Certain fields of academia, particularly those influenced by postmodernism and critical theory, have become corrupted by a focus on ideology over truth, leading to a lack of intellectual rigor and a stifling of rational discourse
Questions to inspire discussion
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What is the Sokal hoax?
—The Sokal hoax was a 1996 academic hoax where physicist Alan Sokal published a fake paper filled with nonsensical postmodern jargon in a Duke University journal to test if postmodern cultural critics would accept a nonsensical argument. The hoax exposed the abuse of scientific terminology to make political points in academia.
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What is the Grievance Studies project?
—The Grievance Studies project was a hoax where Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay wrote 20 absurd papers in 10 months, including one claiming penises cause climate change, and got 7 published or accepted in peer-reviewed journals to expose the flaws in academia's grievance studies.
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What is the problem with postmodernism in academia?
—Postmodernism in academia has become a "secular religion" that uses scholarship to justify unchallengeable claims, mirroring the way religious dogma is used to shut down debate. This has led to a lack of intellectual rigor and a stifling of rational discourse.
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How does grievance studies scholarship harm society?
—Grievance studies scholarship serves as a form of secular scripture, legitimizing personal opinions and prejudices as moral truth through a flawed peer-review process. This has created a culture of hypersensitivity and offense, which can be manipulated for personal gain and stifles nuanced conversations about important issues.
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What is the solution to the problem of grievance studies?
—The solution is for liberals to rise up and reclaim their values, while also learning to disavow extremists on their own side, allowing for a return to functional politics and a rejection of the lunatic fringes. This requires having honest conversations despite potential rage or anger, and responding with civility rather than matching the anger.
Key Insights
- 📚 Scholarship in fields like Gender Studies plays the same role for scholars as the Bible does for Christians or the Quran for Muslims, serving as a source of moral authority and legitimacy.
- 🤯 The postmodern movement is a secular religion, with parallels to traditional religious dogma, making it impossible to have a rational conversation with its adherents.
- ⛪️ James Lindsay views the grievance studies phenomenon as a "religion" with its own canons and methods of coming to knowledge, which a reasonable person would recognize as flawed.
- 💬 They don't value discourse in dialogue, it's just not part of their Canon, in fact, if anything, it's viewed as a form of violence.
- 🚨 The fact that some academics are so focused on being anti-Western centric, viewing everything the West did as imbued with dominance and colonialism, is a scary idea that needs to be deconstructed.
Academic Integrity and Corruption
- 📚 He wrote a complete nonsense paper, a pastiche of famous postmodernists' quotes filled with nonsense and misused scientific words, and it was accepted and published by a preeminent social commentary journal at Duke University.
- 🤯 One of the papers, "The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct," argued that penises are responsible for climate change, and it came under considerable criticism, but was still published.
- 🐕 The paper "Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks" was not only accepted for publication but also received special recognition as one of the best papers in feminist geography.
- 🤯 The rewritten document, which was a parody of Hitler's ideology, was accepted as a legitimate academic paper, highlighting the flaws in the peer-review process and the lack of intellectual rigor in certain fields of academia.
- 🚨 The authors rewrote a chapter of Hitler's Mein Kampf in a feminist and social justice framework and submitted it to a feminist social work journal, which accepted it for publication.
Here are the 3 categories to sort the insights:
- 🚨 Many disciplines have lost a focus on truth, placing an agenda before the truth, and this corruption in scholarship is poisoning academia.
- 💬 Asking "how could that be false" opens up spaces and enables people to process things in a way they ordinarily wouldn't, making it an incredibly effective question.
- 🤔 The punishment for investigating the erosion of trust in academic institutions can be termination, highlighting the irony that seeking truth can lead to professional misconduct charges.
Social and Cultural Implications
- 🚫 The crusade to make race and gender identity more salient, which is rooted in critical race theory and gender theory, increases everybody's touchiness and willingness to be offended.
- 🚨 This set of ideas is far more dangerous than anything Trump is saying, as it will turn neighbor against neighbor, judging them by the color of their skin, weight, gender, or sexual orientation.
- 💡 One of the most important things is to learn to disavow the extremists on your side, so if you see yourself on the left or right, you can distinguish yourself from the extremists and articulate what you really believe.
#Sociology #Cult #DEI #Identity #Woke
XMentions: @HPluckrose @peterboghossian @ConceptualJames
Clips
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00:00 📚 Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay exposed academia's flaws by submitting and getting published absurd papers in peer-reviewed journals, including one claiming penises cause climate change, to test the limits of grievance studies.
- Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, who pulled off a notable academic hoax, discuss the original Sokal hoax and their own recent project.
- Physicist Alan Sokal wrote a paper, "Transgressing the Boundaries," to test if postmodern cultural critics would accept a nonsensical argument that quantum gravity is a social construct.
- Alan Sokal's 1996 hoax, where he published a fake paper filled with nonsensical postmodern jargon in a Duke University journal, exposed the abuse of scientific terminology to make political points in academia.
- Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay wrote 20 absurd papers in 10 months, including one claiming penises cause climate change, and got 7 published or accepted in peer-reviewed journals to expose the flaws in academia's grievance studies.
- Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay discuss their "grievance studies" project, which exposed academia by submitting absurd papers, including one on "human reactions to queer performativity and rape culture in urban dog parks," which was accepted and even awarded special recognition.
- The authors created a fake academic paper arguing that men should be trained like dogs to combat rape culture, using absurd and made-up experiences, and framed it through the lens of black female criminology to make it morally fashionable and difficult to reject.
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07:42 📚 Researchers exposed academia's flaws by submitting rewritten chapters of Hitler's Mein Kampf in postmodern style to journals, highlighting the corruption of grievance studies and prioritization of agendas over truth.
- Researchers rewrote a chapter of Hitler's Mein Kampf in the style of postmodern, progressive activism, replacing terms like "Nazi Party" with "intersectional feminism," and successfully submitted it to academic journals.
- The authors rewrote a chapter of Hitler's Mein Kampf in the style of feminist theory and submitted it to academic journals, which accepted it, exposing the flaws in the peer-review process and the influence of grievance studies in academia.
- Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay aimed to expose the corruption in academia caused by post-modernism and the prioritization of agendas over truth, particularly in fields with "Studies" in their name.
- The speakers discuss how attempts to have honest conversations about issues like race and sexuality are often shut down by accusations of racism and sexism, with a peculiar definition of these terms that only applies to white people and men.
- The speaker acknowledges historical injustices and ongoing biases, but disputes the idea of systemic racism, arguing that the term is often misused to imply a codified, institutional problem that no longer exists.
- The speakers trace the origins of unusual definitions in academia, starting with sociology, and question their own sanity in the process.
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17:55 📚 Academia's adoption of postmodernism and grievance studies has created a "secular religion" that stifles critical thinking and debate, mirroring fundamentalist approaches to knowledge production.
- Grievance studies scholarship serves as a form of secular scripture, legitimizing personal opinions and prejudices as moral truth through a flawed peer-review process.
- Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay discuss how postmodernism in academia has become a "secular religion" that uses scholarship to justify unchallengeable claims, mirroring the way religious dogma is used to shut down debate.
- A documentary filmmaker has been following Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, capturing their work exposing the flaws in academia, and has released a high-quality documentary on the Evergreen controversy, revealing the religious-like nature of certain ideologies.
- Academia's reaction to the Grievance Studies scandal reveals a refusal to self-reflect and instead scrutinizes authors, demonstrating a fundamentalist approach to knowledge production.
- Academia's flaw is that it's viewed as a religion, erasing past knowledge and critical thinking, making it unacceptable to challenge prevailing views.
- Academics who secretly support critiques of woke culture and grievance studies should be treated with compassion, but also need to find courage to speak out publicly to create change.
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32:37 📚 Academia's shift towards postmodernism and intersectionality has created a culture that rejects reason, science, and evidence, allowing grievance studies to label opponents as racists and avoid discourse.
- Peter Boghossian expresses gratitude for people speaking out against academic injustices, despite facing backlash, and notes a growing trend of individuals, including those in biology, publicly supporting him.
- The hosts of the James Moore event invited Women's Studies department representatives to engage in a conversation, but received no response, despite later claims that organizers spent 80 hours trying to find a qualified participant.
- Academia's grievance studies have created an "engine" that labels opponents as racists, allowing them to avoid discourse and debate, as they believe they're already winning the culture war.
- Applied postmodernism views conversation and dialogue as a tool of oppression, perpetuating the power and privilege of dominant groups, particularly white people.
- Academia's shift towards postmodernism and intersectionality in the late 80s and early 90s, led by Kimberlé Crenshaw, has created a culture that rejects reason, science, and evidence as tools of Western oppression.
- The authors of the Grievance Studies expose used a methodology called "outsider within" to infiltrate and understand the thinking of postmodern academics, and now use simple logical contradictions to challenge their ideologies.
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42:01 📚 Academia's grievance studies are exposed for fabricating data to advance careers, sparking backlash and potential termination for whistleblowers like Peter Boghossian.
- Asking "how could that belief be false" is a more effective question than "what's your evidence for that" as it opens up spaces for critical thinking and processing.
- The authors of the Grievance Studies expose received 10:1 support over criticism, with many academics privately acknowledging the validity of their findings.
- People are starting to speak out against the academic establishment, emboldened by others who have survived backlash and criticism.
- Peter Boghossian was found guilty of not obtaining IRB approval for his "Grievance Studies" project, which has led to potential termination and additional punishments from Portland State University.
- Academia's grievance studies expose fabrication of data to advance careers, secure grants, and achieve tenure.
- Peter Boghossian faces potential termination for his involvement in the Grievance Studies project, while James Lindsay, who is no longer in academia, is free from institutional repercussions.
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48:05 🚨 The spread of grievance studies ideology in academia is creating a culture of hypersensitivity and stifling nuanced conversations, contributing to political polarization and threatening the fabric of society.
- The speaker finds it puzzling that people in Southern California assume he shares their views simply because of his appearance, unlike in his hometown in the southeast where people don't make such assumptions.
- The speaker argues that the emphasis on identity categories such as race, gender, and sexuality in academia has created a culture of hypersensitivity and offense, which can be manipulated for personal gain and stifles nuanced conversations about important issues.
- The spread of grievance studies ideology is a toxin that's destroying societies by teaching people to be brittle, offended, and unable to engage with opposing ideas, ultimately threatening the fabric of America.
- The speaker believes that Trump's rise to power was largely a result of the regressive left's stifling of free speech, which created a backlash among people who felt silenced and found a voice in Trump's willingness to speak his mind.
- The speaker believes that the left's failure to address the excesses of social justice culture, particularly regarding gender and race issues, may have contributed to the rise of Trump and could be a decisive factor in the next election.
- The solution to the escalating political polarization is for liberals to rise up and reclaim their values, while also learning to disavow extremists on their own side, allowing for a return to functional politics and a rejection of the lunatic fringes.
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01:02:14 💡 The postmodern movement has filled a void in academia, driving extremism through a desire for authoritarian control, but a shift towards honest conversations is underway to restore civil discourse.
- The postmodern movement has filled the void left by the decline of traditional religion, providing a new source of meaning, purpose, and morality for some individuals.
- People seek meaning, community, and control in life, but extremism is not solely driven by these needs, as many devout individuals are moderate and not extreme.
- People's feelings of being out of control, rather than a desire for meaning, drive extremism, and addressing this sense of powerlessness is key to reducing political polarization.
- The extremist forms of postmodern ideologies are driven more by a desire for authoritarian control than a search for meaning in a world without a grand narrative.
- The tide is turning against the dominance of grievance studies in academia, with people starting to speak out and sign their names to petitions, marking a shift towards more honest and open conversations.
- To restore civil discourse, continue having honest conversations despite potential rage or anger, and respond with civility rather than matching the anger.
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01:08:49 📺 Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay discuss their project exposing the flaws in academia on Mike Nayna's YouTube channel.
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Duration: 1:9:13
Publication Date: 2024-08-27T12:32:15Z
WatchUrl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97FuO-hEhQo
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