"Dismantling" is a euphemism for destroying, which is the preferred activity of those who cannot create and who take spiteful pleasure in pillage and plunder. Graham Greene's short story, "The Destructors," captures well the nihilistic nature of this movement and the range of people it attracts--from geniuses to idiots.
I recently graduated from one of America's top (and most liberal) universities. After beginning my studies I dropped out in 2013 only to return in 2020 to complete my degree. This gave me a good perspective on the differences between that pre and post 2014-2019 window.
From the perspective of quality of learning, the university has dramatically changed for the worse. Why?
Quality of student is much worse; academic scholarship no longer is paramount for admission and this creates an autocatalytic descent into neurotic and hysterical behaviour (in every class disrupted by calls for social justice, it was consistently the dumbest students at the vanguard).
This is precipitated by an admissions system that seems to center around victimhood and oppression dynamics. Before they even set foot in the university, students are inculcated with social justice thinking.
That being said, the majority of students didn't buy into this crap. You can see this by looking longitudinally at class members. Freshmen come in bright-eyed and eager, the sophomores are disillusioned and stressed - by the time they are juniors or seniors and rrealize they've been taken for a ride and the quality of learning is mediocre, they just want to keep their heads down and get out.
I think to solve this, confident students need to stand up (perhaps with parental support) and demand a higher quality education free of ideology. But the stakes are just so low - students are reprimanded for the most inane reasons these days.
As an older student, I had no problem speaking out and voicing opinions confidently. What I noticed was funny - when I challenged my professors on DEI related matters, I could see the relief in their eyes. Even fellow students breathed a sigh of relief. I didn't face any consequences, but I was also completely on my own. While students and faculty would happily tell me privately they supported my speaking up, nobody wanted to say anything public for fear of being reprimanded.
Anyway, just an observation from the student side of things - everyone is tired of this and regardless of politics, many students just want to learn in an exciting and challenging environment. However, as the quality of student continues to decline the already reluctant body of genuinely intelligent and open-minded students will shrink. It is very hard to mobilize stressed and busy students who would rather just 'exit' than face the power, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
One solution might be to admit more 'older' students with less to 'lose'. I'm not sure..
Wow. Brutal. About two years ago I decided I would stand my ground in the event of a corporate "anti-whiteness" training. The plan was to call out the racism and then quit effective immediately. It never got to the point where I was forced to demonstrate my courage: I now work for a startup without HR department.
I may be naïve, but I am astonished that a university - an institution devoted to the pursuit of knowledge through inquiry, would voluntarily transform itself into an institution of indoctrination and propaganda. Whatever the imagined justice in the purported motivations, this is a disaster for the society. It's probably not necessary to point out that the Nazis and various Communist governments affected similar takeovers of educational institutions.
From the photo, I'm assuming this is UBC and it seems they're following the path of all schools (elementary and secondary) in the province of British Columbia in which the curriculum is being smothered with Indigenous references. In fact, a new mandatory course on First Nations was just introduced for all high schoolers. As a parent of kids in BC, it's been simply astonishing to see how this stuff has taken over social studies and even classes like French and the sciences.
The problem, other than detracting from the teaching of non-Indigenous subjects, is that they're not teaching actual Indigenous history which was often brutal and, in the case of BC's First Nations, heavily dependent on slavery for wealth. The students are instead fed a diet of false, Disney-like narratives about native history that seem to serve the sole purpose of undermining the history of other Canadians.
I can only speculate but this seems eerily similar to what usually happens in countries with revolutionary movements, where the leaders must sever the public's ties with history in order to create a new autocratic system (think Year Zero). In Canada this means poisoning our history of individual liberty, free markets, private property etc with a sense of shame and guilt so that today's youth become more open to the expansion of government.
So the problem is two-fold. One, it peddles lies about our past. And two, it's part of a push to make future generations more accepting of statism.
Great article, and all best wishes. In Minnesota, some lawyers responded to the newly mandated anti-bias Continuing Legal Education requirement by offering courses on anti-Christian bias. Anti-colonialism in Canada, for truth's sake, would have to include the expulsion of the Acadians, the Scottish migration, the migration of obscure religious communities, Canadian support for the American Revolution, Quebecois separatism, repression of the truckers, and more ambiguously, contemporary migration from China.
Ultimately, it should involve an examination of the way elite minority coalitions have colonized the 13 provinces by imposing their ideology, their monopoly of the public forum, and their financial domination. New flag for Canadian patriots: seven red, six white, horizontal stripes, with a blue union in the upper inside corner containing a circle of 13 white maple leaves. (And how should we represent our 50 colonies?)
The abuse of Canadian loyalty to the Crown by its enlistment, at horrendous cost to Canadians, in the questionable First and Second World Wars is another potential anti-colonialist theme.
As for law, I urge you to hold firm on teaching actual aboriginal law truthfully under the broader rubrics of land-use customs and dispute resolution practices instead of sullying your mind and the minds of your students with the Disney version referenced by descripter. Think of your ethical obligations as a lawyer.
I just read John Williams' Stoner. The department head punishes Stoner for refusing to promote an unqualified Ph.D. candidate by forcing him to teach only freshman composition. He turned the tables by using his specialty, medieval literature, as a vehicle for composition courses--his students did better than anyone's. The department chair gave in, and gave him back his graduate seminar.
With these stories, I am already interested in phase two of the Successor Ideology, when the tactics of destruction finally reveal there is no public utility of fairness and liberty at the bottom -- indeed there is no bottom at all -- and the proliferating in-group tribes and grievance unions turn on each other for whatever remaining resources there are.
Of course, this would be a travesty of justice, but since there actually *is* no such-a thing as justice, it can't be.
This is probably a dumb question, but I'm frequently dumb so it doesn't bother me. Is part-a the purpose of this article to encourage the reader to become one-a the outside forces to help Prof. Sérafin? If so, what would that be? If not, 'scuse lameness.
We need to know who the people are who are pressuring university deans to enact these changes. Open the kimono. These are public institutions and the public has a right to know. None of this behind the scenes nonsense.
Will they ever learn? This is so close to the Lindsay Shepherd saga of 2017 that I'm thinking there will be a perpetual five year cycle of this persistent woke idiocy. It's really too bad that the size of her settlement was suppressed by mutual consent, so the current perpetrators don't have a clear idea of what this is likely to cost them monetarily. Intellectual and moral cost is not a consideration, since the establishment is too ignorant to appreciate what that may be.
Thank you Professor Serafin for speaking out. The Fair For All organization (Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism) has come to Canada and not a moment too late. Everyone needs to support their local chapters. https://www.fairforall.org/chapters/
How did you go bankrupt? Gradually and then all at once. Cleverly chosen subtitle! This ideology does not offer any solutions, only endless recriminations and chaos, hence wealth destruction. Today, reserve currency status allows us to print money to uphold the illusion of wealth, while foreign countries foot the bill. This year brought news of Saudi and China discussing trading in their own currencies, India and Russia another example. We might be arriving at the "all at once" phase. The good news? The woke zombies will be gone.
Marxist "woke" is the lipstick on a pig named TOTALITARIAN FINANCE.
James Lindsay and friends (NEW DISCOURSES) long ago unmasked the creation and insertion of an ideological commissariat (HR/DEI) into both the public and private spheres of influence. The commissariat is inhabited and controlled by one percenters who weaponize the "professional feminist" tactic (see Camille Paglia/Janice Fiamengo) of feigning moral concern, creating a commission, demanding a study and forever discovering yet one more reason to ensure the eternal flow of Corporate/ State/Federal grants and tax free donations. I'm not an academic, but suspect, that DEI terrorists through their direct connection (Mommy and Daddy) to the surveillance state/ corporate/governmental bureaucratic tax dollar hog trough, wield power over University administrators with the implied threat that they can cause P.C. trouble making private, corporate and government cash stop flowing into University coffers, which will of course lead to the removal of top administrators.
I know that's a bit of a simplification but, If everything is exactly what it appears to be, the influence and corruption of politics and status revealed in the cash for admissions scandals of recent years, and the sanctioned life destroying assaults on the lives of dissenters from the "party line" by I'm a victim, crocodile tears totalitarians like Taylor Lorenz of the New York Times, (who is a direct product of one percenter education and politics), points directly to a unified baksheesh driven class war being waged within and without academia. (Batya Ungar-Sargon)
Of course Marxist "woke" isn't really Marxist "woke". It simply employs totalitarian communist psyop tactics. This was made clear by the "trained Marxist" leaders of BLM who continue to encouraged the destruction of America while looting the resources of those they pretend to care about. It's a for profit airball manufactured by the inhabitants of a false moral high ground, financed by financial totalitarians who, as has always been, want access to subsistence level labor and the unhampered ability to exploit all resources for their personal gain. Everyone here understands that the people at the top of the CCP/WEF/Wall Street/MIC etc. enjoy the absolute best in life style. "Rules for thee but not for me."
One approach might be demanding accountability from Federal and State legislators on how tax dollar grants are issued, how those dollars are spent, and who benefits. If, as in BLM, the money goes to high salaries and personal bureaucratic expenses they need to be stopped. Especially if being weaponized for the destruction of sanity and community. Why should American tax dollars pay for the destruction of America?
The destruction of the American Democratic Republic, the American Constitution, American Citizenship and a financially independent middle class (see Victor Davis Hanson) must be destroyed for "totalitarian finance" to ascend. It's happening. Unite or perish.
"Dismantling" is a euphemism for destroying, which is the preferred activity of those who cannot create and who take spiteful pleasure in pillage and plunder. Graham Greene's short story, "The Destructors," captures well the nihilistic nature of this movement and the range of people it attracts--from geniuses to idiots.
https://www.shortstoryproject.com/stories/the-destructors/
I recently graduated from one of America's top (and most liberal) universities. After beginning my studies I dropped out in 2013 only to return in 2020 to complete my degree. This gave me a good perspective on the differences between that pre and post 2014-2019 window.
From the perspective of quality of learning, the university has dramatically changed for the worse. Why?
Quality of student is much worse; academic scholarship no longer is paramount for admission and this creates an autocatalytic descent into neurotic and hysterical behaviour (in every class disrupted by calls for social justice, it was consistently the dumbest students at the vanguard).
This is precipitated by an admissions system that seems to center around victimhood and oppression dynamics. Before they even set foot in the university, students are inculcated with social justice thinking.
That being said, the majority of students didn't buy into this crap. You can see this by looking longitudinally at class members. Freshmen come in bright-eyed and eager, the sophomores are disillusioned and stressed - by the time they are juniors or seniors and rrealize they've been taken for a ride and the quality of learning is mediocre, they just want to keep their heads down and get out.
I think to solve this, confident students need to stand up (perhaps with parental support) and demand a higher quality education free of ideology. But the stakes are just so low - students are reprimanded for the most inane reasons these days.
As an older student, I had no problem speaking out and voicing opinions confidently. What I noticed was funny - when I challenged my professors on DEI related matters, I could see the relief in their eyes. Even fellow students breathed a sigh of relief. I didn't face any consequences, but I was also completely on my own. While students and faculty would happily tell me privately they supported my speaking up, nobody wanted to say anything public for fear of being reprimanded.
Anyway, just an observation from the student side of things - everyone is tired of this and regardless of politics, many students just want to learn in an exciting and challenging environment. However, as the quality of student continues to decline the already reluctant body of genuinely intelligent and open-minded students will shrink. It is very hard to mobilize stressed and busy students who would rather just 'exit' than face the power, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
One solution might be to admit more 'older' students with less to 'lose'. I'm not sure..
Wow. Brutal. About two years ago I decided I would stand my ground in the event of a corporate "anti-whiteness" training. The plan was to call out the racism and then quit effective immediately. It never got to the point where I was forced to demonstrate my courage: I now work for a startup without HR department.
I may be naïve, but I am astonished that a university - an institution devoted to the pursuit of knowledge through inquiry, would voluntarily transform itself into an institution of indoctrination and propaganda. Whatever the imagined justice in the purported motivations, this is a disaster for the society. It's probably not necessary to point out that the Nazis and various Communist governments affected similar takeovers of educational institutions.
From the photo, I'm assuming this is UBC and it seems they're following the path of all schools (elementary and secondary) in the province of British Columbia in which the curriculum is being smothered with Indigenous references. In fact, a new mandatory course on First Nations was just introduced for all high schoolers. As a parent of kids in BC, it's been simply astonishing to see how this stuff has taken over social studies and even classes like French and the sciences.
The problem, other than detracting from the teaching of non-Indigenous subjects, is that they're not teaching actual Indigenous history which was often brutal and, in the case of BC's First Nations, heavily dependent on slavery for wealth. The students are instead fed a diet of false, Disney-like narratives about native history that seem to serve the sole purpose of undermining the history of other Canadians.
I can only speculate but this seems eerily similar to what usually happens in countries with revolutionary movements, where the leaders must sever the public's ties with history in order to create a new autocratic system (think Year Zero). In Canada this means poisoning our history of individual liberty, free markets, private property etc with a sense of shame and guilt so that today's youth become more open to the expansion of government.
So the problem is two-fold. One, it peddles lies about our past. And two, it's part of a push to make future generations more accepting of statism.
Great article, and all best wishes. In Minnesota, some lawyers responded to the newly mandated anti-bias Continuing Legal Education requirement by offering courses on anti-Christian bias. Anti-colonialism in Canada, for truth's sake, would have to include the expulsion of the Acadians, the Scottish migration, the migration of obscure religious communities, Canadian support for the American Revolution, Quebecois separatism, repression of the truckers, and more ambiguously, contemporary migration from China.
Ultimately, it should involve an examination of the way elite minority coalitions have colonized the 13 provinces by imposing their ideology, their monopoly of the public forum, and their financial domination. New flag for Canadian patriots: seven red, six white, horizontal stripes, with a blue union in the upper inside corner containing a circle of 13 white maple leaves. (And how should we represent our 50 colonies?)
The abuse of Canadian loyalty to the Crown by its enlistment, at horrendous cost to Canadians, in the questionable First and Second World Wars is another potential anti-colonialist theme.
As for law, I urge you to hold firm on teaching actual aboriginal law truthfully under the broader rubrics of land-use customs and dispute resolution practices instead of sullying your mind and the minds of your students with the Disney version referenced by descripter. Think of your ethical obligations as a lawyer.
I just read John Williams' Stoner. The department head punishes Stoner for refusing to promote an unqualified Ph.D. candidate by forcing him to teach only freshman composition. He turned the tables by using his specialty, medieval literature, as a vehicle for composition courses--his students did better than anyone's. The department chair gave in, and gave him back his graduate seminar.
Land acknowledgement--thin end of the wedge.
This story is amazingly similar to what happened to me at Mount Royal University - https://c2cjournal.ca/2022/02/academic-freedom-vs-wokeism-the-frances-widdowson-affair/.
With these stories, I am already interested in phase two of the Successor Ideology, when the tactics of destruction finally reveal there is no public utility of fairness and liberty at the bottom -- indeed there is no bottom at all -- and the proliferating in-group tribes and grievance unions turn on each other for whatever remaining resources there are.
Of course, this would be a travesty of justice, but since there actually *is* no such-a thing as justice, it can't be.
This is probably a dumb question, but I'm frequently dumb so it doesn't bother me. Is part-a the purpose of this article to encourage the reader to become one-a the outside forces to help Prof. Sérafin? If so, what would that be? If not, 'scuse lameness.
Great article. But you missed a chance to quote Hemingway:
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
Just put “intellectually” before “bankrupt.”
We need to know who the people are who are pressuring university deans to enact these changes. Open the kimono. These are public institutions and the public has a right to know. None of this behind the scenes nonsense.
Will they ever learn? This is so close to the Lindsay Shepherd saga of 2017 that I'm thinking there will be a perpetual five year cycle of this persistent woke idiocy. It's really too bad that the size of her settlement was suppressed by mutual consent, so the current perpetrators don't have a clear idea of what this is likely to cost them monetarily. Intellectual and moral cost is not a consideration, since the establishment is too ignorant to appreciate what that may be.
A coup of mediocrity.
Thank you Professor Serafin for speaking out. The Fair For All organization (Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism) has come to Canada and not a moment too late. Everyone needs to support their local chapters. https://www.fairforall.org/chapters/
How did you go bankrupt? Gradually and then all at once. Cleverly chosen subtitle! This ideology does not offer any solutions, only endless recriminations and chaos, hence wealth destruction. Today, reserve currency status allows us to print money to uphold the illusion of wealth, while foreign countries foot the bill. This year brought news of Saudi and China discussing trading in their own currencies, India and Russia another example. We might be arriving at the "all at once" phase. The good news? The woke zombies will be gone.
Marxist "woke" is the lipstick on a pig named TOTALITARIAN FINANCE.
James Lindsay and friends (NEW DISCOURSES) long ago unmasked the creation and insertion of an ideological commissariat (HR/DEI) into both the public and private spheres of influence. The commissariat is inhabited and controlled by one percenters who weaponize the "professional feminist" tactic (see Camille Paglia/Janice Fiamengo) of feigning moral concern, creating a commission, demanding a study and forever discovering yet one more reason to ensure the eternal flow of Corporate/ State/Federal grants and tax free donations. I'm not an academic, but suspect, that DEI terrorists through their direct connection (Mommy and Daddy) to the surveillance state/ corporate/governmental bureaucratic tax dollar hog trough, wield power over University administrators with the implied threat that they can cause P.C. trouble making private, corporate and government cash stop flowing into University coffers, which will of course lead to the removal of top administrators.
I know that's a bit of a simplification but, If everything is exactly what it appears to be, the influence and corruption of politics and status revealed in the cash for admissions scandals of recent years, and the sanctioned life destroying assaults on the lives of dissenters from the "party line" by I'm a victim, crocodile tears totalitarians like Taylor Lorenz of the New York Times, (who is a direct product of one percenter education and politics), points directly to a unified baksheesh driven class war being waged within and without academia. (Batya Ungar-Sargon)
Of course Marxist "woke" isn't really Marxist "woke". It simply employs totalitarian communist psyop tactics. This was made clear by the "trained Marxist" leaders of BLM who continue to encouraged the destruction of America while looting the resources of those they pretend to care about. It's a for profit airball manufactured by the inhabitants of a false moral high ground, financed by financial totalitarians who, as has always been, want access to subsistence level labor and the unhampered ability to exploit all resources for their personal gain. Everyone here understands that the people at the top of the CCP/WEF/Wall Street/MIC etc. enjoy the absolute best in life style. "Rules for thee but not for me."
One approach might be demanding accountability from Federal and State legislators on how tax dollar grants are issued, how those dollars are spent, and who benefits. If, as in BLM, the money goes to high salaries and personal bureaucratic expenses they need to be stopped. Especially if being weaponized for the destruction of sanity and community. Why should American tax dollars pay for the destruction of America?
The destruction of the American Democratic Republic, the American Constitution, American Citizenship and a financially independent middle class (see Victor Davis Hanson) must be destroyed for "totalitarian finance" to ascend. It's happening. Unite or perish.
Got Constitution?