12 Comments
User's avatar
ExcessDeathsAU's avatar

Alarm bells are going off. This should be categorised under genocide studies.

Please see comments from a US academic about 'whiteness' who wants 'white genocide for Christmas' and more: https://www.thedp.com/article/2018/01/drexel-professor-controversial-christmas-tweet-resignation-philadelphia-upenn

Please see comments from a UK academic who wants to 'abolish whiteness': https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jun/25/abolish-whiteness-academic-calls-for-cambridge-support

There are many, many more examples of this rhetoric.

Expand full comment
epimetheus's avatar

I think it's madness, writ-large. It's too stupid to kinda like deal with (plenty of such people all over academia), and I also think it's going to be over soon: have you watched the Ivy League presidents struggling to say anything about the 'from the river to the sea' crowds on their campuses?

I feel like Wokeness, like its intellectual (ahem) ancestor Leninism/Maoism must expand and subdue the entire world to 'work', and since they appear to be on the loosing side in the US, the only avenue left is to bring the woke revolution to the rest of the world.

Expand full comment
cm27874's avatar

To be fair, Dr. Bakker's research might be described as investigation into how esoteric belief and practice shape blackness, so it is not unreasonable to do the same for whiteness. Or drop both.

Expand full comment
epimetheus's avatar

Well, if one disregards the phony notion of -ness in the first place (which is undefined), then the rest simply falls apart. And, yes, if would be reasonable to study such sentiments, but since there's no methodology, definitions, areas indicated in the above advert (as opposed to, say, Dr. Bakker's expertise in the 'African diaspora', as if that's all the same), I judge it: idiotic.

As an aside, would you care to read some parts from Dr. Bakker's (so far only) refereed publication?

Expand full comment
cm27874's avatar

By demanding 43 EUR, Taylor & Francis does an excellent job keeping this stuff away from us.

Expand full comment
epimetheus's avatar

I do have 'institutional access'…check your substack email inbox ^_^

Expand full comment
cm27874's avatar

Thanks! Do I have to mention that I had to grab it from the spam folder? :)

Expand full comment
epimetheus's avatar

Hahahahaha, how fitting.

Also, you're welcome (but please don't hold it against me).

Expand full comment
Martin Bassani's avatar

It is only fair that Amerika exports this crap back to Europe where so much of what underpins postmodernism/cultural Marxism originates. This way we can decay, more or less, in unison. They should fund a PhD program researching who is funding all this crap and why do they want us destroyed. Do they hate us "because they hate our freedoms"? ;-)

Expand full comment
epimetheus's avatar

That's hardly likely, eh?

Also, imagine how much 'phun' I'm having talking to grad students these days (most faculty isn't better; in my estimation, talking to grad students offers at least the opportunity to change some of their minds, which is kinda impossible if you talk to fellow faculty members).

Expand full comment
Elena Louisa Lange's avatar

Love how you Do The Work of climbing down the rabbit hole for background info on obviously unhinged academics. The kind of women on editorial boards and pampered by funding, too. I have said it long ago that we must abolish the universities, and I still mean it.

Expand full comment
epimetheus's avatar

I think that, after a drastic reduction, that a 're-turn' to the tried and true ways of 'doing science' in universities, arguably one of the West's more glorious achievements, is possible. I think it must be done, but only once the deadweight has been cut loose, and if it was up to me, I'd start with the DEI admins.

I'm working on administrative history around 1800 in the Habsburg lands, and, believe it or not, Francis II/I reduced the number of study programs and universities drastically. It's a wonderfully useful precedent, at least in terms of cutting back on dead weight.

Also, as an aside, my department recently hired a full-time, permanent colleague employed in an academic role. He is supposed to work as 'research advisor', but, hilariously (I'm not making this up), he has an unfinished PhD. You know, it's literally insane to have someone who failed to obtain a PhD to 'advise' current PhD candidates and (presumably, also other, more 'senior' staff) about 'doing research'.

I mean, you can't make up that kind of nonsense, and the only thing I could come up with is--life imitates art, provided Monty Python-like black humour is, in fact, art (which it must be in light of the above).

Expand full comment