Friday 15 March 2019

Friday Light Relief: a Belly-Laugh from the SJWs

So over in the US of A, where they are sore afflicted by student lunacy of both the pitiful snowflake variety and the pernicious SJW kind, there is a 'liberal arts college' just north of New York City in Yonkers, NY called Sarah Lawrence College.  (I presume that good lady has long since spun herself clean out of her grave.)  Students are predominantly female (are we allowed to say that?), a legacy from the early days when it was founded as a women's college.  45 US States and 53 countries are represented in the student body.  From their website:
Its pedagogy ... a rigorous personalized approach to education, modeled on the tutorial system of Oxford University and the theories of educator and philosopher John Dewey. These educational strategies continue at Sarah Lawrence today ... Our students are men and women who share an enthusiasm for intellectual rigor
Right.   Well kindly don't blame Oxford for what's happening just now; and don't be too quick to claim 'intellectual rigor', either.  The SJWs there have assembled a long, long list of impossibilist (and deeply illiberal) demands in the name of the Diaspora Coalition, under the ringing slogan: If the College does not accept these demands, it will no longer be hailed as a progressive institution but instead remembered for its inability to truly embody its self-proclaimed progressive ideology and support all students against an international rising tide of white supremacy and fascism.
  • We demand a mandatory first-year orientation session about intellectual elitism and classism
  • We demand that the College offer classes that embody intersectionality, as defined by KimberlĂ© Williams Crenshaw, and address the racial diversity of the LGBTQ+ community instead of centering whiteness 
And so it goes on, for 94 pages.  Have a laugh and read them all in a quiet moment, it's awful and highly predictable stuff  -  or, just possibly, satire and spoof, but I doubt it.  Rigor?  Rigor mortis, more like.  But it is all made worthwhile by the following cri de coeur, nestling incongruously amongst the blood-curdling sub-Maoist drivel and rant:
All campus laundry rooms are to supply laundry detergent and softener on a consistent basis for all students, faculty and staff.
Hurrah!  Picture the scene: everyone is sitting cross-legged on the floor, taking it in turns to denounce President Cristle Collins Judd (sic) as a racist cisgender purveyor of actual harm to LGBTQI+'s of color everywhere ... when Angielou-Maybelle LaTrine declares for the fourteenth time:  err, sisters, what about the laundry detergent?  -  we should demand softener!  And it must be replenished every week.  And it must be Fragrant RosePetal fragrance.  Every time!  Not just whatever the drugstore has on discount.  Sisters?  Sisters ..?

OK honey, yeah, whatever.  We'll include the detergent, yeah ... yes, and the softener, OK?  Now, about those facist m***********s ...

ND  

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's two that stood out for me:

Diasporic Studies

Students of color should not be forced to resort to racist white professors in order to have access to their own history. It is crucial that the College offer courses taught about people of color by people of color so that students may engage in and produce meaningful work that represents them authentically.

Mental Health Support for Students of Color

We demand the College provide and support at least:

One new Black therapist

One new Asian therapist

One new Latinx therapist

It's worrying when you can only see a person by their race and then assume (without irony)it's all-whitey's that by are default all being racist.

If critical race theory has been around for 30 years and has got us to this point, have far along this train of delusion can we go - what does higher education look like in 20 years?

Anonymous said...

Whilst the ridiculousness of this is amusing, I already see this kind of thinking becoming so pervasive in the corporate world.

Maybe I work in a SJW hell hole but already this year we're having diversity and inclusion drilled into us - we all have to attend an unconscious bias course.

People saying how the gender pay gap reporting regulations are a great idea (To think it's the conservatives that introduced this into law!).

DJK said...

To be fair, "All campus laundry rooms are to supply laundry detergent and softener on a consistent basis ...." may just mean that some laundry rooms already get detergent and softener but that the student body ask that it be handed out to all, impartially.

Charlie said...

In my line of work, I move between large investment banks on a fairly regular basis (new employer, sorry, client, every 6-12 months). They are all fully bought in to all this crap. Some more than others, but still, the core assumption of all their HR policies is white man bad, anything else good.

As for higher education in two decades? Largely online, and all the better for it.

E-K said...

I'm not reading it. I wish to remain woke.

CJ Nerd said...

Presumably it would go without saying that they should boycott Persil:


*** Trigger warning ***

Persil advert (0m46s).

"Whiter whites show my whole wash is cleaner".

Raedwald said...

"The UK has a critical productivity problem. What are we doing about it?"

"Well, we're deliberately employing and promoting staff on the basis of characteristics that have nothing to do with economic efficiency"

"So we're lowering our productivity even more?"

"Well, yes. We simply can't reward staff any more based simply on how productive they are. It's not lawful."

"And are our competitors in India and China doing the same?"

"Of course not. They're hiring purely on productive merit"

"And do those in government know what's happening?"

"Know? They started it all - refusing to give contracts to firms that didn't use non-productivity based criteria for hiring and rewarding staff...."

Anonymous said...

I have taught a few Sarah Lawrence students, on study-abroad programmes in London. Their college administration prides itself on "encouraging our students to challenge their professors." In other words, they were argumentative bitches.

Let's see how the college administrators like it when it happens to them.

E-K said...

More seriously - this isn't funny.

These people will be in charge in ten years.

I really can see gulags and machine gun towers. At the moment all you can lose is your job if you put a foot slightly wrong. And I NEVER thought I'd be able to say that 20 years ago.

Anonymous said...

"classes that embody intersectionality, as defined by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, and address the racial diversity of the LGBTQ+ community instead of centering whiteness.."
This is wonderful stuff, Dave Spart on acid, material the average Guardian columnist should be plagiarising this minute. When reading for a degree I thought the student-politician types at my place were pitiful, irritating, self-abusing, somewhat crazed wackos, but this lot take the biscuit. Do they ever plan to participate in, er, paid employment? Have they taken pains to ensure this stuff doesn't linger on in their social media footprint...?

Y Ddraig Goch said...

RE: Malcolm Stevas

"Do they ever plan to participate in, er, paid employment?"

Oh definitely. Part of the reason for all the demands is to bully the college/university into creating swathes of diversicrat "jobs" that the whining students can graduate into. In the first iteration those jobs might be confined to the education sector but it won't take long to spread to government and then real business. (The engineering company that I work for already has a "gender specialist" in HR.) Funding this stuff is one of the drivers of soaring college fees in the US.

"Have they taken pains to ensure this stuff doesn't linger on in their social media footprint...?"

You have it backwards. This stuff is the jewel in the crown of their campaign to secure lavishly paid diversicrat non-jobs. If they have any concern at all it is that their toddler tantrums won't be prominent enough.

Thud said...

EK, already having to spend time deprogramming my kids from school rubbish (by and large a good school) did your lads escape unharmed?

E-K said...

Thud.

The med student is a bit leftist but can be lived with. The chemist is a proper Conservative. It was touch and go whether he was going to apply to Oxbridge for a combination of History and Philosphy but he went for a less political degree as he could not stand the line he was going to have to tow.

A real shame as that's where his aptitude lies but he's in for a first at a Russell Group in his M Chem anyway. A PhD likely.

May come in useful for the UK's new industry which will be the production of narcotics.

Anonymous said...

You can study history and philosophy by reading books, but for chemistry (and other sciences) you need a properly equipped lab and helpful technicians. So if undecided between a science subject and an arts subject, it's right to pick the science subject.

He can research the history of chemistry on the side.

Don Cox

Nick Drew said...

Don - @ You can study history and philosophy by reading books

History, yes. But philosophy requires wrangling. Plus, in the anglophone tradition, you need some formal Logic which (like maths) is really hard to get to grips with solo / via books

andrew said...

Formal logic

Memories....

Asked a tutor about "laws of form"
After an hour or so worked out he did not understand either.

E-K said...

I don't understand things either when the 'kids' come home and start having fancy debates. They plus a student gf are coming on holiday with us so Scrabble is going to be fun, isn't it.

Anonymous said...

Along with Anon1.25 & Charlie3.08 I see his crap in the workplace actively promoted by eager ambitious types throughout the firm. After all what better way to raise your profile than by promoting diversity (apart from in the ME offices of course) rather than doing anything. Besides jobs to be had in many a bank to educate the masses away from their CIS normative behaviours.

Unsure of the American firms are the worst or if the poison is all pervasive.

Nick Drew said...

There is a thesis (arising from the genuinely socialist US Left, who despise 'Identity-' and 'Intersectional-' politics), that diversity-for-its-own-sake (as a spurious 'benefit in its own right') actually stems from its adoption by US HR departments - who espoused it initially for the easy life / avoiding lawsuits, and invented an entirely fallacious 'logic' for it, i.e. that different viewpoints make for better decisions

unhappily, ignorant diverse viewpoints make for, errrr ...

Charlie said...

I'm waiting for one of the big corps to realise that diversity isn't strength, actually. The highest achieving teams I've worked in were comprised of people who were broadly similar in work ethic, attitude, Intellect and sense of humour. Some were "diverse" in the SJW sense of having women, BAME, gay etc by pure accident.

Conversely, the shittiest workplaces I've spent time in are the ones where the bloke next to you is Polish, across the desk Is a Yank, a Chinese person on the other side, maybe a Canadian, an Egyptian and an Italian thrown in too. Zero shared culture, zero banter, zero real team spirit (but plenty of wanky corporate emails boasting of how much people love their jobs) and, when it comes down to brass tacks, not a whole lot actually being done.

Still, actually doing stuff doesn't seem to get you anywhere in the modern blue chip.

Nick Drew said...

Charlie - @ I'm waiting for one of the big corps to realise ...

Isn't the fruitful C21st dynamic as follows? Start-ups (which, no coincidence, is where the good new ideas gain traction) don't suffer this affliction and - while they remain small & "broadly similar in work ethic ..." etc - make great strides accordingly

and people working for the blue chips who do have good ideas, break away to form these start-ups

the cycle goes even further: because then the blue chips buy them up!** (but these days, tend to leave them to their own devices as much as possible) Everybody knows, really ...
__________________________
** recent example, from my sector: LimeJump - set up by a guy ex-Centrica / v. dynamic & successful development of his Good Idea / just bought up by Shell !