Academics are to blame for the woke wreckage at universities - Article in the Times

[Igneococcus]

This is an interesting article. I don't know the authors at all. They talk quite a bit about GI
https://www.thetimes.com/article/09e33a82-4ba0-41c5-b719-48f5c99663b4?shareToken=2021545388163b2aa60081d99389e569

Such a damning article. And so true. Pretty sure Julie Bindel did an interview with the second author, Kodsi, very recently. Must go listen to it.

Does kind of assume all academics were in on this. Some weren't - and Jo Phoenix and Rosa Freedman come to mind.

I'm an academic. I feel very pressured to toe the line. But what I would say is that most senior academics are older white men (which is why edi IS important in HE even if it's not been done in the best way) and most are utterly clueless about what the culture wars are all about. It doesn't really impact them so they go merrily nodding along.

Interesting reading and I suspect that they can ‘get away’ with being so public about their views only because they’re men. The article feels a bit too sweeping in its attack on woke by including concerns about dangerous policing along with transgenderism and I’d prefer them to have dealt with these issues differentially.

BLM protests were in response to the horrendous death of George Floyd, a considerably different issue from Isla Bryson being housed in a female prison estate or a TW posting about their ‘woody’ whilst in a female domestic refuge.

And I disagree with that article’s headline. Academics are not to blame but rather university management chasing rating bodies. Though certainly supported and advocated by faculty in a variety of departments such as gender studies but also, disappointingly, law and even life sciences.

Judith Butler listed thousands of times more often than Plato is a depressing statistic. That woman has done so much damage.

Ultimately it’s this issue of ‘correction’ that worries me. As much as I despair at the current craziness on campuses, having a political party like Reform dictating what is allowable thinking in a university worries me.

They are publishing a book next year which is probably why there are so many different aspects in this one article.
It will be interesting to see how much backlash they'll get.

They had me at 'Academic's are to blame'. Yep 👍

They don't assume that at all. They don't mention those two, but they do mention Kathleen Stock and a few other academics who have spoken out.

Very interesting, this point especially

What comes next? The position of academia today resembles, in certain respects, that of financial institutions on the eve of the 2008 crash. Universities have been peddling the intellectual equivalent of collateral debt obligations, the bomb that set off the 2008 financial crisis, which mixed together valuable products and toxic ones. Insulated from accountability to the market by the bubble of student loan debt, universities have had the latitude to behave in ways that have not only helped shred their credibility but now justify, indeed, necessitate, external intervention.

BLM protests were in response to the horrendous death of George Floyd

I'll be honest, I never understood why BLM took off so much in the UK, where there absolutely is racism but taking the knee at a football match just wasn't part of UK culture at all. BLM came across as an American movement for American problems and I can't see what impact it had at all in the UK, apart from selling some books.

I'm not sure that's a particularly good analogy. The collateral debt obligation (CDO) 'bomb' was just that, a time bomb. It was inevitable that at some point investors in CDOs were going to find that their investment was worthless, and a financial crisis would be the result.

There is no similar inevitability about what is happening in universities. In my (admittedly limited) experience, group think and adherence to a 'correct' way of thinking was rife in academia even before the current issues took hold. This could go on for decades without some external intervention.

Archive of the article: archive.ph/4YbBy

I’m an academic and this is such an enormous generalisation. There are thousands of academics not interested in promoting the “omni-cause”, which tends to be concentrated in social sciences.

The move to embrace all things trans comes strongly from student pressure, reinforced by the rainbow lanyard-wearers amongst academic and admin staff. We are policed re correct pronoun use for students in our classes, and “module evaluation” is via an anonymous student questionnaire where students are free to cast any accusations they like around, for which we have no comeback. So we are careful to avoid upsetting the special
people because anonymous abuse is not good for staff mental health.

When dealing with fragile, often autistic or ADHD trans-identified young people, the atmosphere is one of treading on eggshells not to cause offence or trigger an official complaint by a student. and for some of these students, it is incredibly easy to cause offence.

Almost all my immediate colleagues think it is nonsense, but we keep our heads down to avoid a pile-on by the self-righteous brigade. Universities take student complaints against staff members seriously even if they have little merit.

It was inevitable that at some point investors in CDOs were going to find that their investment was worthless

I think exactly the same can be said for universities, it's just that the 'investors' are different.

This is all absolutely spot on. And I would add one thing: the Professional Services staff are often more on board with the omni-cause than the academics are. I was in a meeting the other day where the Chair (someone from PS, and the attendees were also 80% PS) asked us to introduce ourselves using pronouns. The only people who didn’t piously declare them were me and another academic.

I was shocked by the claim in the article that EDI staff salaries have tripled over the last three years. Can this really be true? Anecdotally, the number, grades, and power of these staff have increased massively, our director of inclusion wields enormous power in the institution, including over academic freedom.

So we are careful to avoid upsetting the special people because anonymous abuse is not good for staff mental health.

When dealing with fragile, often autistic or ADHD trans-identified young people, the atmosphere is one of treading on eggshells not to cause offence or trigger an official complaint by a student. and for some of these students, it is incredibly easy to cause offence.

It's at least as hard on the 18-year-old students, newly away from home, who can tell male from female and daren't say so in front of their peers. Their mental health seems to be ignored.

Some are, many are cynics and definitely are not. I suspect a lot of it may be institution dependant. I speak on behalf of DH.

Professional services are just as much to blame. At most Unis you can try to express an objective opinion but if it doesn't toe the woke line, if it is in any way right of centre let alone in the Conservative right, just see what happens to you. You won't be punished openly. You will be frozen out, spoken to with a cold tone, with hostility, contempt. Senior staff will'discuss' you as a problem and potentially try to pin something on you. You will go into meetings about your work and find you are treated without respect, in many small ways such that you would sound crazy trying to voice them. You can try to move up but won't get the promotion you seek. Unis are supposed to fully support freedom of speech and political views but they don't. Try going to a national Times Higher conference to see staff from many/most executive bodies in one place and hear how aggressively left of centre they are as a group.

The issue being, there are activists and there are those keeping their heads down.

While I 100% understand those keeping their head down - and I might well have adopted that strategy myself if I was there - the very nature of keeping one's head down is to stay under the radar. So it can hardly be surprising if those outside can only see the act

Sorry

Only see the activists.

I agree it is hard on other students who think it is all nonsense.

That doesn’t detract from the tightrope we are walking as staff. It is not “either/or”.

It isn’t good for anyone in the university community to keep up the pretence that we all believe in gender-ideology, and the very special kid-gloves treatment for the students who are most likely to kick off on a small “trigger”.

If you're talking about the students, I agree, but that's missing my point.

The CDO scandal (or scam) was bound to unravel eventually. I don't think there's such an inevitability about what's happening in universities. Although if it's really being orchestrated by students, if trans becomes unfashionable, then it may eventually burn itself out. I think the requirement to be left wing as an academic and hold certain 'accepted' views may last a lot longer though.

Agree it's moreso the professional service staff.

I'd be surprised if edi salaries have gone up because we've had restructure and redundancy in our EDI teams. Perhaps the salary of those left is higher because they have got rid of a lot of the more junior staff? One of the challenges is the EDI staff are largely from student union and activist backgrounds so they are fully aligned to the student agendas rather than staff issues. They have very little knowledge of employment law for example and many do not understand what academics actually do.

I’m an academic (RG prof) and this is very very faculty dependent. I’ve never taught a trans student and the main point at which this directly affected me was when we were asked to put pronouns on our email signatures. I said absolutely not. Some of my colleagues are full on TWAW. I’m baffled as to how they can believe this. The majority aren’t. I agree with the points about group think in universities. This has long been an issue. I do my best to have quiet conversations with people and also to object to various things (managed to get a form changed recently to reflect sex rather than gender - i had protested back in 2018 or so and been ignored so that’s progress). These authors are from Philosophy where I suspect this is compulsory.

It's anti-truth, and producing students who are fools, and unemployable to boot.

Just as university costs in many countries are increasing for students.

I see more and more parents and students being sceptical of university education, including some of the brightest and most inclined to think creatively. They can see that it seems they will not be able to discuss important ideas, that students seem to come out indoctrinated, and at the end they just have a lot of debt. Not uncommonly graduating without being able to do a close reading of a text or write a coherent long form argument.

At the same time, employers are not finding university grads add value, sometimes the opposite.

Among my kids friends, compared to my own generation, only a few seem to plan to go to university. Many more are going right into work, apprenticeships, business courses, or other paths.

Universities have been bloated up for several decades with far more students than they should ever have had, and they have built infrastructure and hired staff on that basis. When increasing numbers don't see a personal nor a career benefit and don't attend, the institutions are going to crash.