“After this year it seems pretty clear that universities have no backbone, the enlightenment values you and I were raised with have been abandoned (Post-modernists share a lot of the blame but that is a different essay). The process began with civil rights and anti-war movements when the ruling class decided the civics, history, and democracy that we were taught threatened power structures. Universities and state legislators placed tuition out of reach, OJT for the STEM fields replaced and impoverished the humanities and social sciences, the draft was ended and the “all-volunteer” army became gun thugs in foreign and domestic policy. Religion remained the threat it has always been. Surveillance and the carceral state replaced earlier forms of social control.”
“The academic world is too overspecialized to engage new scholars and interest undergrads. It may encourage hacks. We need people who aim for a broader picture, too, outside of the century or author or social period that they focus on –or even the discipline and specific nation. The broader focus is what breathes new life into texts. And is truer to many of the best authors and how they came to write.”
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 