We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Samizdata quote of the day – “We are Jason Arday” “We are Jason Arday,” say the Cambridge faculty.
“We are Jason Arday,” say the British academic establishment.
“We are Jason Arday,” say humanities faculty throughout the West.
And you know what?
They are all correct.
– Dinesh D’Souza
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
To suggest multi-ethnic minority children are not capable of gaining as much from a rigorous education is not just wrong as a matter of fact. It is also morally wrong. It would fall under the bigotry of low expectations.”
Tomiwa Owolade, Daily Telegraph (£)
In the article that Samizdata linked to, I notice one commenter says rightly that everyone who has defended this charlatan needs to have their own work scrutinised for plagiarism and fraud.
And let’s not forget the whole Claudine Gay clusterfuck at Harvard. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67782799
And of course the hard work of James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose in exposing all this sludge: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1634312023?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
Dinesh D’Souza is correct – and Johnathan Pearce is correct, nothing much for to add.
On a positive note – one of the first (if not the first) universities in the world to admit both black and female students, Hillsdale in Michigan, refuses to-this-day to have quotas – so called “positive” discrimination, and it refuses to even record statistics about the racial origin of students – and, therefore, turns down government (taxpayer) money which demands such things – this includes government backed “student loans” which have so increased tuition fees over the years – government subsidies (whether for tuition fees, health care, housing benefit, or whatever) always make COSTS explode.
Hillsdale remains true to the pro liberty principles upon which it was founded (it was founded by Free Will Baptists who, contrary to the philosopher James McCosh, argued that there was a link between Predestination in theology and moral-agency-denying Determinism in philosophy), and for such so many of its students died during the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865.
Whatever other people were fighting for – Hillsdale students were fighting, and dying, to end SLAVERY.
And no other university had a higher proportion of their student body sacrifice themselves for the cause of liberty.
One can oppose black people (or people of any skin tone) being held as slaves (which denies their moral personhood – their status as human BEINGS), indeed be opposed to people of any race being persecuted – without falling into the trap of Critical Theory Marxist “anti racism”.
Here is another item about the fiasco.
To ski off-piste (a bit), it makes me think (graduate of Brighton Polytechnic, 1987, First Class Honours in History) that the value of degrees, which has already declined as their quantity has risen, will decline further, and may even become a negative. When I left my “poly” – converted into a university in the 1990s – my degree achievement (no point being falsely modest here) meant I was offered a doctoral bursary for St John’s College, Oxford, in history. I would have been there just as some of the early “woke” crap was starting to make itself felt although I probably would have more or less dodged a bullet. Kerist, I would have been a contemporary of Niall Ferguson and Andrew Sullivan, and Toby Young.
I did not ultimately do it – I chose the media and financial sector stuff instead – but I do have occasional regrets. I wonder what would have happened if, as a Dr in history, teaching in Oxford or some other place in the UK/abroad, I might have had to contend with all of this in my middle age. I read about a lot of middle-aged academics who have left, some of them in despair. So maybe I avoided a problem.
“Oxbridge”, even now, conveys a certain intellectual esprit de corps, a level of academic grandeur that is hard to replicate, and very hard to regain once lost. I think that it being lost. These institutions, as Edward Gibbon once wrote, have been through bad times before in terms of academic laziness and corruption. For quite a while, it was the Scottish universities that set the pace (Edinburgh and Glasgow).
Professor Arday has something in common with Mr Andy Burnham, our Great Helmsman and Prime Minister: Cambridge University.
Mr Ed – as we both know, Cambridge is a very nice town – it is just a shame that a lot of lies and nonsense is taught there (and many other places) – and the lies and nonsense will, eventually, infect the teaching of the natural sciences.
The natural sciences depend on the existence of objective truth – trying to find it, if there is no such thing as objective truth, if everything is “power structures”, “power relations” and “the exploited and oppressed – who must rise up and destroy the West” then there is no natural science – the work of Darwin or Maxwell is no more important than the ravings of a witch-doctor, and it is “racist” to argue that the work of Darwin or Maxwell is more important.
Johnathan Pearce – you dodged a bullet.
For example, no matter how good your doctoral thesis was – there is no guarantee it would have been passed (not if certain people disliked your political and philosophical beliefs).
And, as you say yourself, many people who have both got a doctorate and (even harder for a conservative) got an academic post, are now resigning in despair.
Even from the University of Buckingham – which is supposed to be a conservative university in the United Kingdom (indeed the only conservative university in Britain).
I sometimes think I should have been a librarian – specifically a university librarian.
But even they have, now, to watch every word they say – not just at work, but also outside of work.
I doubt I would have lasted long.
I do not belong in a world where a person has to constantly fear saying something that can-and-will be used to destroy them, and I will not be sorry to leave this world.
So they are ALL Jason Arday, are they?
So they are all liars, cheats and frauds? Nice of them to say so …
Phil B
Yes indeed Sir.
Well two good outcomes of this would be:
1. That the term ‘Jason Arday’ becomes an alternative to ‘Gordon Bennett‘.
2. That a term for someone appointed or promoted to a job that they are wholly unqualified for is ‘He’s a Cambridge Professor.‘.
I have already seen comments about academia stating that, STEM apart, it should be scrapped and started again with a clean slate. That of course, is not on anyone’s agenda (this side of the collapse).
Mr Ed – if only it was just Cambridge – but, tragically, it is almost everywhere.
As for the corruption of STEM – in many universities academics in the natural sciences are required to sign up, and practice, the Critical Theory Marxist principles of “DEI” (sometimes called EDI in Britain).
The various journals that are supposed to cover the natural sciences even praised the demented ravings that were proposed as a new Constitution for Chile – which the people of Chile voted down.
It was, supposedly, a “scientific” Constitution.
If there is no objective truth – there is no scientific truth, and no engineering truth.
That leftism (Critical Theory “Woke” Marxism) means the end of STEM is obvious.
I agree … but not because Wokeism rejects the notion of objective truth.
Witness Anthony “Science” Fauci: he does not reject the notion of objective truth, and neither do his groupies; not when the notion is convenient for them.
I agree because Wokeism means that all identifiable groups (ethnic, sexual, and religious) must be “fairly” represented within STEM.
Snorri Godhi – Tony Fauci does indeed appear to be more of an old fashioned crook (someone after corrupt gains – of money and fame) than a “Critical Theory” Marxist.
However, the demented Covid policies – the lies against Early Treatment (there were effective Early Treatments which could have saved the people who died – and people who STILL deny this should burn-in-Hell), the insane “lockdowns” (which caused such terrible harm), and the toxic injections (which were not vaccines), were general policy around the world – so it was more than crooks such as Tony “I take the 5th” Fauci. There was clearly a political agenda at work here – using Covid as an excuse for what they wanted to do for other reasons.
I agree with you that “fair representation” would be the death of everything – from medicine to engineering.
Sociology is ripe for this kind of fraud. Any scientific field where the truth is arrived at by the practitioners voting on it is always ripe for political takeover. Sociology is the go-to career for people who like being in academia, but have no brains for the hard sciences, no gift for the arts, no stomach for business & no humility for the trades. Decades after Durkheim et al, it’s just politicized self-citing agenda-driven propaganda with a science-y veneer.