If this kind of arrant assholery occurred among people below the age of consent we would call it child abuse. But since this is a university it is more akin to fraud. A university is supposed to educate. To communicate to a moderately intelligent person, who has shown that they have not merely basic literacy but sufficient understanding of our society to function within it as a citizen — you are supposed to learn how to read and write and add in primary school, and in secondary school enough English and logic and rhetoric and natural philosophy (now called science) to participate within society, voting and the draft included — and expand their understanding of their society by comparing it with others. Including the past.

But instead of expanding the current liberal arts believe that the correct approach is to return to the kindergarten, and compete as to who can throw the best tantrum. The context of the post is that a person was disciplined for serving mexican food at a Science Fiction meeting because it is raciss against illegal immigrants. The stupid is not merely here, it is enshrined.

@Orgleader that commie bastard Lenin pic.twitter.com/w2TV7Jlf

— misesiantexan (@misesiantexan) November 16, 2012

And so, once again, students are being encouraged to cultivate a kind of pretentious racial paranoia, in which almost any innocuous thing can, via mental convolution, be associated with some pretext for grievance, however dishonest and opportunistic. Once some mental association has been discovered or contrived, everyone must act as if the innocuous object or action were in reality malicious and/or wounding, whatever the actual intention and regardless of how absurd and/or dishonest the claim of grievance is. Because whatever association of things is in the accuser’s head is assumed to be in everyone else’s head too.

And lo, grammar and punctuation are deemed racist, and paper coffee cups too. And hair, and genteel gardening programmes. And beards, on white men, are harmful and oppressive, and “glorify behaviours typical of people in white hegemonies.”

Yes, it’s ludicrous and pernicious, and not at all accidental. Dr Golz and her peers are in effect saying to students, “You should want to be the guy who bitches about the alleged racist subtext of party snacks. And if you do choose to behave that way, we’ll reward you and flatter you and make you feel important, while making other people jump through clown hoops to appease the feelings you pretend to have.” And the more implausible and contrived the claim of victimhood is, the more status points accrue, supposedly on account of the complainant’s heightened sensitivity and mental prowess. He has fathomed an injustice mere mortals cannot see.

And bewildered onlookers are expected to pretend that this is a high and noble function of an academic institution.

There is a simpler model for this. It was developed in Scotland. You select for professional schools from school or after and intermediate year, and specialize immediately, letting the Arts and Sciences be separate. You keep the places in apprenticeships available, and limit the places at university so that you graduate enough professionals to keep your hospitals, trains and schools running, and allow the very bright to have their sheltered workshop: the Scots sensibly exported them to Oxford and Cambridge.

The Americans allowed the less able take over, drive the true scholars out, and are now racing to the bottom. Parents, if you love your children, keep them away from the academic stupid. Use tertiary education as a trade school only if cheaper alternatives will not suffice.