The War on Competence in American Colleges and Universities

Perhaps this could better be titled "The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization" because that's what we're really talking about.  It isn't some sort of natural process that comes as a result of Western Civilization being old; it comes as the result of planning and deliberate actions by Marxists and other groups bent on destroying the west so that they can plunder the wealth of those nations for themselves. 

None of this should surprise you; I've talked about it here and plenty of others have talked about it on other blogs (for example).  The reason for tonight's little rant is an article in PJ Media "The Death of Merit and the Race to Mediocrity in our Increasingly Marxist Universities" by Philip Carl Salzman.  It's worth your time to RTWT.  Salzman begins with some numbers to help readers see the problem.  Recently, there has been a TV series called "The Enemy Within" that talked about 100,000 foreign agents - spies - here in the US from China and other adversaries.

There are 756,900 teachers and professors in Canada, and 5.2 million in the U.S. Almost all of these professors and teachers are daily resolutely and relentlessly attacking Western culture, rejecting American culture, and advocating cultural Marxism.

How did this come about? During the 1960s and 1970s, two converging social movements transformed the culture of education. One was the adoption of Marxism by a wide range of North American university professors in the social sciences and humanities. The other was the widespread adoption of feminist theory. Together, Marxism and feminism redefined North American society as a hierarchy of oppression, with white, patriarchal capitalists at the top, and poor lesbians of color at the bottom. All citizens were redefined as members of racial, economic, gender, sexual, and ethnic classes, with people of white oppressing people of color, males oppressing females, rich oppressing poor, heterosexuals oppressing LGBTQ++, Christians and Jews oppressing Muslims, and so on. This approach is called “social justice” theory.

When normal folks reply we don't care about that; we care that the people who design and build our bridges are competent, their answer is that ideas such as “merit” and “achievement” are male, white supremacist ideas, used to ensure the unfair dominance of white men.  Conveniently, no one mentions little details like the pedestrian bridge collapse at Florida International University in Miami last year.  It doesn't matter if the contracting company knows how to build a bridge as long as they identify as being able to.  It's the case all over in education:

McGill University, in its “Open Call” for Canada Research Chair applications, claims that “Chairholders are nationally recognized as exceptional researchers and innovators in their discipline.” But, “for the purpose of a nomination for a Canada Research Chair in the October 2019 round, preference will be given to qualified applicants who self-identify as a person with a disability or as an Indigenous person.” In actual choices, for McGill, disability and ethnicity count more than achievement, merit, and potential. And note that you do not actually have to be disabled or Indigenous, but merely to “self-identify” as disabled or Indigenous. Even in our top universities, identity is regarded as more important than facts.

Get that?  They say their "Chairholders are nationally recognized as exceptional researchers and innovators" and without skipping a breath saying “... preference will be given to qualified applicants who self-identify as a person with a disability or as an Indigenous person.”  If those chair holders really are "nationally recognized", it won't be for long if academic standards are no longer used to determine who holds the chairs.

That's right, "academic standards" are "male, white supremacist ideas, used to ensure the unfair dominance of white men."  The dirty little secret is that students who get into University based on affirmative action score and other programs (like the SAT's new adversity score) are hurt by the experience of finding themselves in over their heads.  They realize that they don't belong there. 

The reality is that, while minority students with strong backgrounds do reasonably well in university, students with weak backgrounds and levels of achievement, admitted to university for “social justice” reasons, do poorly, and are harmed by being put into a position that they are ill prepared for. But the overall effect of “social justice” admissions and hiring is the dumbing down of universities and of the U.S. and Canada. Just as world competitors, such as China, ramp up their academic and research achievement, North American universities are catering to  “identities,” and raising subjectivity—“everyone has their own truth”—above objectivity, truth, and reality. This is a deep dive into decadence.

The target of this attack, though, is western civilization itself.  This goes beyond just preferred “equity, diversity, and inclusion” admissions and hiring.  They aim to discredit Western Civilization and particularly American and Canadian society because they were founded and built by white men. The great literary and philosophical works of Western Civilization are no longer read because they are the creations of “dead white men.”  Today's Social Justice Warriors insist on judging anyone from any era in the past by today's ethical system - their ethical system because they tolerate no diversity of opinions.

It was white men in Europe who made slavery redundant by inventing science, modern agriculture, and the industrial revolution, raising productivity through the work of machines, so that slave labor was no longer desirable. Furthermore, anti-slavery movements among white Europeans and white Americans led to the banning of the North Atlantic slave trade, policed by the Royal Navy, and the emancipation of the slaves in the Caribbean and the American South. Estimates are that at least 360,000 Union soldiers, almost all white, died in the Civil War that led to emancipation.

Until retiring, I regularly had the chance to work with young engineers in their first years out of college.  As a "Fortune 500" employer with a big name, we got to choose from the tops of the engineering classes and the best are as good as they've ever been.  We haven't seen many signs of social justice indoctrination; they realized that if they did their jobs wrong people could die and they took it seriously.  The problem is that I don't know how long the sciences and engineering can hold out in modern academia.  There are many, many jobs that not just anyone can do.  Do you want the doctor doing your surgery chosen because they identified as a certain protected class, or do you want them to be the best surgeon in the area (if not the best on earth)?  If you're in this car, do you want to be sitting under a bridge designed and built by people chosen for their diversity points or by people who do the math and sweat the details? 

Racist.