Academiarchy

A well written peek into the suppurating cesspit that is SJW academia (which is most of it). The cracks in the edifice are being exposed, ironically, by #MeToo hypocrisy. The author would appear to be risking her career, so I find it remarkable. It’s also remarkable it could be published.

Added to the DoJ support for Asian applicants’ suit against Harvard, DeVos finally insisting Title IX must observe due process, and the fear inspired vitriol directed against Professors Jordan Peterson, Johnathan Haidt, Christina Hoff Sommers, Brett Weinstein, Charles Murray, and Stephen Pinker, this is encouraging.

If you’ve ever wondered where the Left’s version of Jordan Peterson is, there isn’t one. Oh, there are academic superstars like Avital Ronell (and Catherine McKinnon and Judith Butler, for example) all over the place. But they can’t be called “public” intellectuals because their ideas are agenda driven, deliberately obtuse, and generally abhorrent to the public.

And Ronell’s defenders know it. Judith Butler’s cringing apology is instructive, and essentially admits to autonomic tribalism. Basically, “We rose in righteous anger because the punishment didn’t fit the crime, even though we didn’t know what the crime was.”

Oops. Ronell is a female Harvey Weinstein, but they couldn’t wait to find that out before reflexively attacking her accuser.

#MeToo leader Asia Argento couldn’t be reached for comment.

Rapist credits

The real-world judicial system impinges upon the Jared Polis plan.

Representative Polis (D-CO) says that because we can reasonably assume that of 10 accused campus rapists 2 are actually guilty, we should force-transfer all 10 to other universities. One obvious consequence is that the receiving institutions would be enrolling 2 real rapists whose crimes go unpunished. Another is that no one could be sure if they got a real rapist, so they’d have to act as if all 10 had actually committed rape. I’m not sure what that would mean, but I wonder about the legal liability for any university which accepts someone who is subsequently accused of committing a(nother) rape. Surveillance 24/7?

Another result of Mr. Polis’ plan is that 8 accused rapists would be in a position to sue the originating institution. In fact, to preserve what little of their reputation they would have left, all 10 would be incentivized to file suit. Nobody knows which 2 are guilty, so the odds are good for all of them.

Polis does not explain why any university would want to enroll accused rapists. Perhaps we would need to supply an incentive: Maybe something analogous to carbon credits. Think of accused rapists as coal-fired power plants and complainants as newly planted trees. Why not establish a credit system for the transfer of complainants?

Math is hard, but if 1 in 5 campus men accused of rape is guilty, then 4 of 5 of accusations are false. For every 5 complainants transferred into your institution you could avoid accepting 1 accused rapist. That increases your tuition base. Further, transferring all complainants would address a larger proportion of the problem (4 liars become somebody else’s problem), while simultaneously endangering fewer women on the new campus than the transfer of a single rapist.

It does put a whole new group of men at higher risk of false accusations, but who cares?

It also doesn’t put the real rapists behind bars. But that isn’t the point, is it?

‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first – verdict afterwards.’

With Representative Jared Polis (D – Boulder, CO) and soon to be former Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton (D – Carpetbag, AR) channeling Iracebeth of Crims, I am reminded not just of Lewis Carroll, but also Joseph Heller and Franz Kafka.

The trial of the Knave in Alice in Wonderland, Clevinger’s Court Martial in Catch-22 and Joeseph K.’s year imprisoned in The Trial have much in common with the kangaroo court system Jared and Hillary want to establish.

Carroll:

“If there’s no meaning in it,” said the King, “that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn’t try to find any.”

Heller:

Clevinger was guilty, of course, or he would not have been accused, and since the only way to prove it was to find him guilty, it was their patriotic duty to do so.

Kafka:

“[I]t is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.”

Polis:

I mean, if there’s 10 people that have been accused and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, [it] seems better to get rid of all 10 people. We’re not talking about depriving them of life or liberty, we’re talking about their transfer to another university.

Yep. They’re at liberty to apply to the University of Accused Rapists.

Hillary:

To every survivor of sexual assault… You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed. We’re with you.

The ‘right’ of the accuser to be believed eliminates the rights of the guilty and innocent alike. Who has the “right to be believed?” Well, in Hillary’s case, we know who doesn’t: Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick and Monica Lewinsky.

Always good intent they have

Actually, that’s not true, as Representative Jared Polis, D-CO and the people who applaud him are demonstrating.

Here’s what TITLE IX OF THE EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 1972 states:

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

That is called the “intent,” which for our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court should be sufficient to uphold the law even as it is transformed into Representative Polis’ desired result:

“Every male person enrolled in any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance in the United States shall be subject to summary expulsion from that program or activity if anyone, no matter how wildly specious their complaint, makes an accusation of “untoward” behavior as defined by unelected, judicially untrained administrators acting outside the Justice system and without reference to Constitutional protections. The parameters shall apply retroactively and be recodified contemporaneously with each and any accusation to reflect the suggestions of the three (3) most junior female-identifying clerks at the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights who possess a minimum Body Mass Index of 35.”

Gulag Academipelago

I described Title IX thinking just on Wednesday as, “It’s better that all innocent people be convicted than that one guilty person should go free.” Apparently, Representative Jared Polis, D-CO, took it as instruction, not criticism:

At a congressional hearing on campus sexual assault, Colorado Rep. Jared Polis suggested that expelling students based solely on the idea that they might have committed a crime is an acceptable standard. And the hearing audience applauded him.

Polis, a Democrat, was discussing due process and standards of evidence as they apply to colleges and universities adjudicating sexual assault. Currently, colleges must be only 50.01 percent sure that an accusation is valid before punishing an accused student (more on that later). Polis began advocating for allowing colleges to use a lower standard than that.

“I mean, if there’s 10 people that have been accused and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, seems better to get rid of all 10 people,” Polis said. “We’re not talking about depriving them of life or liberty, we’re talking about their transfer to another university.”

The ignorant little fascist neglected to ad, “Pour encourager les autres.”

Title IX as our conscience

Education Department rewards lying by twisting Title IX

[I]n a recent investigation finding Michigan State University in violation of Title IX, OCR [the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights] required college administrators to offer “remedies” to “Student A,” who both OCR and the university found had made a false allegation of unwelcome sexual misconduct against two fellow students. OCR’s reasoning was that the university did not begin proceedings against the accused students fast enough (even though it immediately kicked them out of their dorm and ordered them to stay away from the accuser).

But the lack of an immediate investigation was not because the university was in any way unsympathetic to victims. Rather, it was due to the fact that the complainant decided not to file formal college charges against the accused (the criminal justice system found her complaint so unbelievable that the accused were never charged, and she declined to pursue formal charges at the college level). It is absurd to demand swift college prosecution of innocent people when the accuser herself does not demand it.

The accused students, whose lives were turned upside down by the charges, were innocent.

Whatever you may think of Title IX’s ‘intent,’ it has been perverted beyond recognition by SJW bureaucrats and University administrators whose livelihood depends on extending it reductio ad absurdum: ‘It’s better that all innocent people be convicted than that one guilty person should go free,’ as we’ve seen at Duke, UVA, Columbia, etc..

A concomitant problem is the Newspeak redefinition of the word “victim.” We are “experiencing the emergence of a victimhood culture that is distinct from the honor cultures and dignity cultures of the past.” At one time we would have seen the falsely accused as the victims, based on the facts. Now, we see liars as victims, based on their genitalia. Training in this thinking starts early:

Boys with sticks

It doesn’t make violence go away when we always tell boys, “Put that stick down.” Instead, it’s making a world where people, boys and girls alike, have no idea what to do about unjust violence…

When your daughter is the one who’s lying barely conscious on the front yard of some frat house, my sons will be the ones who will know enough to charge in, swinging sticks to chase the brutes away. They’ll know because we let them have sticks, we let them find out what sticks can do, and we told them what sticks are for.

Violence doesn’t take over when boys are allowed to have sticks. Violence takes over when no one tells boys what sticks are for.

This speaks to what Christina Hoff Sommers has called “the war against boys,” and it suggests why we might well expect some change, for the worse, in the behavior of some males. They have not been taught the bases of respect for others. In fact, some boys have been actively prevented from learning it. I’m sure this guy is an example.

Grafting an external conscience onto PajamaBoy is easy, and it comes pre-loaded with unearned guilt. He certainly believes the lie that 1 in 5 college women are raped. He recognizes the State definition of moral behavior as superior to his own. He has secret sympathy, because of his original sin of being male, for radical feminists who propose putting all men in concentration camps.

Among other things boys will learn from playing with sticks, under the guidance of caring adults, are the concepts of fair play, honor and mercy. To wit, chivalry. Chivalry is not a one-sided contract, there used to be very different expectations of both male and female behavior. The contract may have needed modification, and that was in progress, but what happened is that the concept of chivalry has been summarily purged from public discourse. The government, piecemeal and arbitrarily, filled the resulting cultural vacuum.

Just as charitable giving is much smaller among Progressives – it’s the government’s job – we’ve farmed out our consciences to federal regulators.

When you remove the caring adults and enforceable contracts you get Lord of the Flies. When you substitute Big Brother for the guidance of caring adults and make the contract up as you go along you get 1984. We’ve done both.

The Snatch Soliloquy


The United States needs every talented hard science graduate it can get. It needs graduates in history, literature and music too, but superior science is what will determine whether we continue to be an affluent society. That is, a society that can easily encourage historians, writers and composers.

How does one go about encouraging the most capable to consider scientific study? Do you start by providing equal pathways for any brain of merit, or do you actively seek out the disinterested? For Liberals, of course, the latter is the answer if the demographic profile of current enrollees fails to conform with a leftist world-view.

Therefore, since relatively few females are attracted to the hard sciences, Liberals see the problem as social injustice, where the solution is getting more females into hard science programs. This, of course, is not the same problem we were trying to solve a paragraph ago.

As with other “affirmative action” programs, it is necessary to define and institutionalize discrimination. Only then it can be administered “fairly” by the government.

A nascent foray into such social engineering is the lobbying to apply Title IX rules to hard science funding in our universities. The short version is that federal funding is to be based on what’s between your legs rather than what’s between your ears.

Hey, it seems like it maybe 10-percent worked for making women professional athletes rich with the WNBA; so let’s apply it to physics, chemistry, computer and nanotechnology research on behalf of our nation’s competitive future.

It’s too bad Larry Summers had the temerity to suggest that maybe there is a reason, unconnected to a patriarchal conspiracy, for the fact that only a small percentage of women are interested in hard science. He woke Leviathan.

For further enlightenment see The Vagina Monologue at Protein Wisdom.