Another Chapter in the Sad Decline of Academia
The Empress isn't wearing any clothes, and she's been that way for a long time. You'd think someone would notice and indeed someone has, here (National Post, 5/20/09).
The article is about the threadbare claims of academic feminism. It's about the laughably low standards set by some feminist "scholarship." It's about how institutions of higher learning, supposedly bastions of intellectual rigor, routinely give a pass to academic work product that would shame a high school student. It's about how these people get promoted anyway, regardless of every academic standard. It's about how those same people still manage to cry "victim," despite being among the most privileged people ever to walk the earth.
The case the article discusses is far from unique, but it gives a good idea of the type of intellectual atmosphere colleges and universities foster these days. It begins with the "Chilly Climate Report" prepared by four feminist academics at the University of Western Ontario.
Do you remember the Chilly Climate Report? On the basis of 35 interviews with female grad students and faculty, the report, written by four militant feminists, concluded 10% of female faculty "had experiences at Western that diminished them as women and academics, making for a chilly work climate."
But the report was a travesty of real scholarship and a terrible distortion of UWO's progressive reality. Its 35 women subjects (no male faculty or grad students were interviewed) were granted total anonymity, so their accusations, almost entirely grounded in subjectivity -- feelings and perception rather than precisely described facts or incidents -- could not be verified.
I've read my share of social science, and methodology whose results can neither be verified nor recreated and that depend entirely on subjective concepts, is, as the author states, a travesty. But I'd add one thing the author doesn't mention. If the academic climate at UWO were truly so hostile to women, why not do a responsible study to prove it? After all, doing the "study" the way it was done just opens it up to ridicule and marginalization.
But I guess the four women who did the Chilly Climate Report knew better than I do. Far from being marginalized, their careers took off. Such an endeavor, which would embarrass any person of intellectual honesty, seems to be considered quite an achievement in the ivied halls. But embarrassment seems impossible for people who aren't aware of their nakedness.
Thanks to Jeremy for the heads-up.
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