Diversity Studies and its students
This account of the contents of a seminar on "GENDER AND ETHNIC DIVERSITY IN ACADEMIC SCIENCE" really has to be read to be believed. Almost every day in my own course in PPE, some professor or lecturer will make a cringeworthy crack against America or her President, and get half a dozen chuckles - not because it's funny, but because a few sheeple want to show their right-on convictions. But to imagine a lecture of nothing else besides this sort of brain-dead left-wing cant, I really had to read what they are actually like.
The term 'cult', used in the conclusion, really isn't much of an exaggeration. All the elements deprogrammers have to deal with are there, from the tortuous circular reasoning to the sneering at objectivity, evidence and logic necessary to shield such evidently absurd extremism from the real world.
I do wish I could remember where I read of what happens to people who complete their degrees in this sort of thing, because it is a useful supplement to such columns. Few will be surprised to hear that such graduates don't tend to be at all successful, however widely one chooses to define success. Just as Media Studies isn't the best choice even for someone who wants to enter journalism, Gender Studies, Black Studies and Queer Theory (yes, really!) don't even train one to be an effective race-baiting feminazi. Even feminist pressure groups and rabid green think tanks need people who can analyse statistics and make rational or scientific arguments. Three years of training in cliches and of indoctrination into a closed, circular system of thought immune to people who disagree with you is not a lot of use.
Those who take such courses end up thoroughly cheated. Overqualified for many of the positions they would otherwise have taken (if only in their own minds), and bearing a very burdensome chip on their shoulder, their career paths probably end up far more restricted than if they hadn't wasted their time and money. Obviously there will still be opportunities to lecture in the subject oneself one day, no doubt in an atmosphere of perennial resentment and condescension from serious academics. But I'd suspect most of them simply end up as militant shop stewards in public sector unions, as the sort of bureaucrats who come up with laws like those mentioned in the post below, or as third-rate teachers, where they can at least be the Kaiser of their own classroom, feebly trying to pass on their values to those who just want to learn about English Literature or History.
The march through our institutions goes on.
