Ethnic Studies 101: Playing the Victim. An aggrieved Harvard professor exemplifies how a fast-rising academic field injects paranoia and hatred into American culture.

City Journal ^ | January 16, 2020 | Heather Mac Donald

[karpov]

On November 27, 2019, Harvard University denied tenure to an ethnic-studies professor specializing in Dominican identity. Students and faculty at Harvard and across the country sprung into protest mode. The failure to tenure Lorgia García Peña, they said, resulted from Harvard’s racism. NBC Nightly News, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and other outlets covered the controversy from the same angle.

In fact, García Peña had been catapulted into the academic firmament with a speed that most non-intersectional professors can only dream of. She has been showered with benefits. Thirty-one percent of Harvard’s tenure-track professors lost their tenure bids in the 2018‒19 academic year without alleging bias, since most of those failed contenders were white. Yet García Peña has gone through her academic career playing the victim, reflexively accusing those around her of white supremacy. In this, she is a perfect synecdoche for ethnic studies itself, which also stakes its identity on the conceit that it is in a nonstop battle for survival against the forces of racism and exclusion.

To the contrary, ethnic studies is ascendant. It is spreading rapidly throughout K‒12 schools; its ideology has already bled into the political realm. It’s worth reviewing García Peña’s career as an emblem of a fast-rising academic field whose worldview is taking over American culture.

In April 2019, García Peña published an op-ed about her travails as an ethnic-studies professor. After referencing Trayvon Martin as an example of the “violence and destruction based on bigotry and hate” that permeates all levels of our society, she urged readers to “dig deeper into the ‘seamless’ ways in which white supremacy shapes our institutions and every aspect of our lives.” (The rationale for García Peña’s scare quotes around “seamless” is unclear.)

[Da Coyote]

Ethnic studies.
Right up there with phrenology on the ladder of intellectual accomplishments.
Sooner or later, we will start shaming folks who were stupid enough to throw their money into the sewer by getting such a worthless and totally non academic degree.

[aynrandfreak]

Warren didn’t even know how to properly wield her fake-Native American ancestry!

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Henry Louis Gates Jr. was years ahead of these bozos. He has parlayed his victimhood into a pretty good career after the beer summit.

[ActresponsiblyinVA]

Is tenure at Harvard based on merit or other factors?

[Nothingburger]

Very long piece by the estimable Heather MacDonald.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Heather Mac Donald is a warrior!

[Responsibility2nd]

These morons don’t seem to understand that paranoia, hatred and other social ills are a DIRECT RESULT of the elitist Educrats that want to destroy white culture and transform America into a third world shit hole.

Or even worse. Into a mirror image of California.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Is tenure at Harvard based on merit or other factors?

Like anything else related to getting into Harvard, obtaining tenure has never been easy

[Nuke From Orbit]

“These morons don’t seem to understand that paranoia, hatred and other social ills are a DIRECT RESULT of the elitist Educrats that want to destroy white culture and transform America into a third world shit hole.
Or even worse. Into a mirror image of California.”

Nailed it!

I think that the education system in this country is completely broken. I am in school now and the amount of liberal BS that is being forced into degree programs is a waste of people’s money but it is a huge cash cow for the universities.

[Renkluaf]

Grievance Studies!

[higgmeister]

What does a “fast-rising academic field” mean?

[MarkL]

The only thing that a degree in “Ethnic Studies” prepares one for is graduate school for “Ethnic Studies.”

The only thing a graduate school degree in “Ethnic Studies” prepares one for are post-graduate degrees, or teaching an “Ethnic Studies” class.

Mark

[Gay State Conservative]

Merit? What a racist word for you to use!

[Saltmeat]

Any college degree that contains the word “studies” is a degree in unemployment. When I was in school the only “studies” degree available was General Studies. If you earned this diploma, it signified that you learned a little something about a lot, and not much about anything. Mostly you learned in college what you should have learned in high school.