UOW academics, including visiting fellow Sarah Keenan who handed in her resignation, woke on Monday to news the university had signed a deal with the Ramsay Centre to establish the country’s first degree in Western Civilisation.
Under a deal signed on Friday and made public on Monday, The Ramsay Centre will pay for 10 academics to teach the three-year degree, and give 30 students a year more than $27,000 each towards their living expenses while they study.
The background to this is that part of the fortune of the late Paul Ramsay was bequeathed to setting up a course on “Western Civilisation”. It’s caused several universities more than a little heartache; on the one hand, funding for a degree course in 2019 is very welcome, particularly in the current funding climate. On the other hand, universities have gone down the rat hole of SJW lunacy and are hostage to utter nutters with the title, “Professor”, as we have seen previously.
As with all of these political minefields, the people shouting the loudest are usually the ones operating with a low resolution view of the underlying facts.
In all of the coverage of the conflicts between activist academics and the Ramsay Centre, not one column inch has been dedicated to explaining which part of the proposed curriculum they take most offence from.
To assist the readership of his organ, here is the proposed curriculum;
Shocking stuff, eh?
Personally, I’m outraged that Malthus, Marx, Engels, Rousseau and Foucault are given the oxygen of publicity on a course supposedly on the subject of “civilisation”. I assume that’s the position of the offended academics too?
Bill’s Opinion
The proposed curriculum looks like an extremely interesting and balanced course. The reading material doesn’t, Prima Facie, scream “white supremacy”, does it? In fact, it even includes the godawful 60s French nutters, which we’d all be better off forgetting, frankly.
As for those who object to the course, we only need look at what they do for a living;
Dr Keenan, who is based at the Birkbeck School of Law, resigned as a visiting fellow at the university’s Legal Intersections Research Centre because she would not support an institution that leant its name to the Ramsay Centre.
This is the LIRC’s work;
And this is Dr. Keenan;
In fact, one need only look at that joyless face to know that anything she dislikes is probably going to be a lot of fun.
To hell with your intersectional law.
It is always interesting that these people don’t enter the arena to contest the battle of ideas. They vacate the field by resigning, or seek to ban the opposing side from speaking. Is it fear, or lack of confidence? Probably both. But it is instructive.
Even if they do deign to enter the contest, the debate soon slides into personal attacks.
It isn’t learning, it is dogma. What to think not how.
Yes, you have it on the money there.
That was my point in posting the proposed curriculum; what exactly is it in that list that is so horribly offensive?
The only conclusion I can draw, in the absence of any of the objectors explaining, is that it’s the high quality of content that irritates them so greatly. Higher quality than the material on the Legal Intersectional Studies degree, for example.
I am sure you could complete the LIRC degree and be no more able to participate in an informed and lucid manner in any form of debate, which I thought was part of the point of university. Ie the exploration and use of a learning process.
But why do that when you just go straight to the answer.
I am still struggling with what the LIRC for, except perhaps for the employment of more academics to hector us from a lofty height.
“But why do that when you just go straight to the answer.”
This.
See also; the gender pay “gap” as a consequence of duh patriarchy.
I’m very happy that Dr. Keenan has resigned. I hope a lot more like her follow her.
I’ve often noticed at work that a lot of women resign because they are desperate to have a baby. Here’s hoping that Dr. Keenan has found a good strong man who has impregnated her, and she is now content to settle down an be a docile and loving nest-builder.
“Here’s hoping that Dr. Keenan has found a good strong man who has impregnated her, and she is now content to settle down an be a docile and loving nest-builder.”
Yes, that must be what’s going on. Very prescient of you. Perhaps we should send her some wholesome recipes for scones and other such domestic delights.
Given her…erm…chosen physical gender-identifiers I doubt she’ll have money left over for scones, what with the cost of IVF these days. Hopefully her wife is a big time HR executive.