Shove it!
The 20th anniversary of 9/11 is a time for heroes. They arise unexpectedly, in times of extreme duress. One such hero is a professor from Portland State University, situated in the belly of that totalitarian city in Oregon. His name is Peter Boghossian. He did not lay down his life as the firefighters did in NYC. But he did give up his tenured career to fight an insidious foe: the death of intellectual curiosity. Felled by the new Woke conformity that silences dissent.
Which begs the question: Did Osama bin Laden win, after all?
We excerpt here Boghossian’s cri du coeur as printed in Bari Weiss’ on-line Common Sense:
‘My university sacrificed ideas for ideology. So today I quit.’
‘The more I spoke out against the illiberalism that has swallowed Portland State University, the more retaliation I faced.’
— Peter Boghossian
I never once believed — nor do I now — that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion. Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. …
But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division.
Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues. Faculty and administrators have abdicated the university’s truth-seeking mission and instead drive intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions. This has created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly. …
So, in 2017, I co-published an intentionally garbled peer-reviewed paper that took aim at the new orthodoxy. Its title:
“The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct.”
This example of pseudo-scholarship, which was published in Cogent Social Sciences, argued that penises were products of the human mind and responsible for climate change. Immediately thereafter, I revealed the article as a hoax designed to shed light on the flaws of the peer-review and academic publishing systems. … I continued to believe, perhaps naively, that if I exposed the flawed thinking on which Portland State’s new values were based, I could shake the university from its madness.
Shortly thereafter, swastikas in the bathroom with my name under them began appearing in two bathrooms near the philosophy department. … in one instance accompanied by bags of feces.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Educators at UW-Madison, Edgewood College, and the Madison public schools — do not let Prof. Boghossian quit in vain. Speak out against the madness that exiles a 42-ton rock from campus in the name of “Equity.”
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
Dave asks, “When will UW system president Tommy Thompson find his voice?”
Voice? His voice is of no consequence. He lacks the intellectual training and capacity to understand even the most simple UW imperative: continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.
“When?” you ask. When the annual Madison rates for murder or theft drop by a mere 20%. [aka NEVER]
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“When will UW system president Tommy Thompson find his voice?”
This is precisely why we’re seeing a shift in how people vote. We’re tired of politicians who aren’t there when you need them most, who hide at the first sign of trouble. who submit to bullies, and who maintain the status quo. We’ll put up with the bravado and bad manners if it means that person has our collective backs.
Maybe one day people will understand this.
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Precisely. The UW System would be (dys)functioning the same way if Russ Feingold had been appointed President instead of TT.
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Instead of hoping to find a person who is an intellectual or political elite, let us instead look for someone who served our country as a squad, unit or platoon leader in the military. He or she should be the type to naturally strive to be the best they can be in anything they do. They should also strive to bring out the best in all the people that they command.
Their fundamental guiding principle is their self sacrifice for the good of those who they command. They should be the kind of leader that those who serve under them, know that that person always has their six.
Someone who see’s themselves as the servant of WE the PEOPLE!
Not themselves and their fellow elites.
To stand up for what is right no matter what the cost is to their own person.
That is the kind of leadership we need in this community, this county, this state and this country.
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If there was ever a system that’s rotten to the core its today’s colleges and universities. And until an axe–a large and sharp one wielded by someone genuinely committed to reform– is taken to the root causes of the rot, it will continue to spread and pollute the minds of impressionable young people. When I see Tommy abolish tenure in the humanities and social “sciences,” abolish every department and program that promotes oppression and victimhood (e.g., black studies, Latinx studies, women’s studies, queer studies, etc), and halve the number of administrators, I’ll be willing to admit he’s earning his pay.
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