"If Americans and Europeans are curious how all this ends, they might take a look at Canada, where the war against cultural appropriation is in a decidedly more advanced phase. This year, in fact, it has become the subject of full-blown social panic among the country’s intellectual class."
"It seems incredible that someone could listen to the recording of the meeting between Shepherd and the three faculty members and come away thinking that she was using ‘her white woman tears’ to bully Rambukkana. It seems far more plausible to me that she’s crying because she’s upset and intimidated by three superiors accusing her of transphobia and gender violence. Presumably, she would have responded similarly if Pimlott, a white man, had done most of the talking. Or for that matter, if she herself had been of colour."
"If we follow [Susan] Carland’s argument to its logical conclusion, the only option we are left with is for Muslims and non-Muslims to ignore each other until Muslims find an interpretation of the Qur’an that meets secular standards in matters of gender and family. In the meantime, everyone must keep up a tight smile when we encounter one another in public and privately hope that our lives don’t intersect"
"[A] properly oriented university [should] be an institution that seeks truth as something good for its own sake, an institution that motivates this pursuit as integral to a life well-lived, and finally an institution that recognizes the corrupting influence of power upon this pursuit and strives to mitigate this corruption with disciplines of character as well as intellect. My suggestion here, which must therefore remain at most a suggestion, is that such an institution should look to those of Athens in the 4th century BC. Not those of London of the 18th century, nor Berlin of the 19th, century, never mind Paris of the 20th century. We should look backwards not because we wish to go backwards, in the manner of the traditionalists mentioned by Aaron, but because we long to move forward again."
"Whenever human intellect comes to the brink of some real truth that might disillusion us, humiliate us, we turn away in shame or fear, followed immediately by anger at whoever dared try to educate us. Hasn’t that been an effect of much modern science, which keeps displacing us from the center of the cosmos? The Galileo case is iconic, but more illustrative is that of Darwin. He suffered no inquisition, thanks to the freedom of speech enjoyed by the British of his era, but his account of human nature has nearly always been met with scorn from religious believers"
The economic model for academic journal publications is broken.
Today’s political rhetoric is speech in which logos is sacrificed at the altars of ethos and pathos.
"Since continuing my education, I’ve come to quickly learn that on campuses today, racism no longer means what I understood it to be all my life. According to critical race theorists, who permeate academe and its administration, racism is not ethnic prejudice and discrimination but rather prejudice and institutional power. Because whites have institutionalized privilege, they say it is impossible for them to be victims of racism. In this worldview, I should be alarmed when prejudicial sentiment is hurled at some, but not all, of my peers."
"The problem is that postmodern theory isn’t a very interesting or effective way of dealing with literature. Too much is lost."
"If rights are continually seen – and used – as weapons to be wielded against political and religious opponents, then it will not be surprising if more people turn to the illiberal solutions on offer from the Right or the Left."
"What, I wondered, would have happened had Jesus emerged in a Roman Empire that had gone through an industrial revolution? Other things being equal, what would modern science and technology do to a society with very different values from our own? Would they react with the same incomprehension that we do when confronted by religious terrorism?"
"Postmodern tolerance is used as an instrument of confusion, in order to impose the recognition of difference on social agents using state power. The assumption behind this move is that society isn’t a realm of individual freedom, but a pyramid of domination which benefits an elite. In such a situation, equality of rights is threatening."
"The logic of collective action is that when the costs of expressing a belief are borne by the individual, but the benefits are shared among all members of an epistemic community, it is perfectly rational to fail to reveal our beliefs about that topic, no matter how justified they might be."
"Taking a precautionary approach to GMOs, therefore, risks going too far while simultaneously not going far enough. Not only does it overlook the potentially important benefits that GMOs can bring and the many ways that the risks they pose can be mitigated, but it also fails to acknowledge the real source of the systemic risks that we should be most concerned to avoid."
ICYMI: Conspiracy theories seem to gain followers faster than ever before. But the biggest one of them all is losing traction. Why?
Understanding the Wilfird Laurier scandal, and far-left apologia for evil. Quillette's best of the web this week.
