Have you read about the three professors who wrote fake ‘research’ papers, including a paraphrase of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and got them accepted in journals specializing in “grievance studies” of various sorts? See Power Line’s Scott Johnson writing to add to this heaping of scorn.
Some of the discussion has focused on the quiet disdain with which such bogus areas are viewed by real academics. We’re talking about fields like Black Studies, Chicano Studies, Women’s Studies, Indigenous Studies, LGBTQ Studies, for all I know, maybe Albino Studies or Pedophile Studies. Somewhere someone is contemplating the founding of a Journal of Self-Mutilation Studies.
These have been ways for universities to hire members of the designated victim groups to study, and give classes in omphaloskepsis, basically self study. The rationale has been the subcultures in question have supposedly been “beneath” the focus of standard academic disciplines.
Meanwhile, members of the ‘real’ disciplines view these upstarts as the academic equivalent of fig leaves. As ways for the institution to camoflage its lack of interest in victim groups.
No “real” academic expects grievance study ‘scholarship’ to be genuine, nobody is surprised they only pantomime academic rigor. These units are Potemkin Villages whose appearance, or even existence, is what counts.
The institutional cynicism is monumental, the grievance studies faculty are aware of how they’re viewed, and that awareness only makes them more radical, more angry.
