Why academics hold Thatcher and Trump in such contempt

The sheer venom in Leftist hate of influential conservatives is a wonder to behold. And academics are usually very committed Leftists so are particularly unhinged. What is going on? Why the complete lack of any balance or moderation?

One has to conclude that influential conservatives strike deeply wounding blows at the worldview of Leftist intellectuals. The threat to their worldview is so severe and their worldview is so important to them that they have to muster all their emotional resources into its defence.

The basic problem for them is that their worldview is delusory and hence fragile. Great intellectual and emotional resources are need to support a claim as patently absurd as "all men are equal". It has cost them a great deal of mental effort to make sense of such sillines so attacking such delusions robs them of something very important to them. It's like an attack on their children.

I have covered this topic in much greater detail here: http://jonjayray.com/elitism.html

‘Has that orange baboon gone yet?’ asked a senior professor in the teacher’s room at my university yesterday.

The remark went down well, despite the unfashionable remark about someone’s skin colour and the dubious zoomorphic comparison.

As did an earlier comment from another colleague joking about how he’d like to replace Trump’s corona medication with something more potent (i.e. he wishes he were dead).

I’ve had more than four years of this sort of ‘banter’ at the university I work at, which pretty much sums up the consensus view amongst academics of the outgoing President: Trump is a disgrace to humanity, a complete aberration, and the sooner he departs the White House – and this earth for that matter – the better.

The highlight of four years of abuse towards Trump include an English professor who celebrated the Japanese festival of Setsubun (where beans are thrown at imaginary devils) by pinning a picture of Trump on the wall and having the class aim their ammunition at it instead. He boasted about this in a staff meeting.

Then there was the Canadian colleague, terrified that his accent might mean he was mistaken for an American, who took to wearing a maple leaf lapel badge every single day. And there was the American lecturer who began pre-emptively apologising on behalf of his nation to everyone he was introduced to. Another American professor told me she had severed all ties with relatives back home whom she’d discovered were ‘Trump sympathisers’.

This bottomless contempt, expressed without caveat, and in the apparent certainty that no sane person could possibly disagree, reminded me of the venom directed at Margaret Thatcher by academics during her time as Prime Minister. And the atmosphere of relief and celebration after the US election result is reminiscent of the period when Mrs Thatcher was forced from office, when I was an undergraduate at St Andrews University.

I recall that one of my history lecturers, now a prominent Guardian contributor, could barely conceal his delight. He opened our first post-Maggie class by writing the word ‘Thatcher’ on the board and then, with a gleeful, triumphant flourish, crossing it out.

The academics themselves would claim, and no doubt believe, that their animus derives from their superior humanity. But I have an alternative theory, and it’s a simple one: insecurity.

Trump, the great deal maker (in his own mind at least) measured success in terms of bottom lines and negotiating outcomes, a philosophy inimical to most academics.

His very presence in the White House was living proof of how far you can go without paper qualifications, or even reading books. Suspicious of the academy and its leftward lurch, he justified withholding funding from institutions that practised affirmative action and had diversity programmes.

Similarly, Thatcher, despite her own academic success, was at heart the grocer’s daughter who weighed the produce in her father’s shops and took fair payment in pounds, shillings and pence.

Thatcher took this thinking with her into No. 10. Building on her relatively unproductive spell as education minister she introduced measures to gauge teaching and research ‘quality’ – replacing the university grants committee with a funding council shorn of most of its academics – and removed the security of tenure for many. As with the grocers, there was to be nothing on tick.

Trump had the disturbing habit of asking uncomfortable questions about the worth of institutions with no tangible end product: ‘What’s the point of Nato?’ he has effectively asked. Thatcher might have wondered the same about the NUT.

Basically, Thatcher and Trump lacked the automatic respect many academics feel is their due. They gave the impression that they could see right through us – an uncomfortable feeling.

But if the sentiments of the majority of educators of 2020 and 1990 are similar, what has changed is the level of censoriousness, and the fear among the few dissenters of speaking out against the consensus. Pro-Thatcher academics were perhaps not too popular in the staff room, but didn’t live in fear of losing their jobs. I’m not sure that is true about Trump.

Now and again I gently take on my Trump hating colleagues. I point out that, however disagreeable his personality, being the first President in 40 years to not engage or escalate a war means an awful lot of people have avoided being killed. And an improved American economy meant better living conditions for those at the bottom of the heap. And then there was Trump’s potentially huge breakthrough in the Middle East peace process.

Is it not worth at least thinking about these things before we start declaring the Trump era an unmitigated disaster and start popping the champagne corks? ‘You can’t possibility defend Trump’, said a Canadian professor friend when I raised these points.

And what worried me was that I’m not entirely sure in what sense the word ‘can’t’ was being used.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-academics-hold-thatcher-and-trump-in-such-contempt

‘Wokeness’ Infiltrates College Music Departments

Inevitably, college music departments have succumbed to pressure to promote “social justice” and fight racism. It’s hard to see much injustice or racism in music, but that doesn’t matter to activists intent on showing that they’re in the vanguard of America’s transformation.

Consider, for example, the announcement back in September by the music department at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC that it was taking steps to combat “systemic racism.”

We learn that the music department, eager to participate in the college’s new anti-racism initiative, hired a consultant, Lorna Hernandez Jarvis. She met with minority students and alumnae so that they could engage in “safe and confidential” conversation about the department. That conversation revealed a number of problems, particularly the lack of diversity in the music curriculum, insensitivity toward international students, and mistaken assumptions by faculty members about minority students.

It’s hard to imagine that the racially restricted “conversation” didn’t involve a lot of what lawyers would call “leading the witness,” but let’s say that the participants really thought that those items were problems at Meredith.

Professor Jeanie Wozencraft-Ornellas, head of the department, subsequently met with the consultant. Afterward, she stated, “Having been aware of systemic racism in housing, banking, education, etc., I have to admit that I was not truly aware of how systemic racism was built into our curriculum and music education.”

In the summer of 2020, systemic racism was being discovered everywhere. Meredith College’s music department was guilty of it and steps had to be taken.

To eliminate it, the department announced that it was redefining its mission, revising its curriculum to include a global music component and more inclusion of “marginalized musicians,” and collecting songs from different cultures to use in the teaching of music theory, which will be compared with European tonal scales and intervals. Moreover, the department would look for anti-bias, anti-racism (ABAR) texts and materials to use.

Thus, the Meredith music department entered the battle against systemic racism. The question is whether its moves will make any difference. Meredith’s students weren’t “racist” in the past and it’s hard to believe that they will think or act any differently now that they’ll be studying some different musical systems and composers from around the world. But academic virtue signaling isn’t about results—it’s about appearances.

A second incident where college music teaching collided with “wokeness” occurred at the University of North Texas (UNT), where a music professor found himself in trouble because he dared to dispute the trendy belief that racism pervades the academic world.

Here’s what happened.

A music professor at Hunter College, Philip Ewell, gave an address to the Society for Music Theory entitled “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame,” subsequently published here. In it, Ewell argued that music theory suffers from institutionalized “whiteness” that needs to change so there can be “positive racial change in music theory.”

A large portion of Ewell’s address was devoted to an attack on a German music theorist, Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935.) He accused Schenker of racism and concluded that his contributions to music theory were therefore tainted.

Ewell’s arguments touched off vigorous debate within the field, especially his attack on Schenker. As it happens, there is an academic journal, The Journal of Schenkerian Studies, devoted to his work. That journal is published by UNT and edited by professor Timothy Jackson. Jackson decided to devote much of the next volume to a symposium on Ewell’s address, publishing articles by scholars who took issue with his claims, including Jackson himself.

That sort of thing is standard among academics; someone makes an argument and then it gets debated.

Sadly for professor Jackson, dispassionate debate is no longer allowed on many topics, especially those where claims of racism by “progressives” are concerned. Once word got around that Jackson had challenged Ewell’s thesis, an angry mob descended on him.

A group of students demanded that the university discipline or even terminate all those on the music faculty who were responsible for the publication of the Journal. They also demanded that the university conduct an investigation into “past bigoted behaviors by faculty.” Rather than defending a colleague’s academic freedom, a number of UNT faculty members circulated a petition in support of the students.

As we have seen on so many campuses, the social justice warrior types don’t want to argue with their opponents. They want to see them punished.

Writing about this affair for National Review, Samantha Harris of FIRE said,

It is particularly ominous that Jackson’s critique of a fellow scholar falls wholly within the scope of academic freedom that UNT promises its faculty…. Simply put, the behavior of those who want Timothy Jackson’s life ruined over his academic critique of an article applying critical-race theory to music theory is not compatible with freedom.

At the time of this writing, professor Jackson still has his job at UNT, but the university’s “investigation” into him continues. That investigation, his attorney informed me in a phone conversation, violates university rules for the handling of faculty disputes. Moreover, Jackson has been banned from participating in committee work, which harms his prospects for advancement.

When university leaders won’t defend faculty members for engaging in precisely the sort of intellectual jousting that should be the backbone of scholarly life, then the whole educational enterprise is on very thin ice in this country.

A third instance of “wokeness” intruding into the world of music teaching comes to us from the University of Arizona. A music professor there, Molly Gebrian, who specializes in the viola, recently declared that the music world has a problem—it’s too dominated by music written by white men.

She states, “Really, what we need is a national overhaul of the music curriculum…. The status quo is not okay. That how change has to start, with individuals doing what they can to affect (sic) change.”

When leaders won’t defend faculty for engaging in intellectual jousting that should be the backbone of scholarly life, the whole educational enterprise is on very thin ice in this country.
Professor Gebrian’s contribution to “change” is her compilation of a database of compositions for the viola that excludes everything written by white men. Supposedly, it will be easier for viola instructors to teach their students if they don’t have to study works by “dead white guys.”

Undoubtedly, there are some good pieces written for viola by women and “underrepresented” composers, but how does it help students by eliminating many pieces just because they were written by white men? Gebrian’s purge takes away many famous compositions, including Hector Berlioz’s great “Harold in Italy” and Bela Bartok’s Viola Concerto.

It won’t make women and minority viola students at the University of Arizona feel any better about themselves to be shielded from those and other compositions by white men. Nor will the world change for the better if students and professional musicians stop performing pieces written by white men and only play “diverse” works. The world has many problems, but they will be exactly the same no matter what music is played.

If a math professor were to tell her students that they were not going to study any mathematical theorems devised by white men because she wants to fight white male dominance, almost everyone would regard that as educational malpractice. This is no different.

From large state universities to small private colleges, “wokeness” is taking over, with regrettable consequences for the quality of education.

https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2020/11/wokeness-infiltrates-college-music-departments/

Beware, Australian Parents, Your Kids Are Being ‘Scootled’

When I noticed that a top-tier federal-state education body is providing lesson materials for teachers, I decided to take a look. The body is Education Services Australia (ESA), a company set up by federal-state education ministers. ESA provides free supplementary online materials for teachers via 20,000-plus pages on its Scootle portal. No mickey-mouse operation, it’s all keyed precisely to the curricula and used in 2019 by some 60,000 teachers, who chalked up 2.8 million sessions involving 18.8 million page views. From 2000-09 this on-line exercise chewed up about $130 million of taxpayer money.[1] Today ESA self-supports on revenue of $40 million a year from projects and subscriptions.

Scootle is just one of many third-party inputs to schooling. More than 90 per cent of teachers and 8400 schools, for example, use online lessons supplied by the anti-capitalist green-left Cool Australia outfit (See here, here, here, here). I fully expected that Scootle materials would be part of the Leftist miasma pervading education, which is so all-encompassing that even the 50 per cent conservative-voting parents long ago ceased to notice what their kids are being taught.

In the immortal words of Victoria’s one-time education minister and premier Joan Kirner, education must be reshaped to be “part of the socialist struggle for equality, participation and social change, rather than an instrument of the capitalist system”. This was consummated in 2008 when PM Julia Gillard and her Labor premiers brought in their “Melbourne declaration”.[2] Conservative governments don’t seem to mind that schools have been converted to breeding grounds for green-minded woke warriors.

ESA is supposed to promote “improved students outcomes” and classier teachers and schools. As we know, our kids’ performance is sliding down the international league tables, despite ESA’s best efforts. So, as an amateur auditor, having logged on as a “guest user”, I had a look around.

“Paul Keating” gets 17 hits, virtually all laudatory; Gough Whitlam gets 56 hits, none hostile and most laudatory. Whitlam’s dismissal (1975) gets a dozen tracts. “John Howard” gets more than 20 cites, but sadly none are laudatory and most hostile.[3]

I got a surprise when I searched on “WWF” to check that green lobby’s input. Instead of cute pandas, I got a dozen propaganda film clips from the Communist-led Waterside Workers Federation of the 1950s, such as “Banners Held High, 1956: May Day”. Scootle tells kids this film is “honouring the achievements of workers across the world”. Actually, a few months after its May Day love-in, the WWF backed the Soviets as their tanks crushed the Hungarian revolt.[4]

Scootle’s asylum-seeker treatment is straight from The Greens’ playbook.[5] Search for “asylum seeker” and the request generates exactly 100 hits and ‘refugee’ alone 169 hits. Scootle’s intense interest in the topic includes: Discussion paper – ‘Towards a fairer immigration system for Australia’, 1992.

This is the cover of a 55-page paper titled ‘Towards a fairer immigration system for Australia‘. It states that the current immigration system is unfair to some groups and discusses how to guarantee fair access to Australia’s immigration system. The paper was prepared by Andrew Theophanous and published in 1992… The dimensions of the discussion paper are 29.60 cm x 21.00 cm.

I’m sure it’s a lovely paper from 28 years ago for kids to study, being 29.60cm x 21.00cm and all, about fairness and victim support. Author Andrew Theophanous was MHR (Labor) for the seats of Burke and Calwell from 1980-2000. But as Wikipedia puts it, “He was later jailed for bribery and fraud offences relating to visa applications and other immigration matters.” Specifically, “he was charged with defrauding the Commonwealth by making false representations in relation to an immigration matter, taking an unlawful inducement and soliciting an unlawful inducement.” He got six years, and served two of them. Maybe Scootle should footnote that?

Another example is:

Anthem – An Act of Sedition, 2004: MV Tampa and September 11

This clip presents an interpretation of the Howard government’s response to the arrival of refugees in Australian waters on the MV Tampa in August 2001. The narration states that John Howard had often used scare tactics for his political advantage and that the refugees were now to be used in a ‘race election’. Views defending the refugees are juxtaposed with images of troops. Scenes of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York dramatise the narration, which states that the government used fear of terrorism to override international law and civil rights.

The tone here seems similar to what East German kids used to get. Scootle’s explanatory notes say the film argues passionately that PM John Howard cynically exploited Tampa and 9/11 “to create fear, undermine the rule of law and secure a win in the November 2001 election.” The notes say, “the desperation of the passengers led the captain to attempt to land under conditions of emergency”. In fact the Afghans effectively took over the ship by threats, which led to SAS troops storming the vessel.

Scootle cites Julian Burnside QC, most recently a failed Greens candidate, who “condemns the ‘Pacific Solution’ legislation as being a clear-cut infringement of international law, and another lawyer sees it as being undemocratic.”

In a mealy-mouthed way, Scootle says,

In this case no attempt is made to present the case for the Howard government, the narration puts its views strongly and the use of dramatic footage heightens the sense of crisis, reinforcing the filmmakers’ view that these events marked a serious attack on civil liberties and democratic processes.

Impressionable kids are treated to a tear-jerking film (aka “powerful account”) about an Australian family with four kids visiting an Afghan teen in detention in Port Hedland in 2004. The visiting mother describes ‘a heavy gate being locked behind’ them, the children ‘huddled together wide-eyed and silent’ and the guard ‘unlocking the third door’, with an echoing, sombre and “slightly fearful” sound track. The film, asserts Scootle, “raises questions about the government policy that imprisoned children in the name of border protection.”

Kids also get a poem, ‘When I think of Australia’ by Amelia Walker. Extract: “I switch on the TV and see wire with children behind it. If this isn’t their country it isn’t mine.” Images include chicken wire and “refugees’ children in detention camps”. There’s also a color cartoon provided from leftist New Matilda[6] showing

a dilapidated ship crowded with asylum seekers approaching a pier where an elderly woman stands with outstretched arms, saying: ‘I know it’s extremely unAustralian of me, but I’d like to welcome you to our shores …’

So where does Scootle offer kids the conservative government’s case? A search on “people smuggler” finds one hit from a 1990 incident, and none contemporaneous. Another search fails to turn up reference to the 1,200 asylum seekers drowned after Labor’s PM Rudd overturned Howard’s policy and encouraged people smugglers to ship 50,000 people south in those infamously leaky boats.

More here:

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2020/11/beware-parents-your-kids-are-being-scootled/

***********************************

My other blogs: Main ones below

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

*******************************