Category: Academia
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The Academic Job Market in the ‘Sixties
Substack latest. The gravy days are long gone. Howlin' Wolff tells it like it was and your humble correspondent throws in his two cents.
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Too Late Again!
Every once in while I will get the notion to send 'fan mail' to a philosopher whose work I am reading and for whose work I am grateful. But I am sometimes too late. The search for an e-mail address turns up an obituary. The last time this occurred was when I wanted to congratulate…
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Former Students
Did I help them or harm them? Probably not much of either. They've forgotten me, and I have forgotten most of them. The few excellent students I had made teaching somewhat worthwhile, but the unreality of the classroom bothered me and the unseriousness of teaching those with no desire to learn. It was like trying…
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The New Right: More Combative, Less Conservative
Culturally, the Left won; so what's to conserve? The Old Right, bow-tied and bespectacled, gentlemanly and erudite, has proven impotent to slow down, let alone stop, the Left's long march through the institutions and their subversion of them. Assembled in their well-appointed 'cucksheds,' the likes of George F. Will fiddle with ideas while the Republic…
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Wokery in Waco
Baptist Baylor goes Marxist.
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A Not So Happy Warrior
Mark Steyn on Mike Adams (1964-2020): He "seemed like" a happy warrior, but who knows? It's a miserable, unrelenting, stressful life, as the friends fall away and the colleagues, who were socially distant years before Covid, turn openly hostile. There are teachers who agree with Mike Adams at UNCW and other universities – not a…
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The Ability to Write and to Comprehend a Good, Long Sentence . . .
. . . is one mark of an educated mind. You won't learn this in the English Department of Rutgers, however. Example: If you value the life of the mind, the pursuit of truth, the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, high culture and its transmission, in short, the classical values of the university as set…
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The ‘Catholic’ ‘Universities’ Have Become Jokes: Fordham
I continue with the examples. Fordham, the other day: Fordham University is persecuting a student for speech that shouldn’t even be all that controversial. Surely the Jesuits who run the school aren’t afraid of honest debate? At issue are two Instagram posts last month from Austin Tong, age 21: one implicitly criticizing anti-police protests and…
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Defund the ‘Universities’ If You Value the Life of the Mind
If you value the life of the mind, the pursuit of truth, the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, high culture and its transmission, in short, the classical values of the university as set forth in such great works as John Henry Cardinal Newman's The Idea of a University, then you should withdraw all support from…
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Is Grammar Racist?
It has to be. Whatever blacks and other 'people of color' are not good at is racist; blacks and other 'people of color' are not good at grammar; ergo, etc. This also explains why logic, mathematics, natural science, chess, self-control, self-reliance, deferral of gratification, pulling up your pants, etc. are all racist. It is also…
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Don’t Give Money to Your Alma Mater!
With few exceptions, the universities of the land have become leftist seminaries. Why give ammo to the enemy? Charlie Kirk makes the case for divestment in DivestU, a very short YouTube video. Kirk explains his divestment initiative to Laura Ingraham in this two-and-a-half minute interview.
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Should Humanities Departments be Shut Down?
The following is from a reader who takes issue with Chad McIntosh's Euthanizing Liberty. Secondarily, he takes issue with me since I basically endorse McIntosh's contentions. McIntosh maintains that . . . the closure of philosophy departments, along with others in the humanities, [is] a good thing, for three reasons. First, institutions of higher education…
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Can the Humanities be Saved?
Excerpts from, and commentary on, John Gray, Why the Humanities Can't be Saved. HT: Karl White. It is hard to see why any sensible person would enroll in a humanities degree at the present time. A common argument used to be that the humanities taught students how to think. [. . .] This is not…
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Euthanizing Liberty
Chad McIntosh sees an upside in the recent closures of philosophy programs. I agree with him. In conclusion, I now see the closure of philosophy departments, along with others in the humanities, as a good thing, for three reasons. First, institutions of higher education have already devolved to the point that the humanities are a…
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The Academic Job Market in the ‘Sixties
Robert Paul Wolff tells it like it was: . . . I reflect on the ease and endless rewards of my career, moving from comfortable position to comfortable position, and compare it with the terrible struggles of young academics trying to gain some sort of security and time for their own scholarship in an increasingly…