Youtube is such an awesome resource for knowledge, it’s a shame they’re consigning videos with “alternative” points of view to concentration camps, no longer easily accessible to the public. It really is amazing what those alternative videos have accomplished, literally dissecting false media narratives in real time, completely shutting down the worst of the lies our political class and mainstream media try to foist upon us.

If Youtube had been as operational before the first Iraq war as it is today, the American public would have had reams of information regarding the ridiculous “babies ripped from incubators by Iraqi soldiers” hoax, would have been told repeatedly how Saddam Hussein was a CIA asset for decades and asked permission from the US (cluelessly granted) before invading Kuwait, would have been told the truth of any number of lies that were drumming up war fever before we attacked Iraq the first time around (“in retaliation for 9-11” being perhaps the most ridiculous lie that could have been easily dispelled). But I digress. Youtubes’ days as a source of “alternative” information are drawing to a close…though you can still find the information if you know where to look.

I saw a short video with a title I liked, so I had to click on it:

Roger Scruton: How Fake Subjects like Women Studies Invaded Academia

Regular readers of my blog know my take on how this happened (the quick summary: unscrupulous administrators, eager for every student loan dollar and not caring a bit about students, allowed bogus courses to fill the catalog, racking up sales but exploiting kids as they come out of high school). I am, of course, open to alternative opinions, so let’s address some of the things he had to say in this 5 minute video:

“One of the things that happens when a totalitarian government takes over is the universities are cleaned up.”

–I don’t have a transcript, so I may be off a word or two.

It’s no secret that on many campuses, a “cleanup” has occurred. What happened to the kid who wrote the Google memo happened to conservative faculty en masse, years earlier. Oh, we saw the bulldozers and tanks coming, and I assure you some faculty, at least, tried to stand up and stop it…it accomplished nothing. If you dared to question the madness, you were removed. Even if you had tenure, life was made so miserable that you’d leave on your own. I saw it enough with my own eyes. Even if you wanted to stay, you still had to attend “re-education camps,” interminable multiculturalism seminars that, I promise the gentle reader, are extremely painful and insulting. There are still flare-ups by remaining faculty who’ve tolerated all they can, and how these events are treated today serves as examples for what happened a few decades ago, before information could be so quickly disseminated.

“…new subjects in the university, in which the pursuit of truth seems to be secondary to something else…political conformity.”

I certainly agree about these weird new subjects which are clearly more about ideology than academics, but I feel the professor neglects the college coursework on Game of Thrones, Gilligan’s Island, Sex, Sexuality, Sexualism, Sexual Activity, Deviant Sex, and other courses whose titles suggest more about appealing to student interest than pursuit of knowledge.

“…perhaps it can be talked about freely in this room, but you can’t talk about it freely in America…”

He’s obviously knowledgeable, but I do wish he’d addressed how what he just said explains the growth of these courses. Actual professors, actual academics, have been silenced on campus, and this silence is itself a factor in how all fake courses made it onto the curriculum. We had no way to stop it.

“…conformity to an orthodoxy takes precedence over an intellectual method…”

He’s referencing Women’s Studies, and other ideological courses in the above, and while I again concede there’s truth in it…it’s only a sliver of reality. Open up the blinders a bit and you’ll see our campuses have wide swaths of coursework little different than what students already “learned” in the 6^th grade. It’s not about ideology nearly as much as it is about sales and growth. Gotta pay for those administrative raises somehow, after all, and there’s always another Vice President of Diversity position opening up for a friend of the Governor, at $225,000 a year.

“We are going through a time when truth itself is being marginalized from academic scholarship…”

Again, this is true. The recent big gender studies hoax, along with strong evidence that huge amounts of published research is completely bogus, certainly reinforce his point but…how did it happen? What changed?

It used to be that research was judged by faculty in the same department, and departments were their own little communities. The only way a fraud could operate in a department was if the whole department was fraudulent, and that’s tough to pull off. Departments aren’t communities anymore, and many campuses don’t have departments at all. Instead, you have a Dean wh controls the hiring of dozens of adjuncts who rarely even talk to each other.

When it comes time to look at the research, the Dean has no interest or understanding of that research. She simply counts the number of published papers, and if it’s high enough, you get kudos. What’s actually in those papers is irrelevant—half of published papers are never read by anyone, 90% are never cited.  Just get published, past that it’s irrelevant, and that’s what Admin makes the job requirement. If you don’t get published, you’re fired. We have published papers with 1,000 authors now, with the record being over 5,000 authors for a 33 page paper…admin just can’t discern how this stuff works. Back when admin and faculty were the same people, it was possible, but those days are long over.

And it’s supposed to be a puzzle why the pursuit of truth disappeared from campus?

“You can turn all the subjects of the university upside down, and rearrange them as part of the agenda of liberation…”

Again, he’s correct here, as old academic courses like “English literature” are tossed, and replaced with “Women’s English literature,” with a clear ideological bent superseding academics. Absolutely, I’ve seen many courses like that (mercifully, there hasn’t been a “Women’s calculus” course yet…), and once you’ve added a few dozen such courses to the catalogue, you may as well just form an Institute of Women’s Studies on campus, to fill with highly paid vice-presidents.

These courses do have a veneer of academics to them, but are mostly about ideological nonsense. Once you have enough of them, then you start to get those “experts in nonsense” to preside over the fake coursework.

I totally concede there is some truth to what he’s saying, but I still think I provide a broader view of the reality of many universities today. Having acknowledged that our campuses are filled with fake coursework, even if he and I disagree on how it happened, I’m certain we agree it needs to stop.

But what’s sustaining all the fake classes? Once again, the student loan scam is a big factor. We just wouldn’t have the money for campus palaces filled with Vice Presidents of Women and Diversity without the student loans.

And so here I am, once again, doing what I can to educate the public, because it’s their money paying for all this fraud, and hopefully once enough people learn about the reality we can do what must be done:

End the student loan scam.

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