Posted on 05/09/2022 6:41:36 AM PDT by karpov
During the years I taught college English, I had a ringside seat watching a new breed of Jacobins seize control of a university English department, then extend their reach throughout the humanities. Posing as the champions of “social justice,” they have built an empire cultivating “victims”—and silencing colleagues who oppose the new mission of the radical left. For four decades they have ruled universities nationwide, but my focus here is upon the hoodoo they have inflicted upon North Carolina’s Big Four universities.
My first exposure to the type came in August, 1984, when new department head John Bassett announced plans to take N.C. State’s English department in a “radically new direction” that would reinvent English studies as a “social science” and showcase faculty who impose “gender-deconstructionist,” “Marxo-constructivist,” or “post-structuralist” interpretations on classical literature. Dr. Bassett was simply following the nationwide trend that recast English professors as liberators of the oppressed and recast great writers as the enemies of women, people of color, and the underclass.
By 1988, Bassett’s acolytes were in charge—but only after a battle so fierce one reporter likened it to “an academic Beirut.” Their formula for success, hatched in the 70s, introduced here in the 80s, alive and well in 2022, goes something like this: take a crop of Ph.Ds who land jobs in Research I institutions and who know they must publish something original, something “cutting edge,” or perish. Now imagine a crop of upstarts competing to invent a new angle on Hamlet or Huck—then spotting the opening. If, prior to 1980, scholars had called classical literature the hallmark of our Western heritage, the neophytes would invert that premise and call great works the scourge of Western civilization—as the last refuge of racism, sexism, and all the other isms perpetrated by dead white males.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Depending on which degree program, you or your kid can well be dumber leaving than you were going in. And unemployable and in debt for your troubles.
The issue is ALWAYS The Revolution.
Bassett’s bio.
Congressional Record—Appendix, pp. A34-A35
Current Communist Goals
EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, January 10, 1963
Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism,
and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of
communism in America.
At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,”
which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen:
CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be
used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question
by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations
are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world
government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily
by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the
curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, and policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was
told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion
pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, and healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for
intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of
“separation of church and state.” (Remember these goals were published to expose them in 1958) Coincidence?
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to
cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a
minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies,
welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures, which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric
disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who
oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and
retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and
special-interest groups should rise up and use [”] united force [”] to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over
domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.
Is there another link that will work? I tried a couple of times and this link does not work.
I attended Minnesota State University in Moorhead, Minnesota from 1967-1971. The largest department on campus was the English Department, it had about twenty-five to thirty full time tenured or tenured track professors. Today they have twelve. It looks like students voted with their feet and fewer students major in the subject.
Excellent article.
The root issue is that too many people have gone into the academic world, overloaded by the faulty assumption that everyone had to go to college.
Like most extreme social conditions, there will be a corresponding reaction, and we’re starting to see it a bit now, and it will be more pronounced, I believe. The over-supply of ‘humanities’ will slowly be reduced, and this current emphasis on inane social justice constructs will only drive rational student-consumers away as it continues to radicalize.
Who knows, the next great academic novelty may be deconstructing these social justice clowns.
I was curious as to which university was the last of her “big four” (three seemed obvious: UNC-CH, Duke, NC State) so violated protocol and read the article. The fourth one is Wake Forest, which is much smaller in terms of student enrollment than UNC-Charlotte or UNC-Greensboro.
“The issue is ALWAYS The Revolution.”
Bears repeating.
And they want you DEAD.
I saw this coming 25 years ago. I told my nephews to learn a trade. They are auto mechanics and make good money and have no debt.
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