There was a time … But was there? Was there ever a time when universities were ideology-neutral, save for that minimal set of commitments required for universities to perform their function? Thinking there was is a bit like Trump wanting to make America great again. It never was all that great. And neither were universities ever truly ideology-neutral.
    In Christian Europe they started out for the formation of the clergy. In Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union they were established for the training of political commissars. So the halcyon days we’re really talking about are that less than a century in a few rarified, mostly English-speaking institutions, that have now sadly ceased to be what many of us signed on for when we became academics. I say many of us, but not, apparently, enough of us to protect universities from the demand that they return to training clergy and commissars.
    Some of us – Heterodox Academy, FIRE, the NAS in the U.S., and their counterparts in England, Canada, and the Antipodes – are continuing to fight the good fight. But I think most of us realise it’s a lost cause. Is there any way to find it again? To give ourselves at least a fighting chance? Certainly not if we continue to give uptake to the rules of engagement that have been laid down for us by the enemy.
    We’ve been focused – because the enemy’s been focused – on EDI, identity politics, reified post-modernism, wokeism, and so on. We’ve been fixated by their rhetoric. And so we’ve developed a counter-rhetoric of our own, bethinking ourselves the better rhetoricians. But we’re not. And even if we were, we’re missing the forest for the trees. It’s not that there’s something deep going on here. What’s going on is what’s always going on. What’s going on is just the standard battle over material resources. BLM: Black people want what now gets spun as ‘reparations’. EDI: Candidates who couldn’t compete with their betters want merit replaced with skin colour, or sexual orientation, or whatever will give them the leg up. And so on.
    The mistake – and I think it’s our mistake – is thinking this gives us the moral high ground, and them the low. Their counter – and we do ourselves a disservice by dismissing it – is the tu quoque. We’ve always used our skin colour or sexual orientation or whatever would give us the leg up. And the only way we can say, “Oh, but that’s different!”, is to say these gave us the leg up because they’re inductively associated with superior performance. That is, we’re back to claiming white (or hetero or whatever) superiority. So what we’re really saying is what Trump is saying. Back in the day the way things were was better for pretty much all concerned, including the so-called subaltern.
    Well, were they?
    This would be a simple empirical question if we could all agree on what counts as better and worse. But we can’t. Or at least we don’t. Or at least we pretend not to. Flush toilets and smart phones be damned, the life of the Indian was better pre-contact. Shakespeare had nothing over rap. That kind of thing.
    Well, say I, let’s take them at their word. We can’t go back to where we came from. And neither can they. But we can leave each to his own. Only this time, unlike in South Africa, let’s make it separate but truly equal.
    As I (and others) have noted elsewhere, this is already happening. But if we’re not going home, let’s go big. Let every city have two universities, one woke and one un-. And let students choose between them. No, you say? Then explain why not. Is it because you think we’d all prefer being unscathed by the coloniser’s education? Or is it because you don’t want anyone to be scathed by it?
    So they’re right. There’s no such thing as value-neutral education. Never was and never will be. They want to make it their values, and they think we want to make it ours. Let’s disabuse them of this. Let’s render unto Caesar those institutions that are now Caesar’s. And let’s start up our own. But let’s set out a few extra chairs. I think we’re going to have a lot of crossovers.
   

Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy

Tags: BLM, EDI, FIRE, Heterodox Academy, identity politics, NAS, wokeism