Results 1 to 23 of 23

Thread: Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults

  1. #1

    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults

    [RELATED: Critical Theory threads]

    Peter Boghossian is producing/presenting a series of videos by Dr. Lyell Asher on the topic "Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults".

    I will try to keep this thread updated as new videos in the series are released.

    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/...34454528495616


    FULL SERIES (single video @ post #24): Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults

    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults
    PART
    TITLE
    VIDEO
    0
    Introduction
    (see below)
    1
    1965-75: The Decisive Decade
    2
    College Administrators
    3
    Administrator Training
    4
    University of Delaware Re-Education
    5
    Mainstreaming Microaggressions
    6
    Yale's Halloween Hustle
    7
    Why Authoritarians Love "Intention vs. Impact"
    8
    Ed Schools: Weak Academics & Woke Politics
    9
    From Justice to Social Justice
    10
    Social Justice Illiteracy
    11
    The Knowledge Gap
    12
    The Reading Debacle
    13
    How Ed Schools Won
    14
    Things You Can Do: Higher Ed
    15
    Things You Can Do: K-12 Schools
    ALL
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults [Full Series / Single Video]



    Introduction: Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...are-becoming:1
    Last edited by Occam's Banana; 12-06-2022 at 08:50 AM.
    The Bastiat Collection ˇ FREE PDF ˇ FREE EPUB ˇ PAPER
    Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

    • "When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law."
      -- The Law (p. 54)
    • "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
      -- Government (p. 99)
    • "[W]ar is always begun in the interest of the few, and at the expense of the many."
      -- Economic Sophisms - Second Series (p. 312)
    • "There are two principles that can never be reconciled - Liberty and Constraint."
      -- Harmonies of Political Economy - Book One (p. 447)

    ˇ tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ˇ



  2. Remove this section of ads by registering.
  3. #2
    https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/...38602889146369


    Dr. Lyell Asher: Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults
    A 15-part video series
    https://boghossian.substack.com/p/dr...s-are-becoming
    Peter Boghossian (07 February 2022)

    What caused colleges and universities to descend into madness? This 15-part series by Dr. Lyell Asher, an Associate Professor of English at Lewis and Clark, provides the answer.

    Dr. Asher has done his homework—and then some. He’s been studying, reading, and writing (here and here) about the educational landscape for decades. He begins his series by looking at the crucial period from 1965-1975, brings us up to the present, and concludes with specific recommendations for what parents, students, educators, and the public can do to restore sanity in the system and in an individual student’s education.

    As you watch this series, I suggest you pay specific attention to what Dr. Asher says about education schools (“ed schools”). Ed schools are a key vector in transmitting and sustaining the ideology that’s come to dominate not just higher ed, but the K-12 educational system. The increasing lack of trust in our colleges and universities and venerable public institutions becomes clear once one understands the role ed schools and their administrator and teacher training programs have played and continue to play.

    Finally, here’s a way to think about the ideological capture of our educational institutions and why it’s so difficult to solve: Suppose you have a magic wand. You wave the wand and woke ideology and all of its vestiges immediately disappear from every K-12 school.

    You breathe a sigh of relief that we’re finally rid of the derangement syndrome that’s overtaken our schools, brainwashed our children, and seeped into every aspect of the culture. Your relief would not last long. K-12 schools would just repopulate with teachers who’ve been trained by ed schools and indoctrinated into hyper-specific value sets and pedagogies. And this is just one of the things that Dr. Asher’s series does so well—he explains what’s being taught in ed schools and reveals evidence-based literature exposing these practices as harmful and fraudulent.

    Without further ado, here’s Lyell’s guest post and the intro video to the series. [see OP for introductory video - OB]

    By: Dr. Lyell Asher

    At a debate sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1978, the biologist and writer E.O. Wilson was physically assaulted by a group of attendees from a radical political organization calling itself the “International Committee Against Racism.” With his broken leg in a cast and crutches at his side (he’d injured himself jogging), the hobbled Wilson had just started his talk when the courageous InCAR fanatics rushed the stage, roughed him up, and dumped pitchers of water on his head. Damp but undaunted, Wilson soldiered on and finished the talk as planned.

    This incident has become more familiar recently owing to its mention in the many obituaries of Wilson, who died this past December at the age of 92. But it’s also become more resonant owing to the now-commonplace practice of disinviting, deplatforming and even assaulting speakers on college campuses. In 1978, the physical attack on Wilson was as exceptional as it was outrageous, and it would remain so for decades. Through all of my years in college and graduate school, from the late 70s through the 80s, it was simply unthinkable that mobs would be allowed to shout down speakers, much less physically assault them. If you had to win that way, you were admitting defeat. You were an intellectual coward and a fraud. (You still are, by the way.)

    This meant that as an undergraduate I was able to see someone as controversial—even hated—as retired General William Westmoreland being dismantled, rather than deplatformed, by Viet Nam vets during the Q & A period following a talk he gave at Vanderbilt in the late 70s. Those veterans had lost friends in the war, and—no doubt—part of themselves. They had every reason to be enraged. But they let Westmoreland deliver his talk without interruption—less out of respect for him, probably, than for themselves. When their questions did come, they were pointed, often emotional, and devastating. Westmoreland was speaking about the map, but those vets knew the territory, and it was among the most memorable confrontations I’ve ever witnessed.

    That’s what college was and what it should be—what it must be to deserve the name. But in the last twenty years, and in the last decade especially, higher education has gone from listing to the political left, to a full-on capsize into something that, at many institutions, more closely resembles a cult. Different institutions hit this tipping point at different times. But it was back in 2010, when I began hearing adults in positions of authority say “intentions don’t matter,” that I realized that something very different—and very stupid—was afoot. This mantra wasn’t shorthand for intellectually respectable arguments about the limits of authorial intention in literature, or about “intentionality” in philosophy. Rather, it was a dismissal of the “I-didn’t-mean-to-break-the-lamp” kind of intention—that basic component of moral evaluation understood by people everywhere, usually by the time they’re potty-trained.

    This wasn’t coming from faculty either, at least not back then. It was coming from student-facing administrators whose increasing numbers and expanding roles on college campuses had been accompanied by—and accomplished by means of—subtle shifts in language. Students were no longer in a college; they were in a “community.” One began to hear in official pronouncements that “we’re all educators.” The word “collegial” began to mean little more than “compliant.” Something was “inclusive” if it coincided with that week’s political positions of the (mostly white) urban elite sporting advanced degrees. In a little over a decade this administrative class helped turbocharge a process that had been underway for several decades: transforming four-year colleges and universities from being among the best places to critically evaluate ideas, into being among the worst.

    This video series tries to help those outside the academy understand how this happened, and why. Where did these administrators come from, and why do most promote an ideology that’s even more blinkered and dogmatic than that of many “activist” faculty? What’s the connection between this politicized bureaucratic juggernaut in higher education, and the racist “anti-racist” curriculum that’s found such a footing in our primary and secondary schools?

    The series doesn’t of course tell the whole story of higher education’s descent into Woke orthodoxy—it couldn’t. But it does connect a few of the most important phases in that descent to a 100-year history of so-called “progressive”—but in effect, regressive—pedagogical theory in the nation’s k-12 teacher training schools. Despite the great work of writers and researchers like James Koerner, Diane Ravitch, Rita Kramer, John Taylor Gatto, and E.D. Hirsch, to name just a few, that history is largely unknown—not only to the public at large, but to college faculty as well.

    At least where faculty are concerned, it’s unlikely that knowing that history and its disastrous consequences for minority and low-income students especially, would dampen their willingness to allow, and often encourage, the abandonment of the fundamental academic values on which their own disciplines have been built. However much the professoriate may identify with the principled freedom of Galileo and Darwin, it does so only in retrospect, after the dust has settled and the victors have been announced. In the moment, it always follows the example of the Church.

    But that’s an old story. As I believe Christopher Hitchens once said (I’ve been unable to verify my memory), “There is no more cowardly creature on god’s green earth than a professor with tenure.” Whatever its source, the indictment itself is verified by an addendum to the incident involving E. O. Wilson with which I began. In his book Noble Savages, the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, who was at the AAAS-sponsored debate, describes what the audience—consisting mostly of the species homo academicus— did in response to the attack on Wilson: “I was in the back of the room, trying frantically to get to the stage to help Wilson, but the crowd was heading in the opposite direction, anxiously attempting to get out of the auditorium as quickly as possible.”
    Last edited by Occam's Banana; 02-10-2022 at 02:07 AM.

  4. #3
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 1) 1965-75: The Decisive Decade | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...lts-(part-1):c

  5. #4
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 2): College Administrators | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...lts-(part-2):2

  6. #5
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 3): Administrator Training | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...lts-(part-3):6

  7. #6
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 4): University of Delaware Re-Education | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...lts-(part-4):3

  8. #7
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 5): Mainstreaming Microaggressions | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...lts-(part-5):f

  9. #8
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 6): Yale's Halloween Hustle | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...lts-(part-6):0



  10. Remove this section of ads by registering.
  11. #9
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 7): Why Authoritarians Love "Intention vs. Impact" | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...lts-(part-7):9

  12. #10
    Interesting topic... is there a TLDR ???
    It's all about taking action and not being lazy. So you do the work, whether it's fitness or whatever. It's about getting up, motivating yourself and just doing it.
    - Kim Kardashian

    Donald Trump / Crenshaw 2024!!!!

    My pronouns are he/him/his

  13. #11
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 8): Ed Schools: Weak Academics & Woke Politics | Dr. Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...lts-(part-8):5

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by TheTexan View Post
    Interesting topic... is there a TLDR ???
    I'd say the videos themselves are their own TLDR. It's a subject for which a number of issues must addressed in order to adequately present the issue, even at a basic "nutshell" level (which is probably why there will be fifteen videos in the overall series). As Lyell Asher says in the introductory video (see the OP), the videos are as brief as he could make them - the longest (so far) is less than seven minutes.

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Occam's Banana View Post
    I'd say the videos themselves are their own TLDR. It's a subject for which a number of issues must addressed in order to adequately present the issue, even at a basic "nutshell" level (which is probably why there will be fifteen videos in the overall series). As Lyell Asher says in the introductory video (see the OP), the videos are as brief as he could make them - the longest (so far) is less than seven minutes.
    Sounds like he primarily blames Ed Schools (schools that teach Education), with the seeds of wokeness planted in the 1900's and then rapidly accelerating after the Vietnam War.

    Basically the teachers who teach teachers have had a long-standing leftist bias and it's snowballed into what we see today.

    It took them 100+ years to get to this point. Not easily undone.
    It's all about taking action and not being lazy. So you do the work, whether it's fitness or whatever. It's about getting up, motivating yourself and just doing it.
    - Kim Kardashian

    Donald Trump / Crenshaw 2024!!!!

    My pronouns are he/him/his

  16. #14
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 9): From Justice to Social Justice | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...lts-(part-9):5

  17. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by TheTexan View Post
    Sounds like he primarily blames Ed Schools (schools that teach Education), with the seeds of wokeness planted in the 1900's and then rapidly accelerating after the Vietnam War.

    Basically the teachers who teach teachers have had a long-standing leftist bias and it's snowballed into what we see today.

    It took them 100+ years to get to this point. Not easily undone.
    I'm skeptical that it even can be undone, at least in the sense of reforming or rehabilitating the present system. Residential colleges/universities may simply have to die - and even then, it would still remain to abolish things like teacher certification (or at least profoundly reform them, assuming that is even possible). I don't see that happening anytime soon, though eventually something's gotta give. In this regard, the bursting of the so-called "college bubble" may turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

  18. #16
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 10): Social Justice Illiteracy | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...-cults-(part:5



  19. Remove this section of ads by registering.
  20. #17
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 11): The Knowledge Gap | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...ults-(part-2:c

  21. #18
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 12): The Reading Debacle | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...ults-(part-3:b

  22. #19
    Because they are mostly City Urban Liberal Types (C.U.L.T.)
    Last edited by dannno; 03-29-2022 at 03:19 PM.
    "He's talkin' to his gut like it's a person!!" -me
    "dumpster diving isn't professional." - angelatc
    "You don't need a medical degree to spot obvious bullshit, that's actually a separate skill." -Scott Adams
    "When you are divided, and angry, and controlled, you target those 'different' from you, not those responsible [controllers]" -Q

    "Each of us must choose which course of action we should take: education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes. But let it not be said that we did nothing." - Ron Paul

    "Paul said "the wave of the future" is a coalition of anti-authoritarian progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans in Congress opposed to domestic surveillance, opposed to starting new wars and in favor of ending the so-called War on Drugs."

  23. #20
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 13): How Ed Schools Won | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...ults-(part-4:7

  24. #21
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 14): Things You Can Do: Higher Ed | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...ults-(part-5:a

  25. #22
    Why Colleges Are Becoming Cults (Part 15): Things You Can Do: K-12 Schools | Dr. Lyell Asher
    https://odysee.com/@PeterBoghossian:...ults-(part-6:0

  26. #23



Similar Threads

  1. Sounds of American Doomsday Cults Vol. 14
    By TortoiseDream in forum Open Discussion
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 04-21-2019, 02:36 PM
  2. Replies: 78
    Last Post: 10-29-2012, 08:54 AM
  3. From a Liberty perspective, what to do about people physically held in cults?
    By RonRules in forum Individual Rights Violations: Case Studies
    Replies: 17
    Last Post: 08-10-2012, 02:06 AM
  4. TSA at Colleges
    By mfields11 in forum Individual Rights Violations: Case Studies
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 04-07-2011, 09:16 PM
  5. Cults ... split from "Liberty Movement Hides ..." thread
    By FrankRep in forum U.S. Political News
    Replies: 20
    Last Post: 02-09-2010, 09:13 PM

Select a tag for more discussion on that topic

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •