Is being “woke” a way to gain status?

This new piece at the increasingly important site Quillette by two academics with the same name (brother? father and son?), is well worth reading. It’s amusing even if not 100% accurate, but it’s accurate enough to strike home, and to make you rethink what Authoritarian Leftism is all about: The Winegards’ thesis is not entirely new. The […]

Control-Left: EVERYBODY is “problematic”

Why do I keep returning to HuffPost like a dog returning to its vomit? It’s probably because I consider the site, as the epitome of Control-Leftist journalism (and a widely read media platform) to be a harbinger of social changes to come in the Left. Already “mainstream” venues like the New York Times and the […]

Bari Weiss in the NYT: the “intellectual dark web”

I received this link from many readers, so of course I had to read it. Plus it was a piece by Bari Weiss, a beleaguered Leftist who’s been ostracized by her fellow New York Times writers for going after the Authoritarian Left: A few quotes from Weiss: What is the I.D.W. and who is a […]

Leaders of Women’s March get pushback for osculating anti-Semite and homophobe Louis Farrakhan

As I’ve mentioned before, three of the leaders of the Women’s March—Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, and Carmen Perez—have sucked up to the vicious anti-Semite and homophobe Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, otherwise known as the Black Muslims. On February 28, Mallory attended a speech Farrakhan gave, and the link above shows some […]

Leisure fascism: Vegan says that a carnivore can’t eat tofu because it’s “cultural appropriation”

Well, yes, this is from The Sun, but it does give names and I suspect it’s true (it’s reported at multiple places, including msn) .  Click on the screenshot for the LOLs: The relevant bit of their exchange (in case you didn’t know, “tofurkey” is a turkey substitute made out of tofu, intended for consumption at […]

Surprise! Pinker smeared again by those who distort his words

There is no end of the kind of cherry-picking people will go to if they want to smear New Atheists. This post gives a prime example, with the target being Steve Pinker. (It’s always either Pinker, Sam Harris, or Richard Dawkins.) On November 6, Spiked Magazine held one of its “Unsafe Space” events at Harvard, […]

Zinnia Jones: The dangers of Regressivism

Zinnia Jones is a transgender woman who nominally posts at The Orbit, a series of blogs that were once part of Freethought Blogs but separated from that site for reasons that were never explicit. I rarely read her site, and rarely look at The Orbit itself because postings at the 22 constituent blogs are rare; in […]

The Cultural Revolution hits a Canadian university: grad student teacher bullied for promoting free discussion in her class

Wilfred Laurier University is a public university in Waterloo, Ontario, and has just become the target of international opprobrium after its persecution of a graduate teaching assistant became public this week. The teaching assistant, 22 year old Lindsay Shepherd, is now one of my heroes for standing up for the principles of free speech and […]

Internal emails at Evergreen State reveal climate of racial hostility

An article by Jillian Kay Meolchior in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “Inside the madness at Evergreen State” (behind a paywall, but I thank a kind reader for sending me the text), reveals that, contrary to the college’s claims, The Evergreen State College (TESC) had a toxic atmosphere of authoritarianism, so that accusations of racism were […]

A postmodern academic signals her virtue: Why Pilates is white and racist

Last March I wrote about a dreadful paper on feminist glaciology, whose intent was to bring a feminist viewpoint to the study of glaciers. It failed to do that, but succeeded in signaling the virtue of the authors, all from the University of Oregon. Moreover, the authors’ work was supported by the National Science Foundation—yes, American […]