One of the least remarked-upon facets of recent years has been the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the academic left. While they control many humanities departments, and have filled the minds of many young people with idiocies it will take them years to shuck off, they have almost no substantive contribution to make to American society. Many enclaves of the academic left have actively longed for the defeat of the U.S. in Iraq; and are ambivalent between the West and its Islamist enemies. I think particularly of the gay academic left, so busy tying themselves into "queer studies" knots that they were utterly absent in the battles for marriage equality and military service. (And when they were not absent, they were busy criticizing advocates for gay equality for being "assimilationist.") Old-school lefty Todd Gitlin has a great new piece on their vacuousness in the Chronicle for Higher Education. Money quote:
[T]he academic left is nowhere today. It matters more to David Horowitz than to anyone else. The reason is that its faith-based politics has crashed and burned. It specializes in detraction. It offers no plausible picture of the world. Such spontaneous movements as do crop up in America ‚Äî like the current immigrant demonstrations ‚Äî do not emerge from the campus left. Neither do reformers’ intermittent attempts to eject the party of plutocracy and fundamentalism from power, to win universal health care, to protect the planet from further convulsions, to enlarge the rights of the least privileged. If more academics deigned to work toward reforms, they might contribute ideas about taxes, education, trade, employment, investment, foreign policy, and security from jihadists. But the academic left is too busy guarding the flame of nullification. They think they can fortify themselves with vigilance. In truth, their curses are gestures of helplessness.
Go read.
The Dish 