Dr. Andrea Quenette
[From article]
This woman was being forced by her judges to read what was in effect a confession of guilt prepared for her by the accusers (the self-same judges). She was then bullied into sitting quietly as her judges took turns condemning her. When, during this tribunal straight from the depths of twentieth-century totalitarianism, Quenette attempted to read her own prepared statement of clarification and apology, the students refused to hear it.
[. . .]
The charge was political incorrectness, the ultimate crime against the progressive state. There is no defense against this charge. The notion of defense presumes a charge that is rational and defined by a knowable and stable law. The rationale of defense is inapplicable in the world of progressive thought. You are guilty because you have been accused. You are accused because we have decided your action, in this instance, at this time, constitutes a crime. To answer the charge is to commit further offense. Do you find this incomprehensible?
[. . .]
This woman was being forced by her judges to read what was in effect a confession of guilt prepared for her by the accusers (the self-same judges). She was then bullied into sitting quietly as her judges took turns condemning her. When, during this tribunal straight from the depths of twentieth-century totalitarianism, Quenette attempted to read her own prepared statement of clarification and apology, the students refused to hear it.
[. . .]
As Orwell taught us, the essence of good citizenship in a totalitarian society is one’s willingness to say that two plus two equals five when that is the prescribed belief of the moment -- and actually to believe it.
[. . .]
Kafka shows us, in living grayness, the essence of our time. We all stand accused before a faceless establishment. The precise nature of our crimes will never be disclosed to us, and probably couldn’t be disclosed with any clarity. Our guilt, though never in doubt, is as elusive as the "true" perspective on an optical illusion.
The only difference between our real bureaucratic world and the one inhabited by Kafka’s Josef K. is that ours is being gradually superimposed on a civilization with a long-standing tradition of rational justification and reliance on empirical evidence.
[. . .]
one is always on trial, always in the process of being condemned. And our jury is not our peers, is not even human, but is a haze of superior sentiment issuing from one of those mysterious offices we can never find.
[. . .]
These winds blow most easily through the minds of the educated class, because education today means little more than having one’s mind fitted with a moral and intellectual revolving door prepared to accept anything the ruling class decrees, and to condemn dissenters as required, without so much as a twitch of self-doubt about the ever-shifting standards of judgment. In other words, the more time one spends in today’s academic system, the less rational one is likely to become, and the less open to having one’s platitudes challenged. For the most advanced scholars, i.e., graduate students and their professors, the winds of establishmentarianism have almost perfectly displaced the antiquated adherence to basic humanity and simple logic that were once considered the prerequisites of productive thinking.
In short, the university’s essence has been reversed. No longer a haven of philosophical detachment and open discussion, it is now the foremost exemplar of the mob mentality. No longer the one place in our excessively practical modernity where the theoretical life might get a fair shake, it is now the primary residence of fanatical activism, reason’s natural enemy.
[. . .]
how far the West has fallen, and how quickly. Graduate students in the American heartland, the heartland of modern liberty, are demanding that a young woman professor be terminated, forcing her to read aloud from their condemnation of her, and walking out on her as she seeks their forgiveness -- though neither she, nor they, nor anyone else in this Kafkaesque tragicomedy, can explain exactly what offense she committed for which forgiveness is needed.
[. . .]
But if we are foolish enough to make education -- the future of civilization -- our life’s work, the "gentlemen" will likely be a goon squad of role-playing militant idiot doctoral students and their cheerleaders/puppet-masters, the professorial parasites. The shame of it, indeed.
A civilization's future is only as bright as its educational establishment.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/11/thought_terminated_kafka_at_kansas_university.html
November 25, 2015
Thought Terminated: Kafka at Kansas University
By Daren Jonescu
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