In a recent segment on CNN, Fareed Zakaria observed
American universities have been neglecting excellence in order to pursue a variety of agendas — many of them clustered around diversity and inclusion. It started with the best of intentions. Colleges wanted to make sure young people of all backgrounds had access to higher education and felt comfortable on campus. But those good intentions have morphed into a dogmatic ideology and turned these universities into places where the pervasive goals are political and social engineering, not academic merit.
.... In the humanities, hiring for new academic positions now appears to center on the race and gender of the applicant, as well as the subject matter, which needs to be about marginalized groups.
Two recent postings for jobs at Williams suggest that this is taking place even at our alma mater.
The first is the cover image for this post, the highlighting in the screenshot we found online, stipulating that the German Department was looking for someone "committed to inclusive and anti-racist pedagogy, to decolonizing and expanding the field of German studies."
Anti-racist pedagogy is a controversial methodology, "a form of Disruptive Teaching, [which] uses the framework of anti-racism to critically examine the role of education in disrupting white supremacy." As to "decolonizing", Germany was stripped of her colonies in the Treaty of Versailles after the conclusion of World War I on June 28, 1919.
The Program in Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies is looking for "a professor of Queer of Color Critique, field open, ideally with interdisciplinary scholarship. We also especially welcome those with additional interests in Disability Studies/Crip Theory, Feminist Technoscience Studies, and/or Migration Studies." This is same program that, following Israel's response to a barrage of rockets fired indiscriminately at population centers in the Jewish State in 2021 endorsed a factually inaccurate statement condemning that response.
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