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[stas]

Журналистка "Хроники высшего образования" позволила себе усомниться в благотворности Black Studies на основе диссертаций выпускников - в которых попадаются перлы типа исследования зловредного влияния чернокожих консерваторов вроде судьи Кларенса Томаса на гражданские права в США и обьяснения кризиса субпраймовый ссуд расизмом.
Разумеется, результат был немного предсказуем - журналистка уволена на месте, редакция журнала кается, что на её страницу удалось протащить ересь, ставящую под сомнения самые священные догматы, и обещает пересмотреть редакционную политику, чтобы подобное никогда больше не повторилось. Дополнительно, редакция кается за то, что позволила себе пригласить читателей к дискуссии на затронутую тему и тем самым причинила им тяжкие духовные страдания.

И правильно - академия - не место для дискуссий. Не в пивной, чай. Нечего неприятные слова говорить. 

Да, там ещё ответ самих академиков-чернознатцев - в котором, разумеется, воззвания к крови Трейвона Мартина, сравнения с Гингричем и жалобы, что их слабый голосок пытаются заглушить силы раситсткого белого эстеблишмента (копия: работодателям заглушателя с требованием немедленно уволить - каковое требование, разумеется, в считанные дни удовлетворяется). В общем, всё вполне в академических стандартах, в отличие от. 

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Оригинал из WSJ

[syrya.livejournal.com]

Gina Barreca, a teacher of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut, composed a poem mocking me. (It begins "A certain white chick—Schaefer Riley/ decided to do something wily.") MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry spewed a four-minute rant about my post, invoking the memory of Trayvon Martin and accusing me of "small-mindedness."

Scores of critics on the site complained that I had not read the dissertations in full before daring to write about them—an absurd standard for a 500-word blog post. A number of the dissertations aren't even available. Which didn't seem to stop the Chronicle reporter, though. And 6,500 academics signed a petition online demanding that I be fired.

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At first, the Chronicle stood its ground, suggesting that my post was an "invitation to debate." But that stance lasted for little more than a weekend. In a note that reads like a confession at a re-education camp, the Chronicle's editor, Liz McMillen announced her decision on Monday to fire me: "We've heard you," she tells my critics. "And we have taken to heart what you said. We now agree that Ms. Riley's blog posting did not meet The Chronicle's basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles."

When I asked Ms. McMillen whether the poem by fellow blogger Ms. Barreca, for instance, lived up to such standards, she said they were "reviewing" the other content on the site. So far, however, that blogger has not been fired. Other ad hominem attacks against me seem to have passed editorial muster as well.

In her Monday mea culpa, Ms. McMillen wrote that her previous "editor's note last week inviting [readers] to debate the posting also seemed to elevate it to the level of informed opinion, which it was not." I have been a journalist writing about higher education for close to 15 years now, having visited dozens of colleges and universities and interviewed hundreds of faculty, students and administrators. My work has been published in every major newspaper in the country, most often this one, and I have written two widely reviewed books on higher education as well.

As I wrote in the book I published shortly before the Chronicle hired me, "It is not merely that [many] departments approach African-American studies from a particular perspective—an Africa-centered one in which blacks residing in America today are still deeply hobbled by the legacy of slavery. It's that course and department descriptions often appear to be a series of axes that faculty members would like to grind."

But why take my word for it? Scholars more learned than I have been saying the same thing for decades. In 1974, Thomas Sowell wrote that from the beginnings of the discipline, "the demands for black studies differed from demands for other forms of new academic studies in that they . . . restricted the philosophical and political positions acceptable, even from black scholars in such programs."

Thirty-five years later in a piece for the Minding the Campus website, former Berkeley Prof. John McWhorter noted that little had changed: "Too often the curriculum of African-American Studies departments gives the impression that racism and disadvantage are the most important things to note and study about being black."

My critics have suggested that I do not believe the black experience in America is worthy of study. That is not true. It's just that the best of this work rarely comes out of black studies departments. Scholars like Roland Fryer in Harvard's economics department have done pathbreaking research on the causes of economic disparities between blacks and whites. And Eugene Genovese's work on slavery and the role of religion in black American history retains its seminal role in the field decades after its publication.

But a substantive critique about the content of academic disciplines is simply impossible in the closed bubble of higher education. If you want to know why almost all of the responses to my original post consist of personal attacks on me, along with irrelevant mentions of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, .., it is because black studies is a cause, not a course of study. By doubting the academic worthiness of black studies, my critics conclude, I am opposed to racial justice—and therefore a racist