Gucci Little Piggy

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Dust, Meet Another One

Naomi Schaefer Riley, who I wrote about the other day after she began receiving flak for criticizing Black Studies at the Brainstorm blog, has been fired from The Chronicle of Higher Education. Her colleagues, readers, Ph.D. candidates and professors from Northwestern University, and over 6,500 petitioners called for her ouster, and they got it.

For what again?

She called Black Studies “left-wing victimization claptrap”.  In a response at The Chronicle, the students of Northwestern said she penned the screed because she didn’t want to be “out-niggered” by her right-wing cohort.  Riley’s husband is black, which should diminish that argument.

It’s a fine trap they’ve set – the leftists.  And it has parallels in the Obama administration.  What they’ve effectively done is made Black Studies (like Obama) immune to any sort of criticism with a moat of dog whistle taunts.  A pointed critique about their politics or their tactics is sold off as racism, thus ending the conversation.

A “scholarly” article published in the Journal of Black Studies highlights this well.  The abstract for an article titled “The New ‘New’ Racism” reads “the author suggests that an even more subtle form of racism may exist.  Racism may actually be expressed in opposition to big government…these results provide support to the argument that racism still exists and has found a new subtle expression.”

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28 Responses to Dust, Meet Another One

  1. stickman 05/08/2012 at 7:26 am

    How can this they justify censoring an opposing opinion of a program that is suposed to be based on scholarship? They feel its nessesary to silence even this form of peer review? An idea/dogma based on assumed facts and outcomes, that isnt open to any opositional debate isnt scholarship, its a religion.

    One wonders if she herself dosnt have a case for “discrimination”. It could be argued that they showed extream prejudice and racist thinking when they made the desision to terminate her.

  2. stickman 05/08/2012 at 7:27 am

    Pardon poor spelling. Just got up and no spell-check for my non spellin ass….

  3. namae nanka 05/08/2012 at 7:32 am

    Reading the comments over there, it is surprising that it took that much effort to throw her out.

  4. George 05/08/2012 at 7:40 am

    How about a White Studies?

  5. Gorbachev 05/08/2012 at 7:49 am

    Academia: No dissention of any kind allowed.

    The home of intellectual freedom.

  6. RomanCandle 05/08/2012 at 8:04 am

    This kinda ties into the study you mentioned about teachers going easy on black students.

    Reading the hysterical responses to Riley’s piece, with people calling it vitriolic and a personal attack despite the fact that it wasn’t, I couldn’t help but think that these black graduate students are just not used to being criticized in this manner.

    Unsurprising, given that the only people they deal with in their academic life are Black Studies professors and condescending white liberals. Talk about living in a bubble: the moment someone critiques their scholarship, they assume they are being attacked personally.

  7. Bonfire of the Inanities 05/08/2012 at 8:24 am

    All these firings for “racism” are starting to take on the character of a purge. Maybe Riley, Derb, Weissberg and James Watson should get together and start their own publication. Shift the weight a little.

  8. And Balls 05/08/2012 at 9:11 am

    She wasn’t fired for being a racist. She was fired for being intellectually lazy and dishonest. You see, it was wrong of her to criticize the dissertations based on only a short synopsis–not the full text and not even an abstract (the dissertations themselves aren’t even complete, but I’m sure that she gave them more to write about). The Chronicle of Higher Education holds itself to high standards of intellectual rigor and journalistic integrity, and her piece fell so far short of those standards and was so lacking in integrity (because she didn’t read the dissertations before attacking them) that there was no option but to fire her.

    I’m sure that any journalist in the future will be free to heavily criticize black studies dissertations as long as they thoroughly read the completed dissertations first.

  9. Chuck Rudd 05/08/2012 at 9:34 am

    And Balls:

    BS. If she’d have criticized Economics or any other discipline in such a manner she wouldn’t have been fired. Also, The Chronicle wouldn’t have written up a fluff piece about any other academic discipline in the first place.

    It was also placed in a blog post which means that it wasn’t held to the same ‘journalistic’ standards as other Chronicle pieces. The Chronicle also had ample time to edit it before hand. And she quoted directly from The Chronicle to make her point. One of the dissertations sought to explain, basically, how Thomas Sowell, John McWhorter, and Clarence Thomas are all Uncle Toms.

  10. jz 05/08/2012 at 9:40 am

    Agree with A_B_, that NSR’s assertions would have been stronger had she actually read the dissertations. She dismissed them as fluffery based upon the topics : black midwifery, racism in housing markets, anti affirmative action racism, etc. Here’s the trap: the essay she was responding to was simple promotional sloganeering. That author never read the dissertations either. NSR fell into and accepted her frame. NSR could have responded with more gravitas has she actually read the dissertations.

    Opposition to big government is racist? I’m busted.

  11. jz 05/08/2012 at 9:46 am

    The Chronicle does NOT hold itself to any level of integrity nor rigor when it promotes dissertations that are not yet written.

  12. RomanCandle 05/08/2012 at 9:59 am

    Wow, I just assumed And Balls was being sarcastic and mocking The Chronicle’s cowardly explanation for Riley’s dismissal. And it is cowardly: they were all about open debate until they discovered that the criticism wasn’t going away. Then, quite suddenly, their commitment towards open debate became much more pliable. Just more fair-weathered friends of free expression, I suppose.

    Those are the “high standards” everyone must be talking about.

    Side note: John McWhorter is a pretty iconoclastic guy with some eclectic viewpoints. It’s horribly unfair to consider him a party-line conservative. Then again, that’s how fanatics think: there’s no middle ground, no nuance. You’re either with them or against them.

  13. And Balls 05/08/2012 at 10:33 am

    I was trollin. RomanCandle has it right. Though I’m sure the full dissertations will be excrementally better than a mere synopsis.

  14. RomanCandle 05/08/2012 at 10:37 am

    @And Balls

    Thank goodness. The hard left is so out there nowadays it makes satire quite difficult.

  15. Chuck Rudd 05/08/2012 at 10:56 am

    And Balls,

    My bad. Good troll job though.

  16. Ryu 05/08/2012 at 11:07 am

    Right. She should have expected that.

    I think its good though. They mass produce their own enemies. You always give a guy a chance to save face, a way out. These liberals are cut throat and take no prisoners though. They force their enemies to become extremists to counter them, which is how WN arose.

  17. mm 05/08/2012 at 11:09 am

    Once everyone accepts that the bulk of interest and agitating over “racism,” whether on the streets or in academia, is really just about feather-nesting, it narrows the focus of attack we ought to be pursuing.

    If we keep allowing these idiots, whether the Trayvon Martin Skittles Team, or whether those who concoct entire university programs of fluff as vehicles to feather their career nests by using the tired cries of “racism,” we’ve allowed them a head start they ought not have, although thankfully, the public is awakening to and rejecting those pathetic and tired wails.

    Where to start? Well, who are the victims? Beyond the Rileys of the world, the victims are the taxpayers, at least as far as public universities are concerned. The bloated faculty lists and curricula that lead to degrees of no or little substance, no knowledge that PRODUCES anything is enough of a reason for the taxpayer to revolt. More engineers? More doctors? More physicists? More scientists in general? No. More majors in black history, Latino history, women’s studies, which then leads to bloated departments in which professors make their nests of lifetime tenure.

    How to start a movement? Ideas?

  18. Prof. Woland 05/08/2012 at 11:18 am

    As of this moment, all Whites are on double secret probation.

  19. Sheila 05/08/2012 at 12:00 pm

    She probably thought she was immune to racism charges as a Jew married to a black. It seems that who’s the most specialist minority changes depending on the circumstances. Schadenfreude, anyone?

  20. Chuck Rudd 05/08/2012 at 12:06 pm

    Sheila,

    No schadenfreude from me. Who gives a fuck if she’s a Jew married to a black? She’s criticized the higher education industry and the grievance industry like any conservative worth their salt should do. She was (I’ll take your word for it) born a Jew, what would you have her do about it? Now, do you agree with her position or do you not? That’s the important question here. Your blood lust isn’t a particularly interesting topic.

  21. Sheila 05/08/2012 at 2:55 pm

    Chuck, “blood lust” is rather overly emotional. I don’t sit and wish ill and evil of Ms. Riley; I’m merely noting that people of the sort I am presuming she is (as a Jew married to a black, she probably does not believe in HBD and is a liberal who thinks we can all just get along) tend to assume they’ll never get called a racist because they’re the right sort of Whites. I’m noting that, surprise! when it comes down to it, blacks will always side with other blacks against anyone with lighter skin, just as Jews always side with other Jews. Ethnocentrism is a fact, and is not evil in and of itself, it’s just authorized and endorsed quite selectively in America today. I actually support that she’s not backing down, but even her initial criticism was merely that the theses were ridiculous, not that the entire idea of ethnic-specific studies shouldn’t exist.

  22. Cannon's Canon 05/08/2012 at 3:58 pm

    Naomi Schaefer Riley lost her job for commenting about race? Oyyy, this is like the Shoah all over again!!

  23. Lara 05/08/2012 at 4:06 pm

    Sheila makes a good point. The fact that Naomi is Jewish, will not protect her from criticism from blacks, only from criticism from other Jews.

  24. TangoMan 05/08/2012 at 4:08 pm

    The lesson here is that one should never give one’s enemies the rope to hang you with.

    What we’ve seen with Derb and NSR is but a tip of the iceberg. The pressure to speak out will only grow with time as the cultural marxism has to work at an ever more feverish pace to reshape a resistant reality. As more people see society being pulled through the looking glass they’ll find themselves either needing to speak up or go bonkers from not being able to continue the charade any longer.

    The way to speak up is not to dash off a column in short order. If your intellectual pride forces you to speak, then you’ve got to actually read (or skim) those dissertations and pick them apart. MAKE A CASE BACKED WITH EVIDENCE. Then don’t make any emotionally pleasing statements that come off as mocking – discipline yourself.

    Don’t give your enemies the rope.

    The above won’t save the first few people who go off the reservation, but one of them likely won’t take their firing sitting down and will fight back and now work to embarrass the publication for their cowardice and someone else might take the fight to the protesters and by hook or crook claim some scalps there or cause them severe embarrassment (witness the Gleick affair or climate-gate).

    At some point such firings should become indefensible. I hope. Cross all your t’s and dot all your i’s. and buckle up and go forth to do intellectual battle. No less than truth and academic integrity rest on your shoulders. All that other side has is outrageous outrage at having their faces rubbed in the truth. God help us all if they prevail.

  25. Lara 05/08/2012 at 4:59 pm

    I once was dealing with a Jewish woman who was overreacting to some minor incident. I almost said, “Relax, we aren’t talking about the holocaust here.” I decided against it.

  26. mike 05/08/2012 at 6:34 pm

    I doubt this woman would have stood up for Derb. It’s hard to feel sorry for someone who’s OK with thought policing in principle as long as they think they’re safe. You can tell by what she wrote in the piece and her reaction to the reaction that she really doesn’t understand how this whole system works, and is firmly within the establishment conservative bubble of ignorance.

  27. Columnist 05/09/2012 at 3:27 am

    She has criticized the clergy. That will not be taken lightly by the Holy Inquisition.

  28. Bonfire of the Inanities 05/09/2012 at 3:41 am

    TangoMan: “cultural marxism has to work at an ever more feverish pace to reshape a resistant reality” – I agree with this. The problem for leftist racial orthodoxy is that reality is pushing back at their belief system harder than ever.

    The presidency of Obama the Messiah was supposed to catapult blacks to equality with whites, but on the ground, the situation for blacks has gotten worse and worse, not better. Meanwhile, the Asian and Hispanic share of the population grows, which means there is less white guilt to milk. And as white people themselves get poorer and are unable to move, they can’t avoid minority dysfunction just by running away from it. Meanwhile Detroit and other cities are turning into replicas of Kinshasa right before our eyes. Foreign policy also plays a part: the inability of America to create flourishing Muslim democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan shows people how hard it is to change long-standing racial or cultural traits.

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