She sets the table by reviewing the state of things in academe, the whole business about #DisruptTexts and casting the pursuit of objective knowledge as an arrogant Western notion, and the call to "integrate subjugated and local epistemologies."
She reviews the attempt - all too successful - to make Francis Bacon, of all people, a controversial figure back in the 1990s:
During the “Science Wars” of the 1990s, between scientific realists and postmodernists, Sandra Harding, Carolyn Merchant, and Evelyn Fox Keller condemned Francis Bacon for what they deemed misogynistic sexual metaphors. Although they could have critiqued Bacon’s writing and left it at that, these feminists went much further, arguing that misogyny is at the heart of modern science. In 1995, Alan Soble made a convincing case that postmodern feminist readings of Bacon are based on misquotations, passages taken out of context, projection, and scholarly uncharitability. I would add that these critiques are wholly contingent upon the technological advancements produced by applying the epistemology advocated for by thinkers like Bacon. Imagine the short-sightedness of encountering a metaphor you dislike in a 17th century philosophical treatise, then proclaiming that the entire epistemological basis of modern civilization is inherently flawed—all while typing on a computer powered by reliable electricity, in a stable country, where you’ve never gone hungry.
She says, with more tact than I can muster, that there is more than a touch of spoiled-brat-ism in all this:
It is also essential to underscore that demands for decolonization in Western universities are the product of affluence. What do you think that impoverished people in the global South care about more: decolonizing Western epistemology or increasing their prosperity? While indigenous people are probably proud of their epistemology, I would bet that the majority care more about meeting their material needs. Decolonization activists might consider how changing epistemology in Western universities will solve the main problems experienced by most people in the world, including extreme poverty, rampant political corruption, substandard infrastructure, inadequate police, and dysfunctional judicial systems. The political advancement of the Enlightenment, liberalism, provides a framework for solving these problems by establishing limited, republican government; enforcing the rule of law; and protecting individual rights and liberties, especially freedom of speech, so that people can have honest discussions about problems and work toward solutions—without descending into authoritarianism and violence.
And she concludes by grimly reminding us that this has implications beyond the confines of the campus:
Be forewarned: decolonization demands won’t stop at the university gates. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang state, decolonization is not a metaphor; it is a struggle over dispossession, the repatriation of indigenous land, and the seizing of imperial wealth. If you have any European heritage, the activists will soon demand that you be decolonized, too.
Elaine McCusker and Dov Zakheim of the American Enterprise Institute explain why slashing the Pentagon budget would be a disaster.
There is little that is new in the letter that 50 members of the House of Representatives sent to President Joe Biden on March 16. In particular, the letter raises the disingenuous argument that “we could cut the Pentagon budget by more than 10% and still spend more than the next 10 largest militaries combined.”
This statement is misleading to the point of irresponsibility.
Completely overlooked is America’s role in the world, and with it the necessity of implementing a strategy that responds to its international interests. Equally important, the statement omits differences in economic systems, purchasing power and transparency that impact the comparative defense budgets of the United States and its increasingly powerful competitor, the People’s Republic of China.
And it's not just China that we have to think about:
As a global power with critical interests and key allies in Europe, the Indo-Pacific region and the Middle East, the United States must maintain forces that can separately address threats in all three regions against one or more hostile powers. It therefore makes little sense to compare American defense spending to that of regional powers.
In one of my journalistic roles, I report on our state legislature for a local media company, and this next subject has been hot lately. Our local state Representative and state Senator have their heads squarely on their shoulders, bu there's a lot of pressure on them to relent in the matter of enhancing choice in the matter of education. A lot of it takes the form of intimations that public school funding is suffering at the expense of charter schools, private schools and home schooling. Corey DeAngelis, a scholar with the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation and the American Federation for Children, in a National Review piece entitled "The Pernicious Myth of Shrinking Public School Budgets," demonstrates that this is just not so.
A young British woman named Keira Bell, writing at Persuasion, has a story to tell that will break your heart. She had a truly crummy childhood. Her mother was a mentally ill alcoholic and her father was absent to a considerable degree. She was a tomboy, and as adolescent hormonal changes began to set in, she was encouraged to consider that maybe she had a gender identity different from her sex. She found a clinic willing to indulge her in this, and started down the rabbit hole of puberty blockers, breast binders, male hormone treatment, and finally a double mastectomy at age 20. And then remorse set in:
The consequences of what happened to me have been profound: possible infertility, loss of my breasts and inability to breastfeed, atrophied genitals, a permanently changed voice, facial hair. When I was seen at the Tavistock clinic, I had so many issues that it was comforting to think I really had only one that needed solving: I was a male in a female body. But it was the job of the professionals to consider all my co-morbidities, not just to affirm my naïve hope that everything could be solved with hormones and surgery.
Donald Trump spoke to Republican Party donors at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Saturday night and tore into Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, calling him a “dumb son of a bitch” and “a stone-cold loser.”
Speaking to attendees of the Republican National Committee’s donor retreat about the 2020 presidential election that he lost, Trump blamed the Republican leader in the Senate for not interfering with democracy.
“If that were [Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer instead of this dumb son of a bitch Mitch McConnell they would never allow it to happen. They would have fought it,” Trump said, according to the Washington Post.
The former president also went after his former transportation secretary and McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao.
“I hired his wife. Did he ever say thank you?” Trump said. The Post also reported that Trump mocked Chao, who resigned following the Capitol riot, sarcastically saying, “She suffered so greatly.”
And Trump attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, saying, “Have you ever seen anybody that is so full of crap?” He then told those gathered that it had been suggested to him that the Covid-19 vaccine should be called the “Trumpcine.”
One for us all to keep our eyes on: Russia has amassed 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine. Also lots of fancy robotic weaponry.
No comments:
Post a Comment