL
I thank the writer for his heartfelt, sincere, letter of resignation. Unfortunately, it is just that kind of reasoned honesty that has no place in the Woke world. I’m sure the recipient is having a good laugh at this poor prof’s well-meaning naïveté. How humiliating!
This is not a war that will be won by reasoned argument, but by fighting fire with fire. Until the enlightened are willing to fight the fascists at the voting booth and the HR dept (and I don’t see a lot of evidence of that here) the Woke nihilists will continue to do what has been working for them so well. The cavalry is assuredly NOT coming—the good guys are going to have to do it themselves
I have to strongly disagree with your belief that voting will make any difference, but that's for another post. Here's the calvary: 1) Create alternatives - the opportunities are staring us in the face. My bet is that smart people are already developing alternatives and there is already venture capital behind them and 2) It may be a long game , but the woke universities will devolve to mediocrity. As more and more parents (and kids) realize this, the cream will rise to the top (i.e., will gravitate to the non-woke universities and there are more of those than most people realize).
Yes, create alternatives. People will gravitate to the good ones. Universities, having abdicated their responsibility to instill the ability to question and think in their students, have lost their monopoly on “higher learning”. They just don’t realize it yet.
anybody have a short list of non-woke universities?
Hillman College. That's pretty short.
Google "non-woke universities" and you will get quite a few. Off the top of my head, I would say Chapman (Orange County CA) and Valparaiso University (Valparaiso, IN). Bot very good schools.
Yes, both great schools and neither made the list on criticalrace.org. Chapman is pretty expensive though---had a niece graduate from there. Valpo is a terrific school.
both
criticalrace.org has a list of those that are so you could deduce those that aren't....by state.
I love this sentiment and hope I'm alive to see the flip.
Yes. It is looking like not only a few stalwart colleges remain. Even corporations now have political officers to enforce this insanity.
Good points by Gordon Freeman. This culture is not evolving from a rational/well-reasoned debate. Nor is the battle for sanity a "one approach" battle, but one which needs fighting on multiple fronts. It includes who you vote for, but also where you direct your resources, where your kids go to school and which teachers you refuse to tutor your own.
One can recognize woke values are often irrational and bigoted. And get cancelled for it.
But there are places which one can avoid this sort of silliness and succeed in life. So battle on, and don't subsidize the other side. They need these subsidies because otherwise, they'll be the ones who'll graduate with degrees in gender studies -- and wonder why they are always in debt while spending their life asking people "would you like fries with that?"
While I was familiar with Dr. Boghossian and some of his work, I was unaware of the workplace harassment he was enduring. While I was not surprised, it still angers me that academic institutions seemed to have so swiftly turned their backs on what are supposedly their core values.
This is really sad. I was a Accounting student back in early 90's at University of Texas, but we had to take Philosophy as a required class. I will tell you that I still remember Professor Baker and what he taught us about critical thinking, forming opinions, Socrates, Plato, ethics, etc. . I can say I never knew what "he" thought of the present day topics he would bring up that we would then write and apply this type of logic to, but just gave us tools to think for ourselves. It was one of THE best classes I took at UT. Sounds like this guy was teaching much in that same vein. Pity they are running these people out of the Universities. Critical thinking, ethics, how to form your own opinion by applying these skills, but still asking questions respectfully and listening to the others point of view...such an important skillset to have. I hope he can find another place to land...we still need these Professors.
I had the same experience in Prof. Ed Garlan's philosophy class across the river, at Reed College in the 1960's. He taught each philosopher so convincingly that the students were certain that Prof. Garlan subscribed wholly to that school of thought, until the next lecture when we came away convinced that he subscribed to that day's different school.
I dread to think what a hotbed of woke cult fanaticism Reed must be today.
What a truly horrific, yet all too common, story. The vast majority of our universities operate exactly like this today. If this doesn't change--and frankly I don't see it happening--we are finished as a nation. Anyone paying $60K+ to send their kid(s) to places like like Portland State needs to have their head examined. What a colossal waste of money.
About 12 years ago, my third daughter wanted to tour Antioch College near Dayton OH. Skipping to the point, the college had become a cesspool of weirdos. Enrollment was down to about 400 students. There were still some faculty who seemed sincerely interested in teaching -but the overwhelming counter culture was tearing it down. It was so full of radical leftists signs about “revolution” were everywhere including on hats and T-shirts sold in the bookstore. It was as if an insane mob had taken over the ruins of an institution. Wealthy alumni, who apparently had not been to the school in a long time, were raising millions to bail it out. I was stunned they could have 400 people who were paying to be there.
The only way this will stop is if alumni stop donating en masse. Most probably don't realize it's going on, but it is. Oh yes, it truly is--everywhere.
I can only imagine the smarminess and cringe that drips off the "Dear Alumni, Our school is facing some of the greatest challenges in its proud history..." letters.
But I can't really imagine alumni being so divorced from current affairs as to be unaware of the situation on our campuses, except for the really senile ones. And frankly, if my parents were donating any of MY inheritance to Evergreen State or Antioch, I would take action to prevent it.
Great point, David.
Very sad. So many people around the world would give so much for the chance to learn real skills and knowledge. Our academic culture is useless.
We just had this conversation in my house about paying ridiculous sums for college tuition for our kids to learn this junk? No thanks. When all instructors like Boghossian leave the universities who will be left?
The key is for businesses to stop valuing the degrees from places that are teaching BS. If you are hiring an employee who is going to be dissatisfied and work against your organization or create woke waves, they are not as valuable as the degree implied 7-8 years ago.
And really I think maybe not requiring a college degree for some jobs might be a good start. I used to work for a big media company and believe me, entry level people had problems even doing simple math at times, and they all went to college. Same with writing a clear email.
This
Unfortunately, the university system is part of the Cathedral now. Only when the Cathedral collapses will it collapse as well. Until then, alternative lifestyles are the only way forward for a lot of us.
I think a lot of businesses get this. Doesn't matter - they get jobs in government.
TY M. Substack Commenter 34. I agree with all the commenters below. That's the solution.
No one worth paying for, that's for sure.
Peter, this is what true courage looks like. You are willing to sacrifice your career and security to stand against this madness that has infected our institutions of higher learning. Thank you. Sincerely, thank you.
Oh and BTW, thank you for sharing that amazing Penis article! I am still smiling at your elegant hoax. For example, "2.2 Climate Change and the Conceptual Penis: Nowhere are the consequences of hypermasculine machismo braggadocio isomorphic identification
with the conceptual penis more problematic than concerning the issue of climate change." Beautiful! I can picture these humorless, self-satisfied, hyper-sensitive, self-described "intellectuals" lapping this up while not even remotely realizing they are swallowing the bait hook, line, and sinker. Well done, sir.
Not sure I'd call this courage. This professor helped create this beast that's now turning against its own. I find it rather amusing.
It was courageous for him to stand up to it in the first place, knowing, to some degree, what would be the response. Compare to his colleagues, many of whom see this nonsense for what it is, yet choose to keep heads down, parrot some of the crap and limp along to retirement. Yeah, if you don't call it courageous, I feel you're missing something. Maybe now, if he tries to continue to earn a living, you can call him a "grifter"?
Think of the University System we could have if all the good ones resigned and pooled their resources to develop a "new" type of education system that values critical thinking...
^^^This. It can happen.
I attended grad school at PSU and wrote a letter of support for Dr. Boghossian when the pitchfork mob were first after him for the Grievance Hoax papers. I am sad to see that PSU is losing a professor who has been a supporter of free speech. I am heartened to know that having faced down this mob for so long, he will have the pluck to find new arenas. Good luck Dr. Boghossian, I send you much support.
Peter, I thought of you and your brave, principled, and eloquent statement this morning as I took a long bike ride, and what came to mind, curiously, was the recent CNN rebroadcast of "9/11," a documentary by the Naudet brothers. They and their crew happened to tag along with the NY firefighters who were first inside the Twin Towers: brave men, all. Even as the handful of fire chiefs established a command post in the lobby and sent their men up the stairs, people were starting to jump from the burning building, a hundred stories above. We never saw their bodies hit the ground, but we heard, and cringed in disbelief and horror, at the astonishingly loud explosions: the sound of bodies disintegrating. Each explosion was a person who, confronted with the licking flames and the slow voiding of all possible means of escape, finally chose how to die. It's a terrible choice. So is the choice made by those fire chiefs to send their men up the stairs, and the choice made by those firemen to actually make the long trip into god knows what future. I view the choice you made--or at least this was my thought while cycling--as essentially a combination of those terrible choices. You did your damndest, as long as you could, to come to the rescue, to think things through, to make the long trek required to save people, and thought systems, that needed saving. You ended up on the roof of a burning building, in increasing pain, with all routes of escape having finally been cut off. The choice to jump is a nervy choice. I mean those words more literally than metaphorically, and I'm thinking of Albert Murray's memorable statement in "Stomping the Blues," something about how what must be avoided at all costs is "a failure of nerve." Murry was a fan of Hemingway and was channeling the grace-under-pressure ethos. Regardless: I see the opposite of a failure of nerve here. I see a principled choice made under great pressure, as an absolute last resort. It's inspiring. You tried as hard as you could to warn people that the building was burning, to smell the smoke, to make that long walk with you up the stairs. You'll land on your feet like the cat you are. Keep making trouble.
A professor leaving Portland State University is like a traveler deciding to disembark from the Titanic before if leaves port. In the future, he will look back and think this was the wisest decision of his life.
The Education Industry deplores free thinkers like this brave soul. Being taught by nuns, Jesuits, and Holy Cross Fathers, the Socratic method was the template for all their instruction. That is a method used for thousand of years. We abandon free thinking at our peril, as did Germany in the 1930's.
I'm not certain Big Education "deplores" all free thinkers.
It just deplores the ones who won't keep their heads down and their mouths shut.
So we have Brett Weinstein and Jordan Peterson similarly hounded, either of whom can produce a grocery list with more rigorous thought and sound logic than most of what passes for academic research in the social sciences.
And now Prof. Boghossian. Not bad company to keep.
And so it begins. Hurrah!! The time is nigh to build new institutions of learning and learned. The time is nigh to starve those old institutions of good fruit and wise sage. Huzzah!
Sadly, this is how “they” take over. Organize with fellow travelers to make life hell for those who would resist their propaganda. As those who resist dwindle away, they can be more radical and destructive. They now openly state their goal “Burn this all down.” At first I thought “they” were socialists or communists out to convert us to their anti-freedom ideology. Now I think “they” just want us to be at each other’s throats so our country, and other Western countries, destroy ourselves from within.