#decolonizing the classroom

[mangoesinthailand]

[a-shade-of-blue]

I've been reading the updates on Gaza, and what I've read has made me extremely worried about Mohammed (@ahmed0khalil) and his family who are in Deir el-Balah right now.

There have been continuous relentless attacks on Deir el-Balah. Israel has been targeting tents in Deir el-Balah. Just a few hours ago, Israeli fighters have just bombed a home in that area, killing at least 5 people, including 2 children.

Mohammed and his family are sheltering in a UN classroom right now. Israel is known to target schools sheltering displaced people. Just yesterday another school where displaced families are sheltering has been attacked. This is the fourth school Israel has bombed in less than a week! But they don't have nearly enough funds to evacuate!

Mohammed is only 19 years old and he has 5 siblings. Things have been difficult for them his brother Fathi who is blind, his other brother Abdullah who is autistic and does not understand what is happening, and little 6-year-old Ahmed. They are all suffering from malnutrition because they don't have enough money to buy food, and that is on top of the frequent attacks they have to face every day!

Mohammed's campaign has been shared by 90-ghost as well as vetted by @/gazavetters and is #77 on their vetted list. I've also been communicating regularly with him. Please help! Your donation can mean life or death for them!

Low Funds! Only €3,418 raised of €50,000 goal!

Tagging for reach, please dm me if you want off the mailing list! We thank you in advance.

@dlxxv-vetted-donations @ahaura@ana-bananya@northgazaupdates@c-u-c-koo-4-40k@riding-with-the-wild-hunt @roadimusprime@aces-and-angels@just-browsing1222@neptunerings@mushroomjar@northgazaupdates2@kyra45-helping-others@decolonize-solidarity @heritageposts@timetravellingkitty @briarhips @akajustmerry @wellwaterhysteria @rhubarbspring@nevert-the-guy@ethanscrocs @gumy-shark @khizuo @brutaliakhoa @decolonize-the-everything @postanagramgenerator

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@fiqrr @irhabiya @sharingresourcesforpalestine @batmanego

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@palipunk @gothhabiba @punkitt-is-here

[dostoyevsky-official]

Statement from Professor Eve Tuck

"Let me be completely clear about my personal and individual point of view:  "I condemn Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel, and the taking of hostages, whose safe and swift return I fervently wish for.  I reject antisemitism; it is repugnant and indefensible. "I have taught at universities for over a decade and a half.  I welcome students bringing a range of views into the classroom; it's vital to the teaching and learning process.  I have always believed my role in the classroom to be one of helping students develop their thinking skills, not telling them what to think."

"decolonization is not a metaphor" has always been a nonsense paper in the literal sense: it imparts no sense, makes no arguments, has no meaning. it alludes to ethnic cleansing but shies away from it; likewise eve tuck can't make a single coherent statement

[eretzyisrael]

by Christopher Rufo

Portland, Oregon, has earned its reputation as America’s most radical city. Its public school system was an early proponent of left-wing racialism and has long pushed students toward political activism. As with the death of George Floyd four years ago, the irruption of Hamas terrorism in Israel has provided Portland’s public school revolutionaries with another cause du jour: now they’ve ditched the raised fist of Black Lives Matter and traded it in for the black-and-white keffiyeh of Palestinian militants.

I have obtained a collection of publicly accessible documents produced by the Portland Association of Teachers, an affiliate of the state teachers’ union that encourages its more than 4,500 members to “Teach Palestine!” (The union did not respond to a request for comment.)

The lesson plans are steeped in radicalism, and they begin teaching the principles of “decolonization” to students as young as four and five years old. For prekindergarten kids, the union promotes a workbook from the Palestinian Feminist Collective, which tells the story of a fictional Palestinian boy named Handala. “When I was only ten years old, I had to flee my home in Palestine,” the boy tells readers. “A group of bullies called Zionists wanted our land so they stole it by force and hurt many people.” Students are encouraged to come up with a slogan that they can chant at a protest and complete a maze so that Handala can “get back home to Palestine”—represented as a map of Israel.

Other pre-K resources include a video that repeats left-wing mantras, including “I feel safe when there are no police,” and a slideshow that glorifies the Palestinian intifada, or violent resistance against Israel. The recommended resource list also includes a “sensory guide for kids” on attending protests. It teaches children what they might see, hear, taste, touch, and smell at protests, and promotes photographs of slogans such as “Abolish Prisons” and “From the River to the Sea.”

In kindergarten through second grade, the ideologies intensify. The teachers’ union recommends a lesson, “Art and Action for Palestine,” that teaches students that Israel, like America, is an oppressor. The objective is to “connect histories of settler colonialism from Palestine to the United States” and to “celebrate Palestinian culture and resistance throughout history and in the present, with a focus on Palestinian children’s resistance.”

The lesson suggests that teachers should gather the kindergarteners into a circle and teach them a history of Palestine: “75 years ago, a lot of decision makers around the world decided to take away Palestinian land to make a country called Israel. Israel would be a country where rules were mostly fair for Jewish people with White skin,” the lesson reads. “There’s a BIG word for when Indigenous land gets taken away to make a country, that’s called settler colonialism.”

Before snack time, the teacher is encouraged to share “keffiyehs, flags, and protest signs” with the children, and have them create their own agitprop material, with slogans such as “FREE PALESTINE, LET GAZA LIVE, [and] PALESTINE WILL BE FREE.” The intention, according to the lesson, is to move students toward “taking collective action in support of Palestinian liberation.”

The recommended curriculum also includes a pamphlet titled “All Out for Palestine.” The pamphlet is explicitly political, with a sub-headline blaring in all capital letters: “STOP THE GENOCIDE! END U.S. AID TO IRSAEL! FREE PALESTINE!” The authors denounce “Zionism’s long genocidal war on Palestinian life” and encourage students to support “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” policies against Israel.

The pamphlet includes chants that teachers can adopt in the classroom. Some imply support for militancy and political violence: “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!”; “We salute all our martyrs! mothers, fathers, sons and daughters!”; “Justice is our demand! No peace on stolen land!”

It’s not immediately clear to what extent the “Teach Palestine!” lessons have been adopted in Portland public school classrooms. But the teachers’ union claims that the district has been “actively censoring teachers” for promoting pro-Palestine ideologies; in response, it has assembled a legal guide for how teachers can keep promoting the lessons under the guise of meeting state curriculum standards.

[padawan-historian]

On August 8, 1863, Tennessee ratified the 13th Amendment, abolishing the domestic slave trade of Black + indigenous folks in the state. 159 years later in 2022, Tennessee folks voted to abolish all forms of slavery in the state, including the "Slavery Clause" that allows for incarcerated slavery to persist in both state-sanctioned + private for-profit prisons.To this day, the United States continues to build wealth off the exploited labor of impoverished, (dis)abled, undocumented + racially marginalized people who are incarcerated.

Each community and country that participated in the Transatlantic Slave Trade has its own emancipation day (or year).

And yet, as of 2023, Colorado, Alabama, Oregon, Vermont, Tennessee + Nevada (2024) are the only U.S. states who have made steps to abolish slavery in all its forms. That's not even touching how slavery, both state-sanctioned and illegal bondage, continues to bleed into our everyday places from child labor + forced s*x work to penal plantations and chocolate factories (looking at you at hershey chocolate)

In this second wave of Jim & Jane Crow flooding our world, we must arm ourselves with the tools to disrupt systems, distribute resources + deepen our collective action + good trouble ~

If you wanna explore the full Emancipation post + readings, come join us in the garden community over on Patreon where we upRoot our miseducation through history lessons, community conversations + book talks + decolonizing our everyday practic, our classrooms + our communities.

Reclaim your emancipation + immerse yourself in the ancestral, antiracist liberation! 🖤✊🏾✨️

[maryjane888]

On the stump (h.s.)

Author's note: english is not my first language, so please excuse any mistakes. Also, this first part is shorter but the others will be longer. Hope you enjoy. xx

Part I

"Y/n, please see me in my office after class." Professor Morris gave her a small smile after his request. "Nothing to worry about. Just some opportunities I would like to present you."

Y/n sighed of relief as the auditorium started to fill with sleepy students. She tought Mr. Morris would lecture her about the small pile of multiple choice exams in his desk that weren't all graded yet. Being a TA was reveling to be more time consuming than expected. She would have to reorganize her agenda for the third time this week, which also meant that she would have to skip tonight's plans with her friends. There was no room for mistakes or delays, if Mr. Morris was still planning to write her that recommendation letter.

"Alright, today we're going to talk about the decolonization of India. Don't forget the mandatory readings for this part of the course. I will not be speaking in detail about the process of independence of each asian countrie. If you have any questions, y/n can help you during office hours."

How wonderful, y/n thought, more workload. Must be punishment for all those exams.

...

"Take a seat". She pushed the dark oak chair back and smoothed her navy skirt before sitting down.

"This won't take long." He oppened a drawer on his desk, took some papers out of it and started to go through them.

"I have some connections in Vienna." He stopped and looked at her suggestively, adjusting his glasses. Y/n's palms started to sweat.

"I know New York would be more preferable, but Vienna is the only place now with open seats." Oh God. There was a faint quick thump sound in Mr Morris's office. It was y/n's nervous foot tapping in anticipation. He continued to flick through the pieces of paper until he found the one he wanted. Professor Morris pushed the single page in y/n's direction. Her hopeful eyes made him chuckle.

"That is a list of people responsible for selecting the interns at the UN offices in Vienna. Search their names and study them. I have also scribbled some tips for your upcoming interview." Y/n deviated her gaze from the paper to her professor in confusion.

"My interview?" Mr Morris smiled.

"Yes, your interview. Your application was accepted. You should receive an email soon explaining that you will move on to the next phase." She picked up the paper and pressed it tightly to her chest.

"Thank you, so much." He got up from his chair and buttoned his blazer.

"Now, if you fufill your position successfully as a TA by the end of the semester, I will make sure a recommendation letter gets to those offices." Y/n got up so excited her chair squeaked loudly and almost made her cringe. She was to happy to feel embarassed.

"I will not disappoint you, Professor Morris." She promised.

"I'm sure you won't." He then checked his wristwatch and complained about a meeting he was having with the faculty. Y/n took it as a cue to leave, but not without thanking him one more time.

...

The few students passing by looked strangely at the girl with the wide smile and a spring in her step. Who looks that enthusiastic on a Thursday morning? Y/n did. And she had good reasons to. All her work seemed to finally bear fruit. Being an UN intern was going to propel her career in politics. She would actually learn how things work in the real world, outside classrooms and without textbooks. She would have the opportunity to travel and meet new experienced people. And right now she also had the perfect excuse to ditch her social plans, having to make sure all her extracurricular workload was sorted out. Being an incompetent TA was not an option, and not getting that internship was a scenario that y/n refused to conceive as a possibility.

As soon as she got to her dorm, y/n started to search the people on that piece of paper. Her gold tickect to the chocolate factory. She memorized their full names, academic backrounds, previous jobs, and their personal interests. She made some social media searches for that. Then, a draft for her interview was outlined based off of Mr Morris's tips. Serious but not boring, interesting but not fake, professional but still warm. An email notification made her stop typping. She clicked on the unread message and admired the positive response. Her eyes travelled through her desk. It was a mess. She was surrounded by heavy authors and heavier subjects. A pile of crinkled photocopies of ICJ cases, an open Krugman book with dozens of fluorescent post-its, a few flashcards with EU's legislative process. If her desk was a mess, it meant she was busy and working. That mess made her happy. Y/n looked back at the email and she thought to herself, I'm almost there, I'm going to change the world.

...

"Shit." The hot brown liquid spreaded through y/n's white oversized shirt. She tossed the paper cup in the bin and tried to keep the fabric from sticking to her skin. Her brallette was now visible through the wet shirt. As she walked to the small bathroom atached to the office, she mentally patted herself on the back for keeping an extra t-shirt in her bag.

The door to the office was closed and no one usually came at this time of day. She was safe to change. Y/n tried to remove the stain in the sink as much as she could. She then placed it on the back of the chair to dry. A thin light brown outline was still visible. She sighed in annoyance. That was her favourite shirt.

As she reached to her bag to grab the shirt, the sound of the door knob brought horror to her features. She quickly grabbed the piece of clothing and tried to hide her nude state behind the fabric. As the door opened, y/n could already imagine the chocked look on Mr Morris' face at her lack of clothing. She had a plausible excuse, of course, but it was still a very strange situation. She should have locked the door. Well, too late.

Her look of fear turned to a confused one as she stared at the man that entered the room. He paused, hand still grabbing the door knob, and stared back, as confused as her. They stayed like that for a couple minutes trying to make sense of the situation. Y/n grew annoyed at his lack of action. The door was still open for everyone to see her precarious state.

"Close the door!" He awakened from his trance and quickly shut the door, turnig his back to her. She took the opportunity to dress the clean t-shirt. As she pulled the fabric down her torso, she noticed him staring at her again. Y/n was becoming more and more irritated. She had been gradding tests for the past three hours, hadn't gotten any breaks, decided to get a coffe from the machine down the hall, spilled the drink on her favourite shirt and was now being checked out by some random man that would not say anything, not even an apology. He was about to confront a very grumpy side of y/n.

"Are you a student of professor Morris? Office hours are only on Mondays and Wednesdays. I do not have time to answer any questions today." She went to sit on the desk and continue her work, not bothering to look at him as she speaked.

"I was a student of his." The man approched the desk. "I came to visit him." Y/n continued to write notes with her red pen, avoiding eye contact. Her frustration still mixed with the embarassement from moments ago.

"Well, as you can see Mr Morris isn't here, and he won't be coming in today. You can schedule your visit using the contacts printed by door. I also recommend you to knock before meeting with the professor." Y/n added the last part, staring back at him. He stood tall with crossed arms and a hard gaze. She could see that he did not like the way he was being treated. Y/n wondered who this man really was. What if he was someone important? Someone close to Mr Morris? She realised maybe she should have approched him more carefully.

"I was not aware that TAs now felt so free to seduce their superiors. I'll make sure I knock next time, promise." Her annoyance became painfully obvious and the room grew even more tense. She got up from her chair and faced him fully. They were closer now. He hovered over her, angry gazes competing. Y/n noticed his deep green eyes and a single chocolate lock fell between them. That was annoying.

"I spilled coffee on my shirt, not that I owe you any explanations." She backed away slightly and straightened her posture. "I will not admit any insulting accusations about how I work. You don't know me." Y/n tried to calm herself down. She was grumpy and he was just provoking her. It was not worth her time, so she distanced herself from him. He did not say anything else. He only observed her as she checked the time on her phone. Its late, she thought, I'll finish this tomorrow.

"What? Time to get undressed in another professor's office?" Y/n shot him a death glare.

"You're an assh-" she was interrupted by the sound of the door knob. She immediately stoped talking as Mr Morris entered the room. The other man smirked at her, enjoying her big scared eyes.

"Y/n? What are you still doing here?" He noticed the piles of exams with red anotations here and there. "It's late. Please go home and rest. You can finish another time." Mr Morris gave her a reassuring smile. Y/n started to pack her things, happy that he hadn't heard her before. Bad language was a no go with the faculty, especially insults. It could damage her image as a TA.

"And I've seen you have already met Harry." They both exchanged awkward smiles. "Weren't supposed to..." Y/n gave a questioning look at the two men. Harry was now avoyding her eyes. She tried to ignore the whole situation and placed her bag in her shoulder, ready to leave.

"I'll see you next week. Get some sleep, y/n." Professor Morris waved her goodbye. Harry simply stood next to him, hands in his pockets, as he observed her closing the door.

...

Y/n sighed in relief as she closed her laptop. She had asked professor Morris if she could take the online interview in his office. Her small dorm didn't look very professional as a background. He allowed it, telling her to not worry to much. At this point, y/n felt like she could ask him to be her garantor and he would say yes. He was like the godfather she never had.

Y/n had a good feeling about the call. She got the interviewer she most wanted and she felt like they truly connected through their mutual interests. Plus, the tips on that golden piece of paper really came in handy. She would have to thank her professor for the millionth time. Now, all she had left to do was being a good TA, keep her grades high and trust that her capabilites would be good enough to grant her the spot she thought she was worthy of. Y/n thought some relax time was needed and well deserved. She pushed all her work aside, and texted her friends. That night she would be joining them.

[framesandrevolutions]

Columbia’s Art History Legacy: How NYC Shapes Curation and Museum Studies

When we talk about art history in the United States, one name consistently emerges as a cornerstone of academic excellence and cultural impact: Columbia University. With its long-standing tradition of producing thought leaders in the fields of art history, museum studies, and curatorial practice, Columbia has played a major role in shaping how we engage with visual culture. But Columbia’s strength doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Its power lies in its location—New York City—a living, breathing museum that transforms theory into experience and classrooms into gateways to the world’s greatest collections.

This unique synergy between institution and city has helped make Columbia not just a university, but a launching pad for curators, historians, and cultural critics who influence how we view, preserve, and contextualize art.

The Legacy of Columbia's Department of Art History and Archaeology

Founded in 1875, Columbia’s Department of Art History and Archaeology is one of the oldest in the country. From its earliest years, it has been deeply intertwined with both European traditions and American innovation. Some of the most influential art historians, including Meyer Schapiro and Rosalind Krauss, have taught or studied within its halls.

Schapiro, in particular, helped establish Columbia’s reputation for rigor and originality. His interdisciplinary approach—connecting art with politics, literature, and philosophy—continues to influence generations of scholars. Columbia’s faculty members don’t just teach art history; they expand the discipline, redefine it, and ask new questions. Whether focusing on Medieval manuscripts or contemporary digital art, Columbia encourages students to study art as a social force—not just as aesthetic objects.

Location as Laboratory: New York City as the Classroom

One of the most transformative aspects of studying art history at Columbia is, quite simply, the ability to walk out of class and step into a museum. The university’s location in Morningside Heights places it within immediate proximity to some of the most important cultural institutions in the world:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

The Frick Collection

The Guggenheim Museum

The Whitney Museum of American Art

El Museo del Barrio

The Studio Museum in Harlem

This isn’t just convenient—it’s foundational. Students and scholars regularly conduct research using original artworks and archives, attend special exhibitions, and even partner with museums on academic projects. Museum internships and assistantships are integrated into the curriculum, making hands-on experience part of the learning process rather than an optional extra.

Moreover, Columbia’s own campus houses the Wallach Art Gallery, which serves as a testing ground for student curators and an exhibition space for important contemporary and historical work. Recent exhibitions at the Wallach have centered on underrepresented artists, community narratives, and transnational dialogues—mirroring the direction that contemporary curation is taking globally.

The Rise of Curatorial Studies

In response to the evolving role of museums and cultural institutions, Columbia expanded its offerings with the MA in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies (MODA) program. Launched in 1997, MODA is a bridge between academic study and curatorial practice. It prepares students not just to understand art intellectually, but to organize exhibitions, develop institutional programming, and question how museums shape public understanding of culture.

MODA students benefit from seminars led by curators, critics, and practicing artists, in addition to scholars. They gain insider access to institutions and work on exhibitions from conception to installation. They also investigate pressing issues in the field: decolonizing museums, repatriation of cultural heritage, digital curation, and representation.

What makes MODA especially powerful is that it doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s part of Columbia’s broader ecosystem—linked with the university's art history faculty, the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, and its relationships with museums across the city.

Crossroads of Culture: Diversity in NYC and the Push for Equity

New York City is arguably the most diverse cultural capital in the world. This has had a profound impact on Columbia’s approach to art history and museum studies. Being in NYC forces students to confront the limitations of a Western-centric canon and instead explore a truly global perspective.

Columbia courses engage deeply with African, Asian, Latin American, and Indigenous art. And New York's own institutions reflect this expanding narrative. The Brooklyn Museum, for example, features collections that challenge colonial assumptions, while smaller spaces like the Asia Society Museum or The Africa Center offer in-depth perspectives on global contemporary art.

For Columbia students, this means exposure not only to the masterpieces of Western art but to emerging and underrepresented voices—voices they will one day help amplify through curatorial work. The art history curriculum increasingly reflects these values, training students to question institutional power structures and advocate for inclusive practices.

The Network Effect: Alumni and Influence

Columbia alumni are everywhere in the art world—serving as directors, curators, researchers, and policy leaders in major museums and cultural institutions. From The Met to international biennials, Columbia graduates bring with them a sense of intellectual depth, critical inquiry, and civic responsibility.

Examples include:

Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, who studied art history and African American studies at Smith College but later taught and collaborated with scholars at Columbia.

Ann Temkin, Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA, who earned her PhD at Columbia and now shapes one of the most influential collections of modern art in the world.

Countless others who have contributed to museum publications, education programs, and groundbreaking exhibitions that rethink how art interacts with public life.

The Columbia network is more than professional—it’s philosophical. There is a shared sense of responsibility toward both academic rigor and public accessibility.

Shaping the Future

As museums and cultural institutions face new challenges—economic, political, and ethical—Columbia remains at the forefront of training the next generation of curators and scholars. Questions about restitution, climate change, artificial intelligence, and social justice are no longer peripheral to art history—they are central. And Columbia equips its students to lead these conversations.

It does so not by separating academia from the real world but by embedding study within one of the most vibrant and dynamic cities on Earth. Columbia and New York City don’t just teach art history—they make it, question it, and transform it.

[andromedasummer]

trying to read/familiarize myself with the kind of ideas and language i'll be using come the beginning of my diploma next year. this is book 1 of 16 ive managed to find on critical pedagogy, teaching in an era of neoloberalism, multiculturalism and decolonization in the classroom and early childhood education in Aotearoa new zealand. wish me luck

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Harry R. Lewis

Published: Jan 8, 2024

Let’s go back to how Harvard’s current crisis began: charges of antisemitism.

Why antisemitism seems to be a problem at Harvard and other universities is one of the still-unanswered questions that precipitated the University’s downward spiral.

But, it surely is not Claudine Gay’s fault. It is not because Harvard admits antisemitic students or hires antisemitic faculty. No one is suggesting there are comparable antisemitism problems in other kinds of institutions — such as hospitals or libraries — so there must be something that uniquely happens in universities.

That something must be the source of our woes.

* * *

Unapologetic antisemitism — whether the incidents are few or numerous — is a college phenomenon because of what we teach, and how our teachings are exploited by malign actors.

The Harvard online course catalog has a search box. Type in “decolonize.” That word — though surely not the only lens through which to view the current relationship between Europe and the rest of the world — is in the titles of seven courses and the descriptions of 18 more.

Try “oppression” and “liberation.” Each is in the descriptions of more than 80 courses. “Social justice” is in over 100. “White supremacy” and “Enlightenment” are neck and neck, both ahead of “scientific revolution” but behind “intersectionality.”

Though word frequency is an imperfect measure and the precise counts are muddied by duplicate numberings and courses at MIT, this experiment supports the suspicion that the Harvard curriculum has become heavily slanted toward recent fashions of the progressive left.

For example, “intersectionality” was almost unattested before the year 2000, while published uses of “decolonize” have more than tripled since then.

Merchants of hate are repurposing these intellectual goods that universities are producing.

When complex social and political histories are oversimplified in our teachings as Manichaean struggles — between oppressed people and their oppressors, the powerless and the powerful, the just and the wicked — a veneer of academic respectability is applied to the ugly old stereotype of Jews as evil but deviously successful people.

While Harvard cannot stop the abuse of our teaching, we, the Harvard faculty, can recognize and work to mitigate these impacts.

The political bias in our faculty is now widely accepted. One solution is to use a kind of affirmative action program for conservative thinkers to change the faculty, but that idea is noxious and misses a crucial point.

Professors should not be carrying their ideologies into the classroom. Our job as teachers of “citizens and citizen-leaders” is not to indoctrinate students, but to prepare them to grapple with all of the ideas they will encounter in the societies they will serve.

Instead, individual faculty might diversify what they teach. Committees and departments could enforce a standard that curricula exhibit intellectual diversity and a variety of agreed-upon topics and techniques.

If done correctly, it would not infringe upon individual academic freedom to allow our faculty colleagues to have a stronger role in shaping each others’ syllabi and curricula. Nor would it be improper for the Board of Overseers — with its elaborate Visiting Committee structure — to weigh in on the evident political biases and ideological vectors in our educational program.

As obvious as this all may sound, it would be a big change from the present.

Over the fifty years I have been on the Harvard faculty, the expectation has evolved that individual Harvard professors are free to teach whatever they wish to whomever they wish. It was once the norm for faculty to rotate through courses of unpredictable size and with stable curricula, but now enrollments are predetermined quite rigorously and even introductory courses may change their reading lists and lecture topics drastically when new professors take charge.

Curricular committees theoretically vet these courses, but not annually, and not for the kinds of political biases that have skewed undergraduate education. The result is to favor the hip, current, and “relevant,” over foundational learning — what instructors personally believe to the exclusion of what students should learn to participate knowledgeably in the world outside our gates.

* * *

The leftward shift of Harvard’s faculty deserves scrutiny. Judicious changes to the hiring and promotion process can thwart intellectual inbreeding — just as the current tenure system, now tired and manipulable, was once an innovative revamp of a system that resulted in ethnic and gender homogeneity. Now is the time to change a system that will take decades to alter the composition of the faculty.

But there is no need to wait for that reform.

The goal is not to give students a choice between courses reflecting different ideologies. Harvard should instead expect instructors to leave their politics at the classroom door and touch both sides of controversial questions, leaving students uncertain where their sympathies lie. Professors should have no more right to exclude from their teaching ideas with which they disagree than students should expect to be shielded from ideas they find disagreeable.

All that is required is for faculty to exhibit some humility about the limits of their own wisdom and embrace the formula for educational improvement voiced by Le Baron R. Briggs, a Harvard dean, more than a century ago: “increased stress on offering what should be taught rather than what the teachers wish to teach.”

Harry R. Lewis ’68 is a Gordon McKay Research Professor of Computer Science. He served as Dean of Harvard College from 1995 to 2003.

[mtg-player1]

You’re really cool! /gen

What languages are you learning?

Which ones do you want to become fluent in, in the future?

Where do you learn them?

What’s your favorite language?

Would you advise someone to learn Norwegian?

Do you have a language you’d never want to learn?

What’s the hardest thing for you when learning a new language?

How’s your day going?

ok first thank you for this epic ask. my answer is long so it's under the cut.

I'm currently primarily learning Russian. I am sorta learning Swahili, but I haven't come any far yet.

I'm also continuing to learn french, but I'm already pretty good at french so it's pretty much just reading stuff in french.

I'm sorta learning northern Sami or Sami languages (multiple), but I haven't gotten far.

I'm not sure which languages I want to be fluent in. I guess french, I'm definitely not on a C1 level yet but I know a lot so it's probably the easiest. But I just want to take things as they come a bit. Sami languages (probably northern Sami has most materials) are a candidate, because decolonization and stuff, plus it's a new language family to me which interests me a lot. Though I'll likely try one I know people who speak.

but for learning in general I am considering/currently learning:

- Arabic (maybe Egyptian)

- Swahili

- French

- Russian

- Chinese (probably mandarin)

- Urdu

- Sámi language (unsure which)

- Norwegian sign language

- international sign language

- Usamerican sign language (ASL)

- Thai

And of course I'm probably gonna update this list. (metaphorically speaking, not physically this list in this post)

Where I learn:

So for french I learned primarily in a classroom setting, but honestly that has left me with very weak like audio processing for french.

For Russian I've been using Duolingo which is pretty good, though as people talk about I don't understand the grammar so if I want to use it formally I'm probably gonna diversify. (not sure what I'll do yet)

For Swahili I'm using language transfer. But I struggle to motivate myself to do language transfer lessons. They're primarily audio based and I'm genuinely addicted to music so I'm not always in the mood.

I've also used Polygloss, which is an image description game type thing where you get feedback on your language skills from other users. I would probably recommend this one if it sounds at all interesting to you. This has many languages btw, even toki Pona.

I've used drops but that app fuckings sucks ass. It's difficult to remember stuff in complete isolation. It's like the opposite of reading wikipedia in the target language.

For Thai I've used "Thai drill", which seems pretty good, I haven't gotten far with thai though because I've focused on other languages.

I've used lingodeer the short time I learned japanese, I've heard it's supposed to be really good for that.

I also like using texts, for Russian I've used a lot of wikipedia, trying to just read articles in Russian and see what I understand. For french I've used magazines and lemonde. For Sami I've used just the regular news.

I've tried chatting apps for language learning but I haven't really stuck to them too much so idk if that's for me. I think people like those though.

I've tried YouTube for Norwegian sign language and I find myself less likely to use youtube for language learning, but it definitely helps with getting access to resources when there's little.

Also miscellaneous websites. For Norwegian sign language, Russian and French I've used websites and it's helped at least a bit.

Translation services are essential! Like yeah don't just put everything through translation, but if you need a specific word or want to check your grammar it can be very helpful. I use it a lot in french.

On whether to learn Norwegian that depends what you value.

Some options are: novelty (different language family? unfamiliar writing system?), easiness (similar? are there apps? are there complex conjugations?), practical use (can you watch tv in the language? do you know anyone who speaks it?), different culture (will it give you access to a world radically different to your own?), decolonization (is it a colonized language?)

But personally I'm inclined to say yeah please learn my language. I can recommend resources and help teach you if you chose it, so the easiness is high (plus it's on Duolingo). the practical use, though lowered by the fact that most Norwegians speak english, is decent because it's easy to access free books online in Norwegian, plus news (that may be different like with Palestine - the free national news report does not have to be approved by isnotreal). And in general Norway values freedom of speech. The easiness is raised by you speaking English, and Norwegian also doesn't gender anything depending on subject's gender (unlike french), only grammatical gender, and you can choose between 2 & 3 genders. For novelty it's probably not that interesting though. For decolonization it's a colonizer language, Norway colonized a part of Sápmi and forced them to speak like us, no one colonized Norway. wait actually there might be more than Sápmi? idk I found this about Denmark-Norway, it might be wrong to pin it on just the Danes even though they had the upper hand historically, idk (there was centralized royal rule based in Copenhagen in Denmark). But yeah that last part idk if it really matters, it's not immoral to learn a "evil" language (of any kind), it's more that I consider it extra moral to learn a colonized language. (I wouldn't necessarily consider Norwegian evil but you get what I'm getting at).

For languages I wouldn't learn, honestly there's not many. I'm skeptical towards learning more languages like french because it's hyper gendered & usually non-binary excluding, but I think Spanish for example is one of them and it's so widely spoken it's kinda worth it.

The most difficult thing for me when learning a language, I guess staying consistent. I only have like one perfect month on Duolingo, and for other languages like Norwegian sign language I've not been consistent at all, not even reaching a rate of one lesson a month.

My day is going pretty well, especially after answering this ask :)

[chronic-cane]

Yesterday I went to a workshop/optional lesson on decolonizing pedagogy. It definitely helped solidify my understanding of what decolonization is (which is what the first part was mainly for).

At one point there was a small group discussion about how a student needed extra time in a quiet area for accomodations, and in the hypothetical scenario the other students saw that as cheating.

I have never been through this, but I guess it's something that can happen.

The answers from professors were incredibly useful because stuff like "keep the student from sharing around others" and "see if that anger is coming from need" is not something I would've considered as the person only seeing ableism.

At the end, I sat there and said (mic in hand btw) "As someone who has received such accommodation, it's literally harder to cheat with those accommodations than in your classroom! They make you leave your backpack at the door and only allow you to take a pencil in! I had to wait 10 minutes once for them to call and verify with my professor that it was open note! You can't cheat, it's basically impossible!" To which made a good amount of the room laugh.

"Well, that's another possible response to the students"

[a-shade-of-blue]

Freshwater Pearl Phone Strap & Custom Bracelet Giveaway: Help Families in Gaza!

I am organizing this raffle in order to raise funds for 3 Gaza GoFundMe campaigns. They all have really low funds and donations are coming in slowly for all of them! I have been in frequent contact with all three of them and would be grateful if you can help them out! Due to my geographical restrictions, I can only mail the bracelets to addresses in the UK. 

Fill in this form after donating to enter: https://forms.gle/TThCs5fbyn451AAD6

Campaign Details & Donation Links!

Mahmoud Salim's campaign

Donation Link:  Support a family lacking healthcare and safety

Mahmoud's Tumblr Account:  @mahmoudfamily1

Verification: #117 on this vetted list, also see here

Mahmoud has 17 family members trapped in Nuseirat, including 10 children. Mahmoud almost lost all his family when the house they were sheltering in was bombed with them inside, killing 13 people. Their makeshift tent has been hit by bullets and sharpnel.

Progress: $1,362 CAD raised of $80,000 goal

Mohammed & Ahmed Khalil's campaign

Donation Link:  Help Ahmed Khalil's family evacuate to safety

Mohammed's Tumblr Account:  @ahmed0khalil

Verification: #77 on this vetted list, also see here

Mohammed is 19 years old and from a family of 8. He has 5 siblings: Fathi (23), Aya (21), Anas (15), Abdullah (11) and Ahmed (6). His father has diabetes, Fathi is blind, and Abdullah is autistic and does not understand what is happening. They are displaced in a classroom in Deir el-Balah.

Progress: €3,687 raised of €50,000 goal

Ahmed Khader's campaign

Donation Link:  Help my family to reach save out of Gaza

Ahmed's Tumblr Account:  @ahmedpalestine

Verification: see here

Ahmed has 12 family members including 6 children, in Maghazi right now. He has recently lost his cousin, also named Ahmed, who was a father of 3 children, including a 2-month-old baby girl. He was killed by a missile while fetching water for his family.

Progress: €5,465 raised of €55,000 goal

Instructions: 

Donate a minimum of €5/$5 to enter the raffle! Each €5/$5 counts as an entry, so if you donate €10, you will be entered twice. 

You will get a free extra entry if you donate to all 3 campaigns (e.g. if you donate €5/$5 to all 3 campaigns, you will be entered 4 times instead of 3). 

You will also get a free extra entry for every €/$30 you donate!

Additionally, for every €/$100 you donate...

I will make you a bracelet regardless of if you win the raffle, and you can choose the colour and the beads I use! 

If you donate to all 3 campaigns you can choose to add a freshwater pearl to your bracelet!

e.g. if you donated to all 3 campaigns and the total is €/$200, I will make you two bracelets, and you can choose to add a pearl to each of the bracelet!

The deadline for entering this raffle is 10 December, 2024. 

Thank you for donating and supporting families in Gaza!

Tagging for reach, please message me if you want off the mailing list! We thank you in advance.@dlxxv-vetted-donations@ahaura@ana-bananya@northgazaupdates@c-u-c-koo-4-40k@riding-with-the-wild-hunt@roadimusprime@aces-and-angels@just-browsing1222@neptunerings@mushroomjar@northgazaupdates2@kyra45-helping-others@decolonize-solidarity@heritageposts@commissions4aid-international

@brutaliakhoa @decolonize-the-everything @postanagramgenerator@heydreamchild

@bixels @aria-ashryver@schoolhater@pcktknife@transmutationisms@sawasawako@feluka@magnus-rhymes-with-swagness@werewolf-transgenderism

@watermotif @stuckinapril @chanafehs@malcriada @appsa @serialunaliver @buttercuparry

@gothhabiba @punkitt-is-here@stil-lindigo@prisonhannibal@genderdog

@ankle-beez @lonniemachin @dykesbat @charlott2n @watermotif

@mavigator @lacecap @yugiohz @vakarians-babe @socalgal

@chilewithcarnage @ghelgheli @sivavakkiyar @anneemay @plomegranate @fluoresensitive @determinate-negation @girlinafairytale@cigaretteaunt @murderbot @heydreamchild

[clonerightsagenda]

So - I promised my full take on Within the Wires, and here it is.

First of all, Night Vale Presents continues to be very good at shorter, self-contained stories. WTNV lost me because it just got too long and formless for my tastes - which is fine if that's your jam! but it's not mine - but Alice isn't Dead was a good length for me, and these ten episode standalone seasons really allow them to tell a tight story without wearing out their welcome.

I love the use of the audio medium. WtW started back near the start of the audio drama renaissance when everyone was justifying the medium, and they do a great job - relaxation cassettes, voicemails, audio guides, memos, etc. Nothing else bowled me over quite as much as episode 9 of season 1 in the way it broke down the barriers between speaker and listener, but I really enjoyed the choices made.

I guess I have to accept that the Society is just a weird dystopia concept created to let these stories happen, because it doesn't really make sense. Sure, authoritarian societies don't always make sense or tell the truth about their motives, but family as the primary driver of discord between humans? It seems like the Reckoning started as WWI and then kept rolling, and most of the soldiers in WWI were not fighting each other because of personal animosity. The Society got rid of parents but kept corporations and politicians - that's rich. It would be reasonable to say the Society saw an opening in that taking over the socialization of new generations allows it to indoctrinate everyone, but I read the tie-in novel and the original designers seemed to genuinely believe family was the root of these issues. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. (Also the novel having a Black woman be the proponent of this theory was a bit odd to me.)

A few other things that pinged me the wrong way - WtW highlights a relationship between women in each season, which is great and probably (alas) why it is not more popular.... except season 3 which highlights a trans man. Wondering what the intended implication is there.

I also noted the issues with Native Americans in an earlier post. Season seven sort of addressed that? On one hand you have the mention of Aboriginal Australians reclaiming part of their land and Aotearoa using the original place names, almost like the Society is being framed as this decolonized paradise, but the season progresses to a critique of how clinically teaching children ripped from their families about their 'culture' in classrooms isn't the same as letting people pass down their heritage, just as a family bakery isn't the same bakery if you're just handing new people the recipes. Still, it's interesting that the past treatment of Indigenous people in the Americas has not come up at all, given the aforementioned similarities to residential schools. It looks like the co-writer is from New Zealand which explains why Māori stuff has come up multiple times, but Jeffrey Cranor is American. (Though, I've noted, has a history of overlooking Native issues.)

Some seasons were stronger than others. Season 6 was definitely my least favorite - didn't feel like it tied in much with any of the others. Overall though, the writing was strong, episode 9 of each season usually punched you in the gut, and I really liked how complex a lot of the characters were. Truly a podcast committed to morally grey women.

Verdict: Compelling characters, emotionally impactful storylines, very clever and interesting use of the audio medium, worldbuilding does not really hold up to close scrutiny but that's ok.

[decolonisingpsychology]

Class Norms and Decolonizing Education

The class norms that were developed in conversation with professor-students conversation was evidentiary of decolonizing education. This practice challenges traditional classroom dynamics and fosters a more inclusive, relational, and transformative learning environment (Poitras Pratt & Bodnaresko, 2023). Here are the list of class norms developed:

Value Process Over Perfection

This norm shifts the focus from rigid, product-oriented standards to valuing growth, reflection, and intentionality. In a Eurocentric classroom, success is often measured by final outcomes and standardised assessments. By emphasising process, our class recognised learning as a journey, where mistakes and self-reflection are integral. This approach aligns with decolonial pedagogy, which honours diverse ways of knowing and being, and resists the pressure to conform to academic benchmarks (Donald, 2009).

Connect Learning to the Real World

Decolonizing education means rooting learning in lived experience, land, and community. Our norm to connect learning to the real world disrupts the traditional separation between academic knowledge and everyday life. We are often told that our experiences are the exception, not the rule; that the truth is held is statistics and research. But discussing real-world experiences, encourages us to see knowledge as dynamic and interconnected, not confined to research papers or institutions. This approach also supports place-based and experiential learning, which are central to Indigenous pedagogies and help restore cultural knowledge and community connections (Poitras Pratt & Bodnaresko, 2023). My experience was not a minority in the classroom.

Manage Intent & Impact, with a Focus on Impact

Traditional classrooms often prioritise intent, excusing harm if it was unintentional. Our norm, however, centres the impact of our words and actions, especially regarding experiences of marginalisation. This shift calls for relational accountability and ongoing self-examination, which are essential in decolonial spaces (Donald, 2009). It also creates a safer environment for all students by acknowledging harm and working towards repair, rather than dismissing it.

Contribute to Cultivating an "Ethical Space"

Ethical space, as described by Indigenous scholars like Ermine, is where multiple worldviews can coexist respectfully. Our class norm to co-create ethical space moves beyond token inclusion of Indigenous perspectives. It requires ongoing dialogue, truth-telling, and critical thinking, allowing Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges to be honored on their own terms (Poitras Pratt & Bodnaresko, 2023). This practice is foundational for reconciliatory education and supports the transformative potential of relational teaching and learning (Donald, 2009).

Share the Air: Take Space, Make Space

Dominant voices have historically silenced the voice of minority. Often, participation is often dominated by a few, reinforcing existing power structures. By encouraging everyone to self-reflect on their presence and participation, we foster equity and collective responsibility.

Speak from the "I" Perspective

Speaking from personal experience resists universalising narratives and honours subjective truth. In decolonial work, this practice helps us stay grounded in our own standpoint while respecting others'. It also prevents the erasure of individual experiences and supports deeper listening and understanding within the group (Donald, 2009).

Stories Stay, Lessons Leave

Stories are sacred in indigenous practice, this norm recognises it. By affirming that personal sharing is a gift, not content to be extracted, we are reminded to carry forward the teachings with care, not the storyteller’s identity or trauma. This approach resists the colonial tendency to commodify knowledge and instead fosters ethical relationality and respect for community protocols (Poitras Pratt & Bodnaresko, 2023).

Participating in a classroom guided by these norms has been transformative. I noticed how shifting from product to process allowed me to take risks and reflect more deeply on my learning. Connecting our studies to real-world issues made the material more relevant and meaningful. The emphasis on impact over intent challenged me to be more mindful and accountable in my interactions.

Creating ethical space was not always easy, but it encouraged honest conversations and mutual respect. Sharing the air helped me become more aware of my own participation and made space for quieter voices. Speaking from the "I" perspective deepened my empathy and understanding of others’ experiences. Finally, the norm around stories reminded me to treat classmates’ disclosures with care and responsibility.

Overall, these norms not only disrupted traditional power dynamics but also invited both students and professors to unlearn colonial habits and assumptions. They encouraged us to build a classroom community rooted in respect, accountability, and relational learning—key elements for decolonizing education and moving toward reconciliation (Poitras Pratt & Bodnaresko, 2023; Donald, 2009).

[sarahgcorner]

Reading Journal #10

In the class we had on the Thursday before we went on spring break, I remember picking out different pedagogies that had stuck out to us and ones we would want to use in our future classrooms. Of the three I chose, the top one for me was community-based pedagogies. As I reflected on the readings for this week, specifically the powerful narratives from Aydé Enríquez-Loya and Kendall Leon’s "Chicanx/Latinx Rhetorics as Methodology for Writing Program Design at HSIs" and Isabel Baca's poignant testimony "Hispanic-Serving or Not: La Lucha Sigue in Academia," I could feel how important community was in each of these articles not only in educational advancement but also in the personal and collective empowerment seen throughout. So, if you couldn't tell already, I will dive into the community and its power within us.   

Enríquez-Loya and Leon place a great deal of emphasis on how crucial the role of Chicanx/Latinx rhetoric is in being a transformative methodology as it “centralize[s] Chicanx rhetoric in the design of writing programs,” as it creates inclusive and supportive environments that work to disrupt the traditional educational binaries and borders we are so used to seeing in everyday education (213). I liked their assertion because I learned the necessity for this program and curriculum as they truly reflect the cultural realities relating to their student bodies, and they are not some token gestures that seem authentic but are just at the end of the genuine in themselves. This method is based on community elegance because of the acknowledgment of the students and their lived experiences and the use of those experiences to strengthen the pedagogical approaches. They articulate it even more beautifully through Anzaldúa’s concept of Conocimiento, a pedagogical shift in which there is a “developing a critical and decolonized consciousness that moves from rupturing to fragmentation to connecting, assembling and rebuilding” (213).   

While reading Baca’s testimony, I was given a painful window to look through into the lived reality of navigating academia as a Latina scholar at an HSI. I was born with a large amount of privilege, being born a white woman into a middle-class family, so I don’t know what it is like, nor will I ever know what it is like to experience what Baca has gone through. However, through her experience, she highlights a supportive community's important role in helping to challenge and dismantle institutional racism. This supportive community would consist of BIPOC allies and white accomplices like myself. For me, I have never understood why just based on someone’s skin tone, culture, or heritage makes them less than another, so I will always fight for everyone to be placed on an equal playing field and be given the equity they deserve. Through Baca’s lens, she places community-based pedagogies as not just an educational choice but as one of the essential acts of resistance and survival with academia that resonated with me. We must build communities where BIPOC scholars can share stories of "healing, triumph, recovery, resiliency, and strength" (Baca 74). While these spaces may not have a place for me in them, that does not matter because, at the end of the day, I would not understand. These two works offered me new insights into how there are needs for communities that don't include me, but I can still offer a hand in helping to offer them support.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Anna Krylov and Jay Tanzman

Published: Oct 2, 2023

Note: A version of this article will appear as an invited chapter in the forthcoming volume The Free Inquiry Papers edited by Robert Maranto, Lee Jussim, and Sally Satel.

1. An age of unreason

The liberal enlightenment, humanism, and democracy are under siege. A once-obscure postmodernist worldview, Critical Social Justice (CSJ) [1-3], has escaped the academy and is quickly reshaping our institutions and society at large. Long-standing merit-based practices in science are rapidly being subordinated to practices based on the tenets of CSJ theory [4]. Increasingly, scientists must compete for funding, no longer only on the basis of scientific merit, but also on the basis of how their proposed research will promote the goals of CSJ. As an example, an NIH neurology program requires grant applications to include a “plan for enhancing diverse perspectives” with the goal to “bring about the culture change necessary to address the inequities and systemic biases in biomedical research….” [5] Similarly, funding for fundamental research in chemistry and physics now depends on researchers demonstrating their commitment to “promote equity and inclusion as an intrinsic element to advancing scientific excellence” [6].

In the academy, faculty hiring and administrative appointments are increasingly made on the basis of the candidate’s identity [7-9]. Merit-based admission to schools and universities is being weakened, with standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT being abandoned on “social justice” grounds [10,11]. K–12 is affected as well. Some school districts have stopped giving D and F grades in order to improve “equity” [12]. In math classes, activist teachers claim that getting the right answer and showing your work are white supremacist concepts and are advocating, instead, a supposedly anti-racist CSJ pedagogy [13,14]. Accelerated mathematics programs for gifted students, necessary to prepare them for advanced training and careers in STEM [15], are being dismantled in the name of “social justice” [16-18]. Many school districts have eliminated honors classes altogether in the name of “equity” [19]. The resultant weakening of the workforce has already contributed to the fall of the US from its position as the world leader in science [20].

In the university, faculty and staff are instructed to use Newspeak—neopronouns and other neologisms—in their written and verbal communications for the purpose of “inclusivity” [21,22]. To be avoided are such apparently un-inclusive terms as “strawman,” “brown-bag lunch,” and “picnic” [22–25]. Professional societies and corporations are following suit, proscribing terms such as “field,” “dark times,” “black market,” “double-blind study,” “nursing mother,” “hip-hip hooray,” “smart phone,” “homeless,” and “the French” [26–30].

In biology, an education paper recommends that teachers emphasize the sexual diversity across species in nature, which includes “organisms such as ciliates, algae, and fungi [that] have equal-size gametes (isogamy) and do not therefore have gametic sexes [that is, binary sexes, as mammals do].” This is supposed to promote inclusivity of LGBTQIA2+ students in the classroom [25]. Chemistry education also needs to be reformed, according to the journal Chemical Education, which published a virtual Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) collection of 67 papers exploring such topics as decolonization of the chemistry curriculum, chemistry and racism, and gender and sexual orientation identities in the chemistry classroom [31]. A recent paper in the same journal describes “a special topic class in chemistry on feminism and science as a tool to disrupt the dysconcious racism in STEM,” which explores “the development and interrelationship between quantum mechanics, Marxist materialism, Afro-futurism/pessimism, and postcolonial nationalism.” “To problematize time as a linear social construct,” the paper says, “the Copenhagen interpretation of the collapse of wave-particle duality was utilized” [32]. No, Deepak Chopra was not a co-author of the paper.

In STEM, prospective faculty are asked to pledge their commitment to the ideology of CSJ and to document their activism in advancing DEI [8,9,33,34]. Medical schools are abolishing long-accepted assessments of competency in order to improve racial parity in residency programs [35]. A pamphlet published by the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health claims that public health anti-obesity campaigns are an example of “fatphobia,” that public health’s “focus on body size is rooted in racism,” that “higher weight is not causal to worse health outcomes," and that “focusing on weight ignores systematic injustices” [36,37]. Under the doctrine of gender-affirming care, adolescents are offered life-changing transgender treatments, often after only perfunctory psychological assessment, despite the poor understanding that medicine currently has on the risks and benefits of these treatments [38–40].

[ Unreason and intolerance. Upper left: Yale students protest “offensive” Halloween costumes (2015). Lower left: Activists burn books by J.K. Rowling (2023). Right: Students at UC Davis disrupt a film viewing by throwing a bag of manure into the room. ]

Free speech itself, the cornerstone of liberal democracy, is under attack. As viewed by CSJ activists, free speech is dangerous, harmful, and equivalent to violence [41]. Adherents of DEI ideology believe that DEI should trump academic freedom [42]. Institutions essential for providing a platform for the marketplace of ideas, information exchange, and debate have largely abandoned their mission in the name of social justice activism. Articles in the press are infused with CSJ ideology [4]. Scientific publishers from Scientific American to the flagship journals Science and Nature have become mouthpieces for CSJ [43–56]. Universities, whose primary mission is education and truth seeking, have become complicit in censorship, scholarship suppression, indoctrination, and intimidation [57–59]. Universities and professional organizations have compromised their mission as seekers and communicators of objective truths by abandoning traditional institutional neutrality in favor of political activism, taking official positions on elections, police reform, abortion, wars, and other social issues [60,61], leaving dissenters out in the cold. Where debate, constructive disagreement, and discussion were once cultivated, conformity and dogmatism, enforced both top-down (by CSJ-infused DEI trainings [62,63]) and bottom-up (by ideologically driven activists [58]), now reign.

On campus, another essential provision of democracy, the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, no longer guides procedures for resolving conflict. Suspensions and terminations of professors without a hearing in response to offense taken by students, faculty members, or administrators has become commonplace (see, for example, Ref. 64–67). A predictable consequence is that there is now an unprecedented level of self-censorship by students and faculty [57,68,69]. Proposed changes to Title IX regulations will further erode the free speech of students and the protection of due process [70]. 

CSJ adherents accuse dissenters of being indifferent to existing inequalities and historic injustices, of being bigots, of having nefarious motives, and of perpetuating existing power structures. We reject these accusations. We oppose the practices of CSJ because they harm everyone, including those groups they purport to elevate [71-73]. It is precisely because we care about the existing problems in the world and about real social justice that we oppose CSJ.

What we are witnessing today—curriculum “decolonization,” the elimination of honors classes in schools, the ubiquitous war on merit [4], the imposition of political litmus tests for academic positions, Newspeak, the renaming of everything in sight, and on and on—are not isolated excesses perpetrated by a handful of overly zealous but otherwise well-meaning individuals; they are symptoms of a wholesale takeover of our institutions by an illiberal movement that currently has the upper hand. The current situation is not a pendulum that has swung too far and will self-correct [74]; it is a train hurtling full speed toward a cliff. Those of us unwillingly to go over the edge can either jump off—leave academia (or maybe start up alternative institutions)—or fight to get the brakes applied before it is too late. The remainder of this chapter is about the latter course of action.

2. Why we should fight

To put it simply, we should fight because it is the right thing to do. It is not only our duty to the next generation, but an opportunity to pay our debt to the previous generations of dissenters who fought against forces of illiberalism to create the free and prosperous world that we enjoy today [75,76]. By fighting, we, too, can fend off the forces of unreason and restore the values of humanism, liberalism, and The Enlightenment. Inaction and submission will only enable the further spread of illiberalism. The history of past illiberal regimes, such as the USSR and Nazi Germany, provide ample lessons and motivation to stand and fight today. The train is gaining momentum; the longer we wait, the harder it will be to stop it. We must act now, while we still can.

Although there are uncanny parallels with totalitarian regimes of the past [23,77–80], we are still living in a free, democratic society. Despite the advances of illiberal ideology, manifested by the rise of censorship, the spread of cancel culture [23,57,58,81–83], and the proliferation of institutionalized structures (such as DEI bureaucracies) to enforce CSJ ideology, the dissenters of today do not face incarceration in prisons, labor camps, and mental hospitals. Nonetheless, we can learn from history.

In his book To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter [84], Vladimir Bukovsky [85] describes his experiences as a dissident who refused to comply with the Soviets and challenged the regime. Bukovsky describes the apathy and complacency of the majority of the population at that time. People understood the corrupt and inhumane nature of the regime, but they chose to keep their heads down because—as the Russian proverb goes—“No man can splay the stone” (in Russian: плетью обуха не перешибёшь).

Because of this complacency, the economically bankrupt, oppressive, and inhumane Soviet regime lasted as long as it did (70+ years). But it was the actions of dissidents that ultimately catalyzed its downfall. Consider, for example, the impact of the books of Solzhenitsyn, who told the world the truth about the atrocities of the Soviet regime [86]. In addition to meticulously documenting the scale of the atrocities, Solzhenitsyn explained that they came to be, not due to deviations from the party line or shortcomings of its individual leaders, but as the direct result of Marxist-Leninist ideology.

In Bukovsky’s time (the late 1950s to mid-1970s), open dissent was rare. Growing up in the Soviet Union, I [Anna]—as most of my peers—did not even know dissidents existed. It wasn’t until Perestroyka in the late 80s, when I read Solzhenitsyn’s books and learned about Sakharov [87] that I found out. Yet, it is through the actions of the dissidents that the West came to understand the Soviet regime as an “evil empire,” and this understanding propelled the political forces in the West that ultimately decided the outcome of the Cold War. The impact of the dissident movement on the Soviet regime has been illuminated through a series of memoranda of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, stolen and published by Bukovsky in his book Judgment in Moscow [88]. The acts of individuals splayed the stone after all.

I [Anna] was born (in the then-Soviet state of Ukraine) into the luckiest generation in the history of the USSR—the generation that witnessed the fall of the Wall when they were still young. We could escape to the free world, live as free people, and build successful and fulfilling careers in the West. Had the regime lasted another 20 years, my generation would have been yet another of the long list of those whose lives were ruined by the Soviet regime. I feel a personal debt to the dissidents of the day. 

Now, it is our turn to be the dissidents and to fight the good fight.

Fighting for what is right is not just the right thing to do; it is empowering. Standing up and speaking your mind is liberating, even exhilarating; while hunkering down in fear, hoping the storm will pass, is a bleak experience. Being honest feels good, while being complicit in lies is dispiriting. Fighting the good fight puts you in control, whereas passive submission leaves you helpless. Whether we ultimately win or lose this fight, those who choose to remain silent will look back and ask themselves why they did not act when they could. As Martin Niemöller wrote after World War II,

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Eventually, this illiberal movement, like those of the past, will come not only for the dissidents, but for the silent bystanders as well (and, eventually, for its own vocal supporters).

There are myriad excuses, as old as the history of totalitarianism and oppression itself, invoked to justify inaction, complacency, and collaboration. Bukovsky [84] enumerates a few of the more familiar: “What can I do alone?”; “I’ll be more effective after I get the promotion”; “It’s not my job; I’m a scientist.” “If I don’t collaborate, someone else will anyway (and I’ll probably do less harm).” These reasons may seem logical, even compelling; however, they are self-deceptions. Not pushing back against bad ideas allows them to spread. Not fighting back against illiberalism allows it to grow. Not standing up for truth permits the lies to flourish. Not confronting the CSJ ideologists permits them to advance. And when they advance, we lose. It is a zero-sum game.

The choice to fight in the face of potential consequences is personal [89] and not an easy one to make. But as you contemplate whether to act or to lay low, consider the importance of truth and integrity in your life. To paraphrase Bari Weiss: Worship truth more than Yale. As she says:

[D]o not lose sight of what is essential. Professional prestige is not essential. Being popular is not essential. Getting your child into an elite preschool is not essential. Doing the right thing is essential. Telling the truth is essential. Protecting your kids is essential. [90]

Sure, no one wants to become a martyr for free speech or experience bullying, ostracism, and professional damage [81,91–93]. Cancel culture is real, but the risks are not what dissenters to totalitarian regimes faced historically or face today—cancel culture does not put you in jail. One still can write a dissenting op-ed without the fear of being stripped of their citizenship and expelled from the country, as Solzhenitsyn was for his writings [83]. We still can criticize DEI policies without fear of being put under house arrest, as Sakharov was for his vocal opposition to nuclear weapons and his unwavering defense of human rights [87]. But if we delay, some of the totalitarian nightmares of the past may become a reality. There are already worrying signs of this totalitarian-style repression in America: parents opposing CSJ in schools have been accused of terrorism and investigated by the FBI [94]; a journalist who wrote about collusion between the government and social media was paid a surprise home visit by the Internal Revenue Service [95]; a student who questioned the concept of microaggressions [96] at a mandatory training was expelled and forced to “seek to psychological services” [97]. These incidents in America today are chillingly similar to practices in Russia in the Soviet era, when the KGB routinely investigated dissidents, and dissent from Soviet ideology was considered a psychiatric disorder [84,88]. In the absence of resistance, this illiberal movement, like illiberal movements of the past, will gain ever more power, and we will face ever worse repression and erosion of individual freedom.

Inaction does not guarantee survival, but fighting a successful fight does. The only way to defend yourself against repression by an illiberal ideology is to stop the spread of the ideology.

The dangers of inaction are real, but how much risk one should take must be a personal decision [89]. Above all, it rarely does any good to get fired. Getting fired is playing into their hands. It’s one less enemy in the organization to fight against its ideological capture. Should all the dissidents get fired, the ideology wins. Full stop.

But it’s not hopeless. As we elaborate below, there are ways to maximize the impact of your actions and minimize the chances of negative consequences of resistance.

3. How to fight

Although there is no sure-fire roadmap to solve the current crisis, there are some do’s and don’ts. A recently published handbook, Counter Wokecraft (which we highly recommend), written by an anonymous STEM professor, provides concrete recommendations for staging the resistance [98]. It convincingly explains how small but deliberate actions add up to big change and elaborates on the perils of delaying action. In what follows, we offer our view on how to fight, and we share examples of successful acts of resistance that give us reason for hope. Small contributions add up, so do something rather than nothing.  As Gad Saad writes in The Parasitic Mind:

The battle of ideas knows no boundaries, so there is plenty to do. If you are a student and hear your professors spouting postmodern nonsense or spewing anti-science drivel, challenge them politely and constructively. If you are a graduate and your alma mater is violating its commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of thought, withdraw your donations—and let the school know why. If your Facebook friends are posting comments with which you disagree, engage them and offer an alternative viewpoint.... If you are sitting at your local pub having a conversation about a sensitive topic, do not refrain from speaking your mind. If your politicians are succumbing to suicidal political correctness, vote them out of office. [99]

1. Educate yourself; knowledge is power.

To effectively counter the ideology of CSJ, it is crucial to understand its nature and the tactics it employs. As two-time Nobel Laureate Marie Sklodowska-Curie said:

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so we may fear less.

Although Curie was referring to phenomena of the natural world, the observation applies equally to the world of ideas. By understanding the origins and tenets of CSJ, we can fear less—and fight more effectively.

For me [Anna] and my former compatriots, who were forcibly schooled in Marxist-Leninism and experienced its implementation as Socialism firsthand, it is easy to recognize the current illiberal movement’s philosophical roots [78,79]. We recognize the familiar rhetoric and the Orwellian co-option of the language: the media outlet of the Communist Party, which disseminated its lies, was called Pravda (Правда), which is Russian for “truth”; victims of Red terror were called “enemies of the people” (враги народа); Soviet troops invading other countries were called “liberators” (освободители); and  nuclear weapons were developed with the slogan “nucleus for the cause of peace” (атом—делу мира). We are used to looking behind the facade of nice-sounding words and seeing their real meaning to those in power [100]. It is not hard to see that today’s “Diversity,” “Equity,” and “Inclusion” have about as much in common with the noble concepts of diversity, equality, and inclusion as Orwell's Ministry of Love had to do with love or his Ministry of Plenty had to do with plenty. (A more-fitting operational definition of DEI would be Discrimination, Entitlement, and Intimidation.) This linguistic tactic is used because it works. It has fooled many STEM academics and ordinary citizens and has enabled the illiberal ideology to get its foot in the door [3].

As Counter Wokecraft explains, the tactics CSJ employs to gain power in our institutions include the use of liberal-sounding “crossover words” to shroud the illiberal aims of the movement [98]. The concise essay “DEI: a Trojan Horse for Critical Social Justice in Science” by the same author offers insights into the philosophy that undergirds the CSJ movement and clearly elucidates its aims [3]. For a deeper dive into CSJ, we recommend the book by Pluckrose and Lindsay [1].

2. Use all existing means of resistance, but first and foremost, the official ones.

Mechanisms of resistance are available through existing institutions, even if the institutions themselves are failing to protect their mission [101]. These mechanisms can be exploited to change the institution from within.

Bukovsky describes how their dissident group worked within the legal boundaries of the Soviet regime [84]. He contrasts this approach with anarchism and revolutionary destructivism, which, he argues, lead to outcomes that are worse than the original evils. Bukovsky and his dissident comrades structured their activism and resistance within the framework of the Soviet constitution—which many legitimately considered to be a joke. When allowed to speak in court, Bukovsky framed his defense to emphasize the constitutional rights of Soviet citizens, for example, to peacefully demonstrate. Bukovsky attributes their success to this strategy. As an example of an important victory, he describes how he and his fellow political prisoners managed to resist and ultimately eliminate mandatory “corrective labor” for political prisoners. Following legal protocols, they rolled out a concerted effort of filing official complaints. Although isolated complaints never had any effect (they would be registered, duly processed, and dismissed), by flooding the bureaucratic system with a massive number of such complaints (which each had to be properly registered and responded to), they pushed the system beyond its limits. The sheer number of complaints compelled administrative scrutiny of the prison and its officers. And the prisoners won the fight.

Today, we can work within the system of our universities and professional organizations, even if they have already been ideologically corrupted. We can participate in surveys; communicate our concerns to leadership; nominate candidates committed to liberal principles to committees and leadership; vote against CSJ ideologues; speak up against practices that violate the stated mission of the institution [43,102,103]; publish well-reasoned opinion pieces [4,14,15,23,82,83,102]; and insist that our institutions adhere to their stated institutional (and legal) commitments to free speech and non-discrimination, such as being equal opportunity employers. Counter Wokecraft [98] provides concrete suggestions on how to effectively oppose the advances of the CSJ agenda by simply insisting that standard protocols of decision-making be followed—that is, through formal meetings with organized discussions that adhere to a set agenda, vote by secret ballot, and so on. In short, the existing governance structures and institutional policies can still be utilized to defend and even restore the institutional mission, even when the institution’s workings have been undermined by CSJ activists.

The following success stories illustrate the effectiveness of working within the system.

At the University of Massachusetts, a faculty group fought—and won—against a proposed rewriting of the university mission statement, which would have redefined the purpose of the university as engaging in political and ideological activism, rather than pursuing the truth [104].

Faculty at the University of Chicago succeeded in having departmental statements that violated institutional neutrality (by voicing collective support for specific social and political issues in violation of the University’s Kalven Report [105]) rescinded [106].

Also at the University of Chicago, in response to faculty complaints to the institution’s Title IX coordinator and general counsel, at least seven programs that gave preferences to specific races or sexes in violation of Federal regulations were discontinued [106].

The faculty of the University of Washington voted down a proposal to require DEI statements for all tenure and promotion candidates [107]. As reported to us, an email campaign initiated by a single faculty member was decisive in defeating the proposal.

At the University of North Carolina (UNC), the Board of Trustees adopted [108] the Chicago Free Speech Principles [109] and Kalven Report [105]. The former articulates the university’s commitment to free speech and is considered to be a model policy on this issue; the latter ensures institutional neutrality, prohibiting units of the university from taking stands on moral, political, or ideological issues, unless they directly affect the mission of the institution.

Also at UNC, responding to a faculty petition, the Board of Governors moved to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements from its hiring and promotion process. The mandate states that the university “shall neither solicit nor require an employee or applicant for academic admission or employment to affirmatively ascribe to or opine about beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles regarding matters of contemporary political debate or social action as a condition to admission, employment, or professional advancement” [110].

In California, mathematicians organized a petition that has, so far, blocked the implementation of radical, CSJ-based revisions to the K–12 math curriculum [18]. At the time of publication, the fight is not over; but they’ve won so far.

A new nonprofit, Do No Harm, has been formed to fight against the encroachment of identity politics in medicine [111]. Among their successes, filings with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against two medical schools has resulted in the elimination of race as a requirement for certain scholarships. Scholarships “meant for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, [a] worthy goal, can and should be met without racial discrimination,” writes the organization’s founder [112].

Adverse publicity and mockery, too, can cause Universities, which are sensitive to their public image, to roll back woke policies, as the following examples illustrate.

The administration of MIT reversed its own decision and reinstated the use of standardized tests for admission [113], the elimination of which had been mocked by dissidents [114].

The Stanford University “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative” website, which listed 161 verboten expressions, including “beating a dead horse,” “white paper,” “insane,” and even “American,” was taken down after sustained mockery in the press and on social media. The university’s president ultimately disowned the initiative and reaffirmed the university’s commitment to free speech [29].

At the University of Southern California, the interim provost made a clear statement that “the university does not maintain a list of banned or discouraged words” in response to the mockery [115] of an earlier memorandum the university's School of Social Work announcing the cancellation of the word “field” as racist [26,29].

At Texas Tech, the administration announced that it was dropping mandatory DEI statements from the hiring process [116], after details of how these statements influenced hiring decisions had been publicized [9].

These examples illustrate the maxim that sunlight is the best disinfectant [117]. We can use social media and the press to shine a light on the excesses of CSJ to bring about change.

Pressure from state governments can also force universities to change course away from DEI ideology. Facing threats from the state assembly to cut funding, the University of Wisconsin system has announced it will eliminate mandatory DEI statements for job applicants. As we are writing this chapter, the state assembly is also threatening to eliminate funding for administrative positions at UW dedicated to DEI [118].

Arizona has also dealt a blow to DEI ideology. The state’s Board of Regents has mandated that public universities drop the use of DEI statements in hiring. The move was in response to a finding by the Goldwater Institute that DEI statements, which were required in over three-fourths of job postings, were being used “to circumvent the state’s constitutional prohibition against political litmus tests in public educational institutions” [119].

Organizations such as the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) have successfully used institutions’ own governing policies and bylaws as well as the law to defend scores of scholars who have been attacked for their extramural speech and threatened with administrative discipline or firing [120,121].

A move is afoot to strengthen universities’ commitment to academic freedom by encouraging them to officially adopt the Chicago Trifecta (the Kalven report, the Chicago Principles, and the Shils report). The “Restoring Academic Freedom” letter [122], which calls on universities to do so, has garnered 1700 signatures so far.

3. Don't play their game: You can’t win.

We are trained to seek compromises and solutions that bring different groups on board; we seek consensus. That is a fine approach under normal circumstances, when all agents are acting in good faith. But we must recognize that we are up against agents who are driven—knowingly or unknowingly—by an ideology whose goal is to take over the institution. Every compromise with them brings them closer to their goal [1,3,74,98,123]. Therefore, we must stand our ground.

A major advance in the spread of illiberalism has been the establishment of DEI bureaucracies in our intuitions to enforce CSJ ideology through policy [3,8,98,124-127]. It is important to understand the power of this system and to distinguish the system from the people. A DEI apparatchik can be a nice, well-meaning individual, who has been fooled by the movement’s deliberately deceptive language [1,98]; a cynical opportunist who seeks power and career advancement; or a True Believer. A DEI administrator may be completely unaware of the philosophical origins of CSJ, whose goals the DEI machine has been installed to implement. But just as a Soviet apparatchik need not have read Das Kapital to have been an agent enforcing conformity to Marxist doctrine, a DEI apparatchik need not have read the works of the critical theorists Gramsci, Derrida, Foucault, Bell, Crenshaw, and Delgado to be implementing CSJ-inspired ideology. But even participants who are naive of the movement’s history, philosophy, or ultimate goals are furthering its aims; they are still cogs in the machine. Do not be fooled by DEI administrators who may naively or deceptively deny that they are advancing CSJ ideology. They are, whether or not they know it or acknowledge it.

The power of the system—the DEI bureaucracy—and its ideological foundation make the motivations of the individual participants irrelevant. The story of Tabia Lee illustrates this point [128]. Lee—a black woman who directed a DEI program at a community college in California—questioned anti-racist and gender orthodoxy, declined to join a “socialist network,” objected to land acknowledgments and Newspeak terms such as “Latinx,” “Filipinx,” and neopronouns, and supported a campus event focused on Jewish inclusion and antisemitism. Lee describes her non-orthodox worldview as follows:

I don’t have ideological or viewpoint fidelity to anyone. I’m looking for what’s going to help people and what will help our students and how we can be better teachers and our best teaching selves. [128]

This attitude was found to be incompatible with the ideology of DEI. When Lee refused to change her worldview to comply with the orthodoxy, she was terminated from her position [128].

The establishment of the DEI bureaucracy in our institutions represented a tectonic shift from CSJ as a grass-roots movement to CSJ as an official power structure within the university equipped with a massive budget to promote its ideology [124,126,129-132].

A 2021 report by the Heritage Foundation [130], which documented the size of this new bureaucracy, identified 3,000 administrators with DEI responsibilities among the 65 universities they surveyed [124,131]. This number is in addition to the already extensive staff of Federally mandated Title VI, Title IX, and disability offices, who also perform DEI-related tasks. The new diversicrats already outnumber the mandated staffers. For example, the average university examined had 4.2 DEI personnel for every one ADA compliance administrator [124]. Given the sheer number of DEI officials and their generous salaries (one-third of chief diversity officers are paid more than $200,000 annually [132]), it is not surprising that DEI budgets are enormous; for example, in 2021, UC–Berkeley dedicated 41 million dollars to DEI [129].

The DEI bureaucracy is given official status within the university and is empowered to interfere in faculty hiring, to disseminate CSJ ideology by means of mandatory trainings, to infuse the ideology into teaching [10,13,16,25,31], and to curtail academic freedom [42,127]. Khalid and Snyder provide insight into the logic and financial incentives behind the DEI machine:

This attitude was found to be incompatible with the ideology of DEI. When Lee refused to change her worldview to comply with the orthodoxy, she was terminated from her position [128].

The establishment of the DEI bureaucracy in our institutions represented a tectonic shift from CSJ as a grass-roots movement to CSJ as an official power structure within the university equipped with a massive budget to promote its ideology [124,126,129-132].

A 2021 report by the Heritage Foundation [130], which documented the size of this new bureaucracy, identified 3,000 administrators with DEI responsibilities among the 65 universities they surveyed [124,131]. This number is in addition to the already extensive staff of Federally mandated Title VI, Title IX, and disability offices, who also perform DEI-related tasks. The new diversicrats already outnumber the mandated staffers. For example, the average university examined had 4.2 DEI personnel for every one ADA compliance administrator [124]. Given the sheer number of DEI officials and their generous salaries (one-third of chief diversity officers are paid more than $200,000 annually [132]), it is not surprising that DEI budgets are enormous; for example, in 2021, UC–Berkeley dedicated 41 million dollars to DEI [129].

The DEI bureaucracy is given official status within the university and is empowered to interfere in faculty hiring, to disseminate CSJ ideology by means of mandatory trainings, to infuse the ideology into teaching [10,13,16,25,31], and to curtail academic freedom [42,127]. Khalid and Snyder provide insight into the logic and financial incentives behind the DEI machine:

DEI Inc. is a logic, a lingo, and a set of administrative policies and practices. The logic is as follows: Education is a product, students are consumers, and campus diversity is a customer-service issue that needs to be administered from the top down. (“Chief Diversity Officers,” according to an article in Diversity Officer Magazine, “are best defined as ‘change-management specialists.’”) DEI Inc. purveys a safety-and-security model of learning that is highly attuned to harm and that conflates respect for minority students with unwavering affirmation and validation.

Lived experience, the intent–impact gap, microaggressions, trigger warnings, inclusive excellence. You know the language of DEI Inc. when you hear it. It’s a combination of management-consultant buzzwords, social justice slogans, and “therapy speak.” The standard package of DEI Inc. administrative “initiatives” should be familiar too, from antiracism trainings to bias-response teams and mandatory diversity statements for hiring and promotion. [127]

The DEI bureaucracy is a categorical enemy. Don't deceive yourself that you can work with it to accomplish good for your institution [128]. This bureaucracy is founded on ideas that are in direct opposition to the liberal enlightenment and humanism [1,3,4,42,79,99,125–128,133,134]. Their goals are not your goals; consequently, you cannot ally or compromise with them. We must, instead, focus our efforts on stripping the DEI bureaucracy of its power, ideally, ridding the institution of it completely. This will not be an easy fight, but neither is it an impossible dream. State legislatures are already taking action against DEI. At the time of this writing, 35 states have introduced bills that would restrict or ban DEI offices and staff, mandatory DEI training, diversity statements, and/or identity-based preferences for hiring and admissions [135]. Recognizing that such bills could go too far and compromise academic freedom, the Manhattan Institute has drafted model legislation that would abolish DEI bureaucracies on campuses while preserving academic freedom [136]. To date, at least one state, Texas, has enacted legislation based on the Manhattan Institute’s model [137].

Another reason not to attempt to work with the DEI bureaucracy is that CSJ ideology leaves no space for rational dialog. As explained by McWhorter [71], Pincourt [3,98], Pluckrose [1], Saad [99], and others, CSJ is not a rational or empirical worldview, but an ideology whose adherents have accepted a set of unfalsifiable tenets that may not be questioned. Thus, CSJ ideologues are not open to reasoned arguments that contradict their worldview; it is, thus, futile to argue with them. We need, instead, to reason with those of our colleagues who have not yet drunk of the Kool Aid.

Finally, since the goal of CSJ is to take over the institution, small compromises with them ultimately lead to large losses for us. Give CSJ an inch, and it will take a mile. Consider, for starters, the following example, in which the dean of the Duke Divinity School made the mistake of conceding to student activists, which led to ever-increasing demands and personal attacks on the dean herself [138]. “The chickens have come home to roost at Duke’s divinity school,” writes John Staddon. Dean Heath, the dean of the school, fully allied herself with the CSJ agenda, rolled out a variety of DEI initiatives, issued a self-flagellating editorial admitting the “structural sins” of the school, and forced non-conforming faculty to resign. Yet, despite these concessions, the demands of “marginalized groups” only grew stronger, culminating in uncivil acts, such as the disruption of the dean’s state-of-the-school address by “four dissident female students bearing bull-horns and chanting, ‘I am somebody and I won’t be stopped by nobody,’ followed by a rap, a little theatrical performance [of a rude nature].”

Staddon writes:

There is poetic justice in this incident. Despite the dean’s earnest attempts “to provide a welcoming and safe place for students,” even after she designed “a space for the work of Sacred Worth, the LGBTQIA+ student group in the Divinity School”—even after disciplining, and losing—Professor Griffiths [a non-conforming faculty], in spite all this, she has apparently not done enough! The LGBT folk want more, much more, in the form of 15 demands. “We make up an integral part of this community, and yet our needs remain deliberately unheard.”

The demands include:

“To appoint a black trans woman or gender non-conforming theologian” as well as “a tenure-track trans woman theologian” and a “tenure-track queer theologian of color, preferably a black or indigenous person.”

A dissident MIT website, the Babbling Beaver [139], illustrates the same point by a mock resignation statement by MIT’s former President Reif:

You would think giving them a Women’s and Gender Studies Program, hiring six dozen DEI deans and staffers, most of whom couldn’t pass 18.01 [MIT’s introductory math course] if their lives depended on it, and cancelling invited lecturers to appease shouting Twitter mobs would be enough,” lamented the weary lame duck. “But noooo ... The only thing I accomplished by giving in to the incessant demands was encouraging additional demands, each more strident than the last.” [140]

The statement is satire, but the concessions made by the president and the ever-increasing demands were real.

Stories of how CSJ, once it is let in the door, rapidly infiltrates the organization and eventually takes it over are too many to enumerate. We present but one example, where the process has been meticulously documented. The report, spon.sored by the organization Alumni and Donors Unite, explains how CSJ took over University of San Diego “first gradually then suddenly.”

Gradually, over the course of a decade, CSJ-DEI became sown into the university’s fabric through changes in hiring committees and curriculum. Then suddenly in 2020–2021 the administration, outside all normal channels of decision-making, initiated a hostile takeover of USD and adopted a radical woke agenda into nearly all facets of the university’s life. [141]

The devaluation of merit and intellectual honesty in the guise of social justice that we now witness will inevitably lead to the decline of our institutions, if not to their destruction [4]. A case in point is The Evergreen State University, which, in 2017, experienced a notorious CSJ uprising on campus [142]. Since then, the university has suffered a 25% drop in enrollment and has lost 45 faculty through lay-offs and attrition [143].

Learn how to recognize and take on categorical enemies [98]. Remember—it is a zero sum game.

4. Focus on truth, not partisanship. Do not fear verbal attacks.

When you take on CSJ, there is something you will need to come to terms with: you are going to be called names, and your views and beliefs are going to be distorted and misrepresented. These are standard tactics of the CSJ movement. Since the adherents of CSJ have adopted an ideological, rather than a rational, worldview, they cannot rationally defend it; so they use the only tools they have: personal attacks and strawman arguments. They will call you transphobe, racist, misogynist, alt-right, Nazi, etc., no matter what you say or do. They will use deliberate misrepresentation of your expressions to subvert and discredit them [98]. They will use the “Motte and Bailey” trick [144] to derail conversations. Learn about these tactics so that you can anticipate, recognize, and counter them [98]. As Gad Saad explains:

The name calling and accusations are locked and loaded threats, ready to be deployed against you should you dare to question the relevant progressive tenets. Most people are too afraid to be accused of being racist or misogynist, and so they cover in silence.… Don't fall prey to this silencing strategy. Be assured in your principles and stand ready to defend them with the ferocity of a honey badger. [99]

Because you will be attacked no matter what you believe, what you say, or how carefully you say it, there is no point in affirming in your interactions with CSJ ideologues that you are committed to traditional humanistic, liberal values. They don’t care. In her essay “I'm a Progressive, Please Don't Hurt Me,” Sarah Haider calls this practice of hedging “throat-clearing” and explains why it is not effective [145]. She also points out the hidden bigotry of it, that is, the implicit assumption that those on the other side of the aisle are inherently evil. Haider writes:

Before touching on any perspective that I knew to not be kosher among other Leftists, I tended to precede with some version of throat-clearing: “I’m on the left” or “I’ve voted Democrat my whole life.” I told myself that this was a distinction worth insisting on because 1) it was the truth and 2) because it helped frame the discussion properly—making clear that the argument is coming from someone who values what they value. But there was another reason too. My political identity reminders were a plea to be considered fully and charitably, to not be villainized and presumed to be motivated by “hate.” The precursor belief to this, of course, is that actual conservatives should not be taken charitably, are rightfully villainized, and really are motivated by “hate.” But I’m done sputtering indignantly about being mischaracterized as “conservative,” or going out of my way to remind the audience that I really am a good little liberal.

She goes on to explain that throat-clearing is counterproductive because: (1) it doesn’t work, you won't be spared; (2) it is a tax on energy and attention; (3) it is bad for you; and (4) it is bad for the causes you care about.

So we should stop worrying about our group loyalties and focus on our cause. Truth wears no clothes, so do not try to dress it up in partisan attire. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and move on.

It may be tempting to stay out of the fight in order to preserve friendships. It is true that some people you thought of as friends may turn against you—privately or even publicly. It has happened to us, and it hurts. But it also lets you know who your real friends are—those who stick up for you whether they agree with your views or not. And you will find new friends and allies who share your values. These relationships, forged fighting the good fight, will be enduring and empowering.

5. Do not apologize.

We cannot stress this enough. Your apology will be taken as a sign of weakness and will not absolve you—in fact, it will make matters worse. Apologies to the illiberal mob are like drops of blood in the water to a pack of sharks. Additionally, your apology can be interpreted as an admission of guilt, which can come back to haunt you in the event you need to defend yourself legally or in an administrative proceeding. The Academic Freedom Alliance advises: “If you confess to an offense you didn’t commit, or if you concede to a claim or accusation that is factually inaccurate or not truly an offense, the admission can and will be used against you.” [146] Recognize that the CSJ activists on Twitter do not care about your apology; they care about publicly flaying you in order to sow fear among other potential dissenters [147]. Someone claims to have been offended by your speech? Someone claims it caused them pain? Fine, that's their problem [148]. You know what your views are. And your friends do too. Stay on message. 

6. Build a community and a network.

Communities and networks provide moral support and there is safety in numbers. Some groups already exist. The Heterodox Academy (HxA), for example, provides a platform to organize communities (e.g., HxSTEM is a community of STEM faculty) and to connect with colleagues who are open to reasoned debate, as per the HxA statement, which each member is asked to endorse: “I support open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in research and education.” The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) also provides resources and support to those who push back on anti-humanistic policies, especially in schools, universities, and in the medical profession.

Organizations like FIRE and the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) provide educational resources, opportunities to network, and—most importantly—protection, including legal representation. Join and support them. Build groups and act as a group—e.g., write an op-ed piece with a group of co-authors. Ten people are harder to cancel than one. Counter Wokecraft describes how to identify the allies among your colleagues and how to build effective resistance at your workplace [98].

Stand up for others. Next time they will do it for you. When you see a colleague being ostracized for what she said, think first, “Which parts of her message do I agree with?” not “Which parts do I disagree with?” If you agree with the main message, say so, and be charitable about imperfect expression. Way too often do we hear colleagues justifying their silence with excuses like “I agree with her in general, but she should have been more careful about how she said this or that.”

Some communities, including mathematicians and psychologists, in response to CSJ takeovers of their professional societies, have simply started new ones [149,150]. Perhaps we need more of these to send a strong message to the old societies that they need to change course. We see evidence of the effectiveness of this strategy; for example, the American Mathematical Society [151] cancelled its CSJ-dominated blog shortly after the establishment of the new Association for Mathematical Research [149], whose apolitical mission is simply to “support  mathematical research and scholarship.”

In 2022, in response to increasing ideological influence and censorship in their profession, behavioral scientists founded the Society for Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences, dedicated to “open inquiry, civil debate, and rigorous standards” in the field [152]. It publishes the Journal of Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences, which commits to “free inquiry,” “rigorous standards,” and “intellectual exchange” [152]. Notably, its terms and conditions state that the journal will base retraction decisions strictly on the basis of the widely accepted COPE guidelines [153]; otherwise, the terms and conditions state, “We will never retract a paper in response to social media mobs, open or private letters calling for retraction, denunciation petitions, or the like....” [154]

There is even a new university—The University of Austin (UATX)—established in response to the current crisis in higher education [155]. The message on the UATX webpage—“We are building a university dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth”—makes clear what void in the American academy UATX aspires to fill [156]. That the university received over $100 million in donations and over 3500 inquiries by professors from other institutions within six months of the project’s announcement, makes clear the demand [157].

The success of such new initiatives will inspire more educators and scientists to stand up and defend the key principles of science and education. And it will send a strong message to our leadership. Even if we cannot appeal to their sense of duty, the financial considerations (Go Woke, Go Broke [158]) and the effect of negative publicity of the excesses of CSJ (such as DEI loyalty oaths, “decolonizing” the curriculum, renaming everything, and Newspeak [9,23,24,139]) may provide incentives to straighten out their act.

4. Conclusion

Will we succeed? Will we stop the train before it goes over the cliff? We do not know what will happen if we fight. But we know what will happen if we don’t. The task ahead might look impossible. But remember the USSR. It looked like an unbreakable power, yet in the end it collapsed like a house of cards. The Berlin Wall looked indestructible, yet it came down overnight. Recalling his 20 years’ experience in the gay marriage debate, Jonathan Rauch told us: “I can tell you that the wall of received opinion is sturdy and impenetrable...until it isn't. And that it's the quiet people in the room who are the swing vote.... and please illegitimi non carborundum [159].”

We are not helpless. We have agency and we should not be afraid to exercise it. We should fight not just because it is the right thing to do, but because fighting brings results. If we behave as if we were living in a totalitarian society, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Afterword

A Russian proverb says, “Fear has big eyes” (у страха глаза велики), meaning that people tend to exaggerate danger. Accordingly, it may feel like resisting the mob will inevitably lead to career damage. But this is not the case; the flip side of risk is reward. In recognition of her activism, including her publication of “The Peril of Politicizing Science” [23], which “launched a national conversation among scientists and the general public,” Anna Krylov, co-author of this chapter, was awarded the inaugural Communicator of the Year Award, Sciences and Mathematics, by the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences [160]. In “Victory Lap” [161], Lee Jussim, co-editor of the book in which this article will appear, documents how as a result of his public resistance to a mob attack on a colleague falsely accused of racism, his career enjoyed a variety of benefits including additional conferences invitations, massive positive public support for his activism, national attention to his scholarship, and an appointment to a departmental chair (with commensurate increase in salary), which he was offered because he had demonstrated that he could take the heat.

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Stop saying "nO oNe iS sAyInG aNy oF tHiS!!" They are. You know they are. Dotted throughout the article are references to sources for quotes and claims. For the list of references, see: References.

Liberalism really is under attack. It's always been under attack from the religous right, but its influence has diminished over time, with society becoming increasingly secular and irreligious, or at least indifferent to religious influence. And principles like the US's First Amendment keep it, at least in theory, from breaching the threshold.

But where the religious attack is on the downswing, the attack from the illiberal left is on the upswing, and both more rapid and more successful, having infiltrated everything from government to science and even knitting clubs. And it hides behind nice-sounding words like "equity" and "diversity," people don't recognize it for what it is, and welcome it inside in a way they don't welcome religious intrusion.

This isn't about left vs right. It's about do we want a liberal society, or do we want a rampantly illiberal, or indeed anti-liberal society?