Posted on 01/29/2015 5:38:48 AM PST by SJackson
Upon witnessing the trials of Nazi war criminals in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt remarked that they shared in common one salient feature: “it was not stupidity,” she said, “but a curious, quite authentic inability to think.” This inability or refusal to think is on full display in a student editorial—“Occupy the Syllabus”—that was recently published by The Daily Californian.
Rodrigo Kazuo and Meg Perret are Berkeley students who are none too pleased by—surprise, surprise—the lack of gender and racial diversity among the canon of assigned authors in most humanities and social sciences courses. In short, there are just too many white guys that students are expected to know about.
The students’ “call” for an “occupation of syllabi” was “instigated” by their experience in “an upper-division course in classical social theory.” The syllabus for this course is scandalous, for it “employed a standardized canon of theory that began with Plato and Aristotle, then jumped to modern philosophers: Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, Marx, Weber and Foucault, all of whom are white men.” Not “a single woman or person of color” was included.
Kazuo and Perret insist that it is “absurd” for these courses to “pretend that a miniscule fraction of humanity—economically privileged white males from…imperial countries…—are the only people to produce valid knowledge of the world.” The authors convict the “white male syllabus” for “silencing the perspectives of the other 99 percent of humanity.”
These white theorists can’t relate to “the lives of marginalized peoples,” or “gender or racial oppression.” In fact, they didn’t “even engage with the enduring legacies of European colonial expansion, the enslavement of black people and the genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas.” When “race and gender” are mentioned in “the white male canon,” they “are at best incomplete and at worst racist and sexist.”
“The standardized canon,” Kazuo and Perret conclude, “is obsolete.” While their course in “social theory” purported to be “relevant” to the day’s issues, its failure to “address gender and racial oppression” belied that claim.
Yet the failures of the white male canon aren’t merely theoretical: they affect non-white, non-male students adversely. The student writers allege that “the classroom environment [in their classical social theory course] felt so hostile to women, people of color, queer folks and other marginalized subjects that it was difficult for us to focus on course material.” Even worse, there were times “when we felt so uncomfortable that we had to leave the classroom in the middle of a lecture.” Kazuo and Perret offer as an example of such moments the time that their instructor, while lecturing on Marx, noted the plausibility of the latter’s theory of “the natural division of labor” between the sexes given that women tend to get pregnant. When a student objected that this does not apply to transgendered people, the instructor replied that there will always be “’exceptions.’” Then, presumably to lighten the mood, he joked: “’We may all be transgendered one day’.” Kazuo and Perret warn that “mocking” and referring to transgendered persons as “’exceptions’ is unacceptable.”
In conclusion, the authors encourage other students to help them to “restructure the way social theory is taught.” The white male canon is a “tyranny” that students must “dismantle [.]” In its place, students must “demand the inclusion of women, people of color and LGBTQ* [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer] authors on our curricula.”
Only in so doing can students hope to “break, systematically and explicitly, the epistemological assumptions on which this exclusionary education rests.”
Kazuo and Perret end their essay with a question: “Is it really worth it to accumulate debt for such an epistemically poor education?”
Given both the content and logic of their op-ed, how can we answer this question with any answer other than a resounding no! These poor students, like the vast majority of their peers in liberal arts departments around the country, have indeed been getting the shaft. But this is because they are not receiving an education at all; rather, it is training, or maybe indoctrination, in an ideology, a doctrine or creed, of which they are the unfortunate recipients.
It is obvious, so painfully obvious, that these Berkeley students are paralyzed by “the inability to think” to which Arendt alludes. Their essay amounts to a caricature of the Politically Correct orthodoxy, i.e. the militant leftist ideology, for which academia has become known—and for which it is routinely ridiculed. In an essay that can’t be more than a 1,000 words, there is scarcely a leftist stock phrase, cliché, or sacred cow that isn’t exploited.
The problem, though, is not that the students are incapable of thinking beyond leftist stock phrases and clichés; the problem is that they are incapable of thinking beyond stock phrases and clichés. As Arendt writes: “Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention which all events and facts arouse by virtue of their existence.”
Arendt admits that if “we were responsive to this claim [on our thinking attention] all of the time, we would soon be exhausted [.]” In other words, we must trade, at least much of the time, in “standardized codes of expression and conduct [.]” However, “the difference” between some of us and the average Nazi defendant that she observed is that the latter “clearly knew of no such claim” on his “thinking attention.”
And what was true in Eichmann seems equally true of these Berkeley students.
The latter can also be likened to some of Socrates’ pupils to whom Arendt refers, men who were not “content being taught how to think without being taught a doctrine,” a creed on which to hang their hats (italics added). Yet the activity of thinking “is equally dangerous to all creeds and, by itself, does not bring forth any new creed” (italics added).
Substantively, of course, Kazuo’s and Perret’s comments are outrageous. The point here, though, is that even if there was truth to them, that they are framed in terms of all of the buzzwords of any orthodoxy—in this case, the prevailing orthodoxy at Berkeley and in academia generally—reveals the shallowness of their intellects.
Moreover, Kazuo’s and Perret’s op-ed serves as an indictment of the faculty and administrators of their institution. Not only has Berkeley (like colleges and universities throughout the land) failed miserably to supply their students (in the liberal arts) with an education, the ability and willingness to interrogate their own most cherished doctrines. Berkeley has actually supplied them with the doctrine that resulted in this essay: After all, can anyone really doubt that Kazuo and Perret are, from tip to tail, the children of Berkeley?
Rather than occupying their instructors’ syllabi, the Kazuos and Perrets of the world would be much better served trying, for once, to occupy their own minds instead of allowing them to be fed with the dogmas and vapid slogans of their professors.
One day the normal people will get it. The left wants to eliminate Whites and all that they have done.
Anybody that goes into debt to get a Liberal Arts degree is an idiot.
Engineering, Medicine, Law, Business.
Anything else is a waste of time.
And even then you have to be careful that these departments have not been overrun by pie-eyed, pc, global warmist bedwetters and droolers.
Germany was NOT an imperial country before 1870. There was not even one Germany—only a bunch of German states. Nevertheless, Germany produced masterpieces of music, science, and philosophy. (Marxism was no masterpiece, however!)
The forced inclusion of LGBTs into the argument is offensive!!!! LGBTs are a pathology of postmodern radical-left society!!!!
These people are crazy, and are throwing away their opportunity to be truly educated, and to do any good in the world!!!!
Did these students mention the names of any notable philosophers they WOULD like to see included? These philosophers of color from the various colonized enclaves of the world? Or were they hindered by the fact that so many of the colonized hadn’t even had written language, much less deep-thinking philosophers whose thoughts were recorded for posterity?
Don’t forget Science!!!!
And what some people do with Law degrees is worse than liberal arts!!!!
On the whole, I tend to agree with you. There are; however, exceptions.
I have a PhD in an engineering discipline. My son, who is much smarter than I am, has a BA in English.
On the other hand, we is in a highly responsible job making a lot more money than I ever did.
The thing about humanities courses is that is harder to get a good job, but once your foot is in the door, you will probably rise faster because you know more about people, rather than things.
All this presupposes, of course, that a), you received a genuine course of study in classical Western thought, and b) you paid attention in class.
Still, I am quite happy in engineering, and he likes his job, too.
Deep thoughts from two members of the Participation Trophy Generation.
If my alumni magazine is any guide, the law school I graduated from (midwestern publicly funded) is overrun by climate/gender/Native American/black studies idiots.
“Substantively, of course, Kazuo’s and Perret’s comments are outrageous”
I don’t understand the point of this article. if the students’ outrageousness is so obvious why didn’t the author just print their article and leave it at that?
When one hears the word “diversity”, one should run, run, run.
It is the call of a weak mind (if there is a mind there at all).
Whites are and have been Western Civilization, the greatest the earth has ever seen.
Students are indoctrinated. To disagree with the professor is anathema.
In the past, students were encouraged to think for themselves and to learn to think for themselves. The more they argued with the teacher, the more delighted the teacher was.
Not so today!
Yep. This isn't about 'equality'(whatever that is) or any other noble sounding BS. It is about eliminating Whites from the playing field and destroying Western Culture and it's history.
"Even worse, there were times 'when we felt so uncomfortable that we had to leave the classroom in the middle of a lecture.'”
A far cry from the men, women, and children who went West in covered wagons--who carved the greatest, richest, most powerful, most just nation the world has ever known out of a wilderness--the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and smashed the Nazi and fascist death regimes--the men, women, and children who relied only upon themselves to survive, to thrive, and to prevail! Strong--tough--wise--just--self-reliant--puissant!
I was about to ask the same. “Put up or shut up!”
I see the author using the article to make a point of his own - concerning the current state of liberal arts education. Seems legit.
If they’re going to ban white people’s ideas they include white people’s inventions in the ban. For example, they should immediately stop using the printing press, the flush toilet, the computer, solar cells, the telephone. and anything with a motor or that uses electrical power.
include ==> should include
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