Women and University Education
inclusion and fear and hate
There is the common ruck of educated women, into safetyism and EVs. And then there is Amy Wax, law professor in trouble at Penn. Not to mention Heather Mac Donald, Fellow of Manhattan Institute, of whom La Wik says:
In spring 2017, a protest group announced plans to "shut down" Mac Donald's speech on the Black Lives Matter movement at a college campus in California, calling her racist, fascist, and anti-black.
Needless to say, Mac Donald has been big on the proactive policing, “broken windows” circuit.
But now she has a piece at City-Journal on the feminizing of the university, featuring the appointment of a new president of New York University.
Linda Mills [is] a licensed clinical social worker and an NYU social work professor. She researches trauma and bias, as well as race and gender in the legal academy.
Mac Donald goes on.
Seventy-five percent of Ivy League presidents are now female… Females made up 66 percent of college administrators in 2021… Females earned 58 percent of all B.A.s in the 2019–2020 academic year… [Needless to say,] Female students disproportionately patronize the burgeoning university wellness centers, massage therapies, relaxation oases, calming corners, and healing circles.
As I keep saying, German sociologist Georg Simmel remarked at the turn of the 20th century that women coming into the public square would adapt it to “suit a more feminine sensibility. Thus,
When students claim to be felled by ideas that they disagree with, the feminized bureaucracy does not tell them to grow up and get a grip. It validates their self-pity. On taking the helm of Barnard College in 2018… [Sian Leah] Beilock pledged to ensure that the college was an “inclusive environment free from fear and hate.”
That is what “a more feminine sensibility” means. Upstream of that is my maxim that “women expect to be protected.” Of course they do; you can’t bear and raise children unless you are protected. But whether it’s a Good Idea to feminize the university, and create an inclusive environment, well I have my doubts.
For instance, there is Amy Wax, tenured law professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School. No “inclusive environment free from fear and hate” for her! They are trying to get her fired (at age 70). Yeah! Talk about sexism and ageism! What is her crime? La Wik has the details. The majority of its article is about her “Controversial Statements.” For instance in an interview with Glenn Loury she said:
Take Penn Law School, or some top 10 law school... Here's a very inconvenient fact . . . I don't think I've ever seen a Black student graduate in the top quarter of the class, and rarely, rarely in the top half ... I can think of one or two students who scored in the top half in my required first year course.
Here’s the thing. Given that black IQs are a standard deviation south of white IQs, you would expect that. But Charles Murray was sent to the principal’s office nearly 30 years ago for pointing it out in The Bell Curve, and for saying that, given that the future belonged to those with high cognitive abilities, factory jobs going the way of the dodo and all, Houston we have a Problem.
It’s funny, isn’t it. You would think that an “inclusive environment free from fear and hate” would be one where people can discuss things in an amicable and friendly exchange of views. But it doesn’t. Instead it means that you are not allowed to challenge the received orthodoxy on anything, because fear and hate.
But I think that this is really a predictable consequence of women in the public square. If you watch men in a barroom, they are good-naturedly insulting each other; if you watch women at lunch they are nervously laughing while agreeing with each other. It’s the nature of the beast.
Personally, I think that university should be hard to get into, and hard to graduate from. And while at the university students should be ruthlessly challenged on their beliefs and assumptions every day of the week. Your mileage may vary.
By the way, I wonder how protected women in Ukraine are feeling right now. I wonder how protected women felt during the Dark Ages in Europe. I wonder how protected women felt in the 1,800 years of war in China that preceded the establishment of the Qin dynasty in 221 BC. I wonder how protected women felt in Europe in the 1940s as German and Soviet and American armies swept across the North European Plain.
Just wonderin’.