Hubris of/Damage Caused By the "Educated" Class

[Belligerent Savant]

When you ain't got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.

this puts it most simply.

That’s only part of it.

(Though it also exposes the hypocrisy of those that claim to advocate for others but when it really counts are largely self-serving above all else)

Quite a few did have ‘something to lose’ and still chose to be guided by their sense of core ethics and human rights, often at great cost to themselves.

Unfortunately far too many others behaved the opposite way, or — assuming they were earnestly/fully hoodwinked when mandates/lockdowns were initially being enforced — once they realized they were misled, a subset* remained quiet and/or compliant despite such realizations.

Part of the tragedy in this is that if a majority stood up against such affronts (rather than comply) very few would have been subjected to the policy harms, as enforcement can only succeed so long as there is mass compliance.

*particularly those in positions of influence/ability to sway sentiment or policy (such as school administrators/board members/staff/union reps for teachers; corporate leadership/employers across various industries; city/state/govt officials, politicians or activists that claim to advocate for human rights; doctors/healthcare workers/nurses that realized mandates/lockdowns were ineffective/harmful, etc; most or all all these examples represent ‘educated’ [and largely affluent/comfortable] demographics).

[Belligerent Savant]

.

This could go into a new OP/thread on the flaws of "IQ" tests, but this is noteworthy regardless, particularly with respect to different forms of perception, presumption, and bias (both self-aware bias and unknown).

They rank what they believe the IQ results will be before the results are posted. Unsurprisingly, the actual results did not align with many of their own perceptions/presumptions.

The comments by "Maria" at around the ~7:30 mark are particularly exemplary of the smugness, presumption, and bias (not to mention blithe lack of self-awareness, a trait shared by many with such inclinations) inherent to certain groups of Americans that largely subscribe to many of the tropes presented to them in mainstream media, mainstream 'science', and most Colleges.

Strangers Rank Their Intelligence | IQ vs First Impressions

[Belligerent Savant]

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As someone with years of experience in a white-collar environment I can appreciate this sentiment, however exaggerated -- of course there are plenty of exceptions, but it seems real-world examples of the individuals characterized below are becoming MORE, not less, common.

@KingBolingbroke

As a person with a PhD I can tell you that graduate school has become one of the most midwit phenomenon in existence. PhD's are some of the stupidest people in the world.

Does this mean I am stupid? That's for YOU to decide.

for example:



Anyone imploring you to “trust the experts” i.e. PhD’s and MA’s, has obviously not been to graduate school anytime recently.

Either that, OR they themselves are PhD's that self-consciously wishes to rule you without your consent or are too conceited to see how midwitted they and their classmates are.
---

My dimwit PhD candidate course instructor constantly insists that we shouldn't be intimidated by him.
---

PhD programs should require applicants to demonstrate their ability to write coherently.

Perhaps this sounds like an unnecessary/obvious opinion, but if you spend a little time around graduate students in the social and hard sciences you will see how bad things really are.

----

The more elaborate the email signature, the more useless the person.

Dr. Shanlee Elise Ramos-Smith, PhD (She/They)
Associate visiting director of design at the center for reparative theology
Affiliated scholar in the native studies department
George Floyd Community College

https://x.com/KingBolingbroke/status/17 ... 06100?s=20

[Belligerent Savant]

.

I sense this latest barrage of "antisemitism" accusations are being used, in part, as yet another divisive tool, and eventually to inspire rhetoric from both the 'Left' and the 'Right' to subscribe to blatant forms of thought/speech suppression.

It's almost satirical to observe the tactical precision by which factions [additional dividing lines] are now being created within tribes/ideology over the current military operations in Gaza/Palestine. Many of those that opposed repressive/totalitarian covid restrictions are ardent/blind supporters of Isreali govt/IDF operations, and conversely, those that were fully supportive of covid restrictions are fervently against ethnic cleansing (and related) operations in Palestine. There are subsets within each tribal affiliation that are now splitting off from their larger tribes due to this Current Thing.

I share the below in this thread as it involves the 'Ivy League'/Highly Educated demographic.

@ggreenwald

Many of the claims of campus genocidal speech are people chanting about Israel: from the river to the sea, etc: nothing to do with US Jews yet has still punished.

These administrators said they don't know of cases of people saying "kill all Jews!" but it's protected either way

@ggreenwald

@JonHaidt

As a professor who favors free speech on campus, I can sympathize with the "nuanced" answers given by U. presidents yesterday, about whether calls to attack or wipe out Israel violate campus speech policies.

What offends me is that since 2015, universities have been so quick to punish "microaggressions," including statements intended to be kind, if even one person from a favored group took offense. The presidents are now saying: "Jews are not a favored group, so offending or threatening Jews is not so bad. For Jews, it all depends on context." We might call this double standard "institutional anti-semitism."

University presidents: If you're not going to punish students for calling for the elimination of Israel and Israelis, it's OK with me, but ONLY if you also immediately dismantle the speech policing apparatus and norms you created in 2015-2016. Please read The Coddling of the American Mind.
@glukianoff and I laid out exactly where the oppressor/victim frame came from (ch. 3), how it spread out of a few departments to gain power over administrators and campus culture (chapters 4 and 5), and how it drove the creation of the bureaucratic structures and processes that now have us all teaching and learning on eggshells (ch. 10). In chapter 13 we offer advice to leaders on how to to return universities to their academic mission and regain public trust.

@BillAckman

The presidents of
@Harvard, @MIT, and @Penn were all asked the following question under oath at today’s congressional hearing on antisemitism:

Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying or harassment?

The answers they gave reflect the profound moral bankruptcy of Presidents Gay, Magill and Kornbluth.

Representative @EliseStefanik was so shocked with the answers that she asked each of them the same question over and over again, and they gave the same answers over and over again.

In short, they said:

It ‘depends on the context’ and ‘whether the speech turns into conduct,’ that is, actually killing Jews.

This could be the most extraordinary testimony ever elicited in the Congress, certainly on the topic of genocide, which to remind us all is:

“the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group”

The presidents’ answers reflect the profound educational, moral and ethical failures that pervade certain of our elite educational institutions due in large part to their failed leadership.

Don’t take my word for it.

You must watch the following three minutes. By the end, you will be where I am.

They must all resign in disgrace.

If a CEO of one of our companies gave a similar answer, he or she would be toast within the hour.

Why has antisemitism exploded on campus and around the world?

Because of leaders like Presidents Gay, Magill and Kornbluth who believe genocide depends on the context.

To think that these are the leaders of Ivy League institutions that are charged with the responsibility to educate our best and brightest.

On the bright side, our congressional leaders deserve accolades for showing tremendous leadership and moral clarity in their statements, by the questions they asked, and the respectfulness with which they conducted the hearing.

It was a masterclass of how our government and democracy should operate.

If you have time, please watch the entire hearing. Throughout the hearing, the three behaved like hostile witnesses, exhibiting a profound disdain for the Congress with their smiles and smirks, and their outright refusal to answer basic questions with a yes or no answer.

This is exactly it.

These university professors were simply saying they don't punish students for pure political speech. If you target a specific student, that's harassment, but op-eds/speeches are protected.

The problem is they've regularly violated this with views they hate:

https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1732429 ... 16071?s=20

@aaronjmate

Using US bombs, the genocidal Israeli army has destroyed every university in Gaza. Its civilians have no refuge.

Is there anything more embarrassing than coddled Ivy League students, backed by both political parties and the establishment media, pretending to be victims?

@HouseGOP

"I should not be here today...I should be taking in...my senior year of college...I am because 36 hours ago, I, along with most of campus, sought refuge in our rooms as classmates and professors chanted proudly for the genocide of Jews. " -
@Penn student Eyal Yakoby

[Video At Link]

12:27 PM · Dec 6, 2023

https://x.com/aaronjmate/status/1732451 ... 10450?s=20

[Belligerent Savant]

More examples of 'stirring the pot' for ulterior ends, but it also displays the hypocrisy and artifice in much of 'academia'.

@realchrisrufo

EXCLUSIVE:

@RealChrisBrunet and I have obtained documentation demonstrating that Harvard President Claudine Gay plagiarized multiple sections of her Ph.D. thesis, violating Harvard's policies on academic integrity.

https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1733 ... 53222?s=20

@Hebro_Steele
·
I have known people like Claudine Gay my entire life and they are the reason why I never checked the black box on college and employment applications.

If I had, I would not be a free individual today.

People often told, "Oh, it’s nothing, just check the box and you’ll get an upper hand." Indeed, I was once offered a $25,000 MLK scholarship, a lot of money in 1993. So checking the black box was tempting, yes.

When I would ask why I should betray my merit or reduce my multiple races to one race box, people like Claudine would often respond with an argument that could be summed up by one word: “diversity.”

However, this was a sham. From the 1960s to the 1990s, the percentage of all blacks on campuses who were from lower economic backgrounds had fallen to the single digits. These students had been replaced by middle to upper class blacks, Africans, Caribbeans, & multiracials like me.

By checking the “black” box, I was being asked to mask over the very problems and inequities that undermined the efforts of lower-class blacks—all so university administrations could claim the pretense of racial redemption through higher enrollment numbers.

And we wonder why there are permanent black underclasses in nearly every major city?

But this was not the worse part about these encounters, which I should mention were life-altering since they affected my life-directions in education and employment

I knew that if I checked the black box, administrators like Claudine Gay would feel like they owned me. They had opened the door to their esteemed institutions and, in return, I would be expected to show fealty to their racial politics and ideologies.

Checking the “black” box on college applications would have forced me to enter what I call the minority state of mind.

The word “minority” is often used generically along with the word “majority” to refer to population numbers. But the minority is also a social construct used by some on the left to enforce loyalty to the politics of a given oppressed racial group.

To enter the minority state of mind therefore meant that I would divorce myself from my larger American identity in order to embrace a far narrower identity based on the politics of race.

In my case, that meant embracing a racialized victim mindset in which everything is defined by slavery, segregation, disparities and racism.

People have mocked me, saying that I give far too much importance to that black box, but they have no idea what awaits a black student who checks that black box.

If I had indicated “black” on my college applications, it would have opened the door to black scholarships, black-only orientations, black fraternities, black housing, black-oriented majors, black student associations, black this.

How could I have gone through these experiences without becoming beholden to the politics of blackness?

So for me to check that black box was to move off the merit track and onto the race track where people like Claudine excelled. She is perhaps the most successful black to walk this path, but she is not a free individual.

She put her emphasis on her skin and it is no wonder why all this evidence of incompetence, racial essentialism, and plagiarism are coming out now.

As bad as that is, the worse thing she did was lead so many people of her race down this dead-end of racial essentialism. People talk about how Claudine hurt Asians and Jews -- people like her hurt blacks far more and that can never be forgotten.

https://x.com/Hebro_Steele/status/17342 ... 05077?s=20

[Belligerent Savant]

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It appears my choice to start a thread on this topic turned out to be quite timely/prescient, eh?

Much can be shared here since the last post in this thread. I've no inclination to provide a full accounting (to the remaining contingent here that may find time to peruse it), but will share a few noteworthy breadcrumbs/recent updates, though this topic remains 'developing'.

First, a piece direct from the NYTimes on the recent Gay resignation, which all started by claims of plagiarism leveled against her by Rufo (mentioned in a prior post above); those claims were later substantiated, with more evidence of additional instances piled on. Exacerbated by the recent claims of "antisemitism on campus" and Gay's recent commentary on such claims during Congressional testimony: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023 ... .%E2%80%9D

Screenshot of an excerpt (I do not have a subscription and the article is behind a paywall):

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/06/busi ... board.html

How Harvard’s Board Broke Up With Claudine Gay

Facing intense pressure, it went from standing behind her as the university’s president to pushing her out within weeks.

A bit of added context on Gay's highly privileged background:

@jeffreyatucker

I'm all for wealth accumulation, capitalism, and sharing fruits with children to ensure their success. Fine. But I did not know until yesterday that Claudine Gay, despite making a career out of victimhood, is more privileged than 99.9999% of the rest of the US population. Again, nothing wrong with wealth and privilege, but it helps to understand the context. Story in Atlantic https://archive.is/R9VFz.
And see NPR here too:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/sto ... =122937646

One of the loudest (and wealthiest) critics of Gay's plagiarism endured quite a bit of blowback (ironic, perhaps, but not surprising), in merely one example of the elites devouring themselves in full public view:

@boriquagato

this is about to get very interesting.

we now have the tools to take a real look at the scale of the higher education/publication fraud.

let's scrape off the rust and see if there is even still a boat left underneath the shell of what was has been passing for academia.

@BillAckman

Last night, no one at @MIT had a good night’s sleep.

Yesterday evening, shortly after I posted that we were launching a plagiarism review of all current MIT faculty, President Kornbluth, members of MIT’s administration, and its board, I am sure that an audible collective gasp could be heard around the campus.

Why? Well, every faculty member knows that once their work is targeted by AI, they will be outed. No body of written work in academia can survive the power of AI searching for missing quotation marks, failures to paraphrase appropriately, and/or the failure to properly credit the work of others.

But it wasn’t just the MIT faculty that did not sleep last night. The @Harvard faculty, its governing board members, and its administrative leadership did not sleep either. Because why would we stop at MIT?

Don’t we have to do a deep dive into academic integrity at Harvard as well?

What about Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Penn, Dartmouth? You get the point.

While we are going to do a detailed review of plagiarism at MIT, we are not going to be the only ones who do so.

Every college and university in the world is going to have to do the same for themselves. They will do so because they will need to validate all plagiarism accusations, or someone else will do it for them.

The best approach, however, is probably to launch an AI startup to do this job (I would be interested in investing in one) as there is plenty of work to do, and many institutions won’t have the resources to do it on their own. Perhaps more importantly, the donors are going to demand that the review is done by an independent third party.

For who today is going to trust higher education to review itself?

Consider the inherently irreconcilable conflicts of interest. Would you trust today’s university president to do an examination of their faculty? What are the chances that the reviews would be weaponized to go after faculty members whose politics were not favored by leadership?

We have seen this before with other tools used by university presidents and their deans. Consider the weaponization of MeToo accusations, speech codes, and the other tactics of cancellation that have destroyed free speech on campus, and many faculty members’ reputations, careers, and their families.

By analogy, who would trust even our most credible corporations with auditing their own financial statements? There is a reason why all public companies have independent auditors who are carefully examined by regulators to ensure they maintain quality, standards, accuracy, and independence.

And what if a plagiarism review turned into an incredible embarrassment for the entire university? It could lead to wholesale firings of faculty. Donors terminating their donations. Federal funding being withdrawn, and a massive litigious conflagration where faculty members and universities sue one another about what is plagiarism, and what is not. Think about the inevitable destruction of the reputations of thousands of faculty members as it rolls out around the country, and perhaps the world.

And maybe that’s a good thing.

...

@Mteuzi

Here's the rundown of the unfolding drama:

- Bill Ackman led the charge against Claudine Gay, Harvard's president, over plagiarism, resulting in her resignation.

- Ackman's wife, Neri Oxman, a former MIT professor, is now accused of plagiarism in her 2010 dissertation and other scholarly works.

- Business Insider reported multiple instances of unattributed content in Oxman's work, paralleling the scrutiny Gay faced.

- Despite criticizing Harvard's diversity efforts and alleging anti-white racism, Ackman's tone softened when addressing his wife's plagiarism.

- Ackman vows to lead plagiarism reviews at MIT and against Business Insider's staff, which reported on his wife.

- The controversy follows Ackman's resentment over his donations to Harvard not translating into influence, as reported by the New York Times.

- Oxman also faced criticism for accepting a donation from Jeffrey Epstein and subsequently sending him an art gift.

- Oxman had left MIT by 2020, moving to New York to launch her company, Oxman, amidst the unfolding plagiarism allegations.

Read the full article below.
https://theguardian.com/education/2024/ ... ccusations
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Mike J
@mbjdc3
·
No the Ivies are just burning down and it’s great to see

This is now getting to the 'post-satire' phase, as the masks come off and veils (however semi-transparent) are lifted:

@JWMoons
·
Jan 6
I’ve been laughing all morning. This Rufo guy has somehow managed to get Harvard alum, staff, and supporters to come out and slam the extension program, which all extension students can see, despite Harvard openly advertising it as Harvard. They’re getting dogwalked.

@Jenniferhochsc2
·
Jan 5

On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students

@jimmygandhi

@Jenniferhochsc2: Your gripe should be with Harvard Extension School which goes to great lengths to emphasize to applicants that it is a real Harvard degree and equivalent to other schools in Harvard.

@wrong_speak
·
"Listen. We went to Harvard for status and sure, we let those 'outsiders' get a piece of our stuff but you ain't one of us. Know your place."

Benjamin B@dejo
@benjamin_bdj

Professor Hochshild (@Jenniferhochsc2): if you do not retract your ill-advised statements about Harvard Extension School, some HES students who paid for their studies with federal student loans will formally apply for Borrower Defense Loan Discharge (as in, formally dispute their obligation to repay their loans) via the official @usedgov Borrower Defense process, citing fraud. They will use your tweets as evidence, and they will win.

Jennifer hochschild
@Jenniferhochsc2

Rufo could have proudly and honorably said, "I pulled myself up by bootstraps;to prove it I have master's degree from Harvard extension school, along with other smart and gutsy students."Instead he used weasel words to try to attach himself to Ivy status and prestige. Insecurity??

@DanielHadas2

Harvard: Dismantling Structural Inequalities by trash-talking their own night school.

Jennifer A. Frey
@jennfrey
The Harvard extension discourse is revealing. For all its patina of progressivism, Harvard knows that it's a gatekeeper. The extension school threatens to widen the gate a bit; hence the need for the "real degree" crowd to signal the difference in their social status.

...
@julesgmanresa
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It’s really nasty gatekeeping all the way down

Etc, etc.

[stickdog99]

https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/think ... ary-9-2024

...

The end of ideology

What’s so incredibly confusing about Covid is that it falsified (proved wrong) nearly all existing ideologies:

• Progressivism failed (all progressive institutions are captured).

• Any form of central planning failed (the bureaucrats murdered millions).

• Liberalism failed (“you do your thing, I’ll do mine,” led to genocidal multinational corporations).

• Republicanism failed (Republicans love the fat cat corporations engaged in iatrogenocide).

• Scientism failed (most doctors and scientists in this country are either idiots or murderers).

All that remains is Fascism (Global High Tech Pharma Fascism). All heretofore existing ideologies were insufficient to stop the objectively worst ideology of all.

So that’s the crisis of this moment — all ideologies lie in ashes. And it’s also the opportunity. How then shall we live given that several thousand years of thinking about how to govern ourselves has failed?

...

[Belligerent Savant]

Steve McGuire
@sfmcguire79

In a series of emails, Harvard Professor Jennifer Hochschild has apologized to Harvard Extension School students and staff:


She did so after the Harvard Extension Student Association issued a statement expressing concern and disappointment regarding her remarks on
@X:



Several students were clearly upset about her remarks:

https://x.com/sfmcguire79/status/174598 ... 87930?s=20

[Elvis]

@JonHaidt

I recommend this book by Jonathan Haidt—

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion


https://righteousmind.com/

[Elvis]

People ('educated' or not) will cling to a prevailing paradigm even as its intitutions around them fail—until a better paradigm is developed to replace it. Anything outside the prevailing paradigm is written off an anomaly—until the anomalies are too numerous or salient to ignore.

This is happening in economics—a far more pervasive and ingrained example of a failing paradigm than a one-off pandemic policy, though both are rooted in faulty paradigm. At an ECB economics summit, Charles Goodhart declared that "We have no coherent theory of inflation. Our models have failed." An ECB economist from Austria replied, "Yes, our models are broken—but they're all we've got."

The classic book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions should be standard high school reading. Kuhn popularized the concept of paradigms and I think his definition is the one that matters.

Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.jpg

[edited for typos]

[Elvis]

summers deficits.jpg

Galbraith Belmont Syndrome.jpg

[Belligerent Savant]

Dropping this here since I'm doing a quick drive by on a couple select threads....

No College Mandates
@NCM4Ever

Well @Harvard just announced that student mandates for flu and C19 will remain in effect for fall 2024. Faculty & staff have no such systemwide mandates.

Noncompliance will affect ability to register for spring classes so get your vaccines “as soon as possible.”

C19 boosters are not required if student shows proof of primary series. Flu vaccines are required yearly on or after 7/1/2024. I repeat-many faculty and staff do not have these same requirements; it is dept dependent. These policies are discriminatory and unscientific.

I’ve repeatedly stated students must refuse to comply but I feel like I’m yelling into a void unless we can break their alliance to tribe over truth.

· Feb 6, 2024

https://x.com/NCM4Ever/status/1754961622035243377?s=20