The Academic Mob Rules

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304363104577391842133259230.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop ^ | May 8, 2012 | Naomi Schaefer Riley

[Academiadotorg]

: Instead of encouraging wide discussion, the Chronicle of Higher Education fires a blogger.

Recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a cover story called "Black Studies: 'Swaggering Into the Future,'" in which the reporter described how "young black-studies scholars . . . are less consumed than their predecessors with the need to validate the field or explain why they are pursuing doctorates in their discipline." The "5 Up-and-Coming Ph.D. Candidates" described in the piece's sidebar "are rewriting the history of race." While the article suggested some are skeptical of black studies as a discipline, the reporter neglected to quote anyone who is.

Like me. So last week, on the Chronicle's "Brainstorm" blog (where I was paid to be a regular contributor), I suggested that the dissertation topics of the graduate students mentioned were obscure at best and "a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap," at worst.

For instance, the author of a dissertation on the history of black midwifery began her research, she told the Chronicle, because she "noticed that nonwhite women's experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature." Another graduate student blamed the housing crisis in America on institutional racism. And a third argued that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and John McWhorter have "played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them."

The reaction to my blog post ranged from puerile to vitriolic.

[p. henry]

More than 40 years ago, my late father, who was then a professor at a liberal arts college in the Midwest, opposed the creation of a black studies department in part on essentially the same grounds and, in addition to receiving many of the same responses, was physically threatened. Since he was over six and half feet tall and weighed in at 225, and was a veteran of two wars, the intimidation was not particularly effective. He did, however, lose the debate, despite the fact that many of the faculty secretly agreed with him. They were just too cowardly to speak in support of their views. Now those faculty are gone, and the current professoriate seems to actually believe these politicized grievance mills serve a true academic purpose.