Thursday, May 15, 2008

Front Page Anti Intellectualism

I hesitate to even post this here, because I hate to think what it will do to the collective blood pressure/IQ/mood, but it seems worth pointing out that this is (at least for a few hours) considered headline news... an Op/Ed about how universities are being selfish and antisocial by protecting and growing their endowments. I guess the part of it that really chaps my ass is the flat statement that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, having the same size endowment as Harvard University, is doing good medical work, while Harvard is simply propagating radical professorial views.

I'm forced to wonder why schools like Harvard have such a rep for cranking out the next generation of the power elite, which is historically a conservative cadre, if what they're ACTUALLY doing with all that money, which they mostly got from the last generation of the power elite, is corrupting the fragile little minds of the sheeple.

I rate this Op/Ed 'what the fuck' out of 10, and worry about what the people who get their opinions from CNN will make of this.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What an incredible fucking idiot. The funny thing is that the idiot hasn't been keeping up with the news: here's one way Harvard and other elite universities have been spending their endowments.

There's no idiot like a lazy idiot.

irasocol said...

If you're going to let a moron like Glenn Beck get you angry...

But pre-proactive. Write complaints to all the Time-Warner board, and the boards of all the companies run by the members of the Time-Warner boards. And get everyone else to d the same. Pick the smallest consumer company run by a board member and we'll all boycott it. Something like that.

We'll generate a little corporate accountability.

Rufus said...

Oh there's a million books and columns along these lines. Actually, there are a lot of people on the internet who believe that all we do every day is scream "Say you love Mao!" at the students until they start crying.

The problem with these people is that it's impossible to argue with them. They'll say something insane- I remember one saying that university literature departments don't teach Shakespeare anymore! And you'll prove to them that it's wrong and they'll say, "Oh, well, maybe it's that way in your department, but everyone knows that universities are..." It never ends.

This is why I'm fine with the idea of taping our lectures and putting them on the net (I'm ready for my closeup). Let them see how un-radical what we do actually is. But it probably won't change their minds anyway.

The big punchline about the Glenn Becks of America is that you'd swear they want the government to step in and mandate the political leanings of professors. But they can't call for that because they're Republicans and that would be political affirmative action. So they just complain, ad nauseum. They know not of what they speak.

The best response is to speak the truth often and ignore them otherwise.