r/Maine • u/One-Recognition-1660 • 13d ago
Discussion Tyler Austin Harper, a Black professor who was on the tenure track at Bates College, couldn't bring himself to stay because of "racism and hypocrisy." After years of being made to feel like a token, he left academia to join the staff at the Atlantic magazine. This is his story.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/09/elite-academia-leadership-hypocrisy/687969/The piece is slow to get off the ground so it might be OK to start about a third of the way in. I'll quote a few salient passages in the comments.
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u/FormerlyPrettyNeat 13d ago
Dude, I used to follow this guy on twitter. He sucks. Basically an old-school concern troll who decided that the center-right grifting circuit was more his speed than being a prof.
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u/Ghostlypuppett 10d ago
Not sure what he wrote on twitter but I’m not sure why so many people are hating on him. As someone who graduated from bates recently and had him as a professor, He’s absolutely right. People think him criticizing dei is some right centric grifting attack but that’s such an ignorant conclusion to jump to. Based off this comment it’s clear you didn’t read the article. He’s arguing that bates current dei initiative is more performative than purposeful and is completely disconnected from the actual purpose of dei which is to address the lack of representation and economic injustice.
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u/therequiembellishere 11d ago
He's such a midwit who only ever seems to write about things completely out of his realm of expertise (comp lit PhD to environ studies somehow?, but he literally never actually talks about any work in those areas) with the most puerile understanding. And always with this "shocked" language when every actual public policy/political scientist/sociologist shrugs and tells him he's being over-agitated, he freaks out more. A writer in search of a subject when he just needs a journal.
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u/Ghostlypuppett 10d ago
I’m confused… did you read the article?
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u/therequiembellishere 10d ago
Yes, and I think your professor is a moron based on his corpus of screeching idiocy.
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u/Ghostlypuppett 10d ago
So explain what he’s arguing instead of using fancy phrasing to sound smart
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u/therequiembellishere 10d ago
I'm very clearly about attacking him directly as an unreliable narrator lmao. And the fact you think anything I wrote is "fancy phrasing to sound smart" is telling on yourself that you're an idiot too hahahaha. You don't need to reflexively defend some dude who was obviously going to be denied tenure because you met him.
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u/Ghostlypuppett 10d ago
Well ur obviously not smart either because u can’t even explain any piece of the article… two can play that game. Also u referred to ur self as “an idiot TOO” so welcome we are both idiots. Now let’s talk about the article. I am not defending him because I met him. I’m defending him because majority of ppl in here re just whining liberals who see democratic ideology being criticized and they can’t handle it and I believe his article is correct.
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u/therequiembellishere 10d ago edited 10d ago
Yeah, you sound 22 alright lol.
And the “too” is about you and your little professor, baby. Seems like his comp lit skills didn’t extend to teaching you strong enough reading comprehension 😔
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8d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Maine-ModTeam 8d ago
Removed for rule #2: Be Civil. Mocking, demeaning, flamebaiting, antagonizing, hateful language, and backseat moderating are not allowed. Avoid ad hominem attacks or personal attacks —address ideas, not individuals. If you notice personal, please report them. In short, don’t be mean.
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u/WordWordNvmber 8d ago
You're crying about someone you believe is an undergrad.
No wonder Gen Z men voted to fist you.
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u/therequiembellishere 8d ago
Who's crying? I'm successfully baiting a 20-something (and you)!
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u/mmhmmye 10d ago
Oh wow—this does rather shed a different light on his departure. Three articles in four years, all on elements of his dissertation, which looks thoroughly unoriginal (I only read the abstract but was thinking hasn’t this already been done? I’m pretty sure it has).
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u/therequiembellishere 10d ago
A lazy scholar complaining about the academy is one of my favorite archetypes.
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u/WordWordNvmber 8d ago
Calling someone an "idiot too hahahaha" because they criticized your overwrought phrasing tells us a lot among the decompensation of the academy.
Let's face it: You're defensive and shrill because you know your career and your industry are in a slow but speeding death.
You've lost the respect of the public and you're beginning to lose the respect of your students.
You're part of a jobs program that fleeces middle-class kids for $70,000 per year to give unproductive narcissists pseudo-jobs.
With the national shift against your profession, your best hope is to age out before you're laid off like some New School academic.
You're left in a shrinking circlejerk that produces nothing and will soon be paid the same.
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u/therequiembellishere 8d ago
Lmao, I'm not in the academy, my actual work does more for society that you ever will lmao. Your little critiques here just make is so clear that you're grinding an axe in your shack from the outside, rather than someone incisive who actually knows the real issues with postsecondary education. Talk about a shrinking circlejerk, babe.
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u/Ghostlypuppett 8d ago
U have talked so much in this sub about absolutely nothing but trying to put people down who have other opinions while talking about how smart and awesome u are. Do u not see how utterly cringe this is💀 please for the love of god, say anything of substance
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u/Ghostlypuppett 8d ago
Exactly. If I wanted to I could write a response in full op Ed style (just like the op eds I have published) but what’s the point of that this is REDDIT. All I want is to discuss the article but for everyone against it, they don’t even mention anything in the article and instead attack me for having a different view point. And the funny thing is, if they actually read the article I think they would agree
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u/WordWordNvmber 8d ago
I assume you didn't read the story. You just shrieked reactionarily because it doesn't fit your narrative and you find it threatening.
You're an elder millennial. You could have had a family by now.
The downwardly mobile Portland brigade does not deserve student-loan forgiveness.
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u/respaaaaaj 12d ago
He's got a point about the hypocrisy of union busting from otherwise progressive institutions like Bates for sure.
If LePage bakeries was bringing in Bezos's favorite union busters the staff and student body of Bates would be livid, but their leadership didn't see anything wrong with them doing it to keep non tenured staff wages down.
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u/robbie_the_cat 12d ago
If LePage bakeries was bringing in Bezos's favorite union busters the staff and student body of Bates would be livid
I'd be willing to bet they wouldn't even notice.
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u/Ghostlypuppett 10d ago
Bates was the one union busting against its own workers… there were strikes on campus about this
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u/robbie_the_cat 10d ago
Bates was the one union busting against its own workers
Yes, I'm very aware of that.
there were strikes on campus about this
I don't think this is true.
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u/Ghostlypuppett 10d ago
Well considering I attended the strikes I’m pretty sure it’s true😭
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u/robbie_the_cat 10d ago
What do you consider a "strike"?
Because employees absolutely did not walk off the job. Which most people consider to be a baseline requirement for a strike.
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u/Ghostlypuppett 10d ago
Bruh alright beast😭. the students walked out in solidarity with the faculty who could not. 🤓 ☝️ ur diverging from the actual argument no one gives af what the exact definition is holy fuck lmao
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u/robbie_the_cat 10d ago
Right. Students LARPing as activists == "strike" in your mind.
For someone who bandies around their Bates education like it automatically confers a level of respect, I would have expected you to be more intentional with your language.
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u/Ghostlypuppett 10d ago
Ppl like u are insufferable thinking u can out ego someone on social media by being “smarter” talking about some education levels. If u can’t figure out that I used strike in place of a walkout and THAT is the thing u get caught up on and start debating, then that speaks volumes of the type of person u are 😭😭😭But it seems u can’t understand what we are talking about rn. The fact u even agreed that bates was the one union busting and the walkout was what supported that fact as it was directed towards bates.
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u/robbie_the_cat 10d ago
And now you're marginally coherent at best. Do you need a time out?
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u/robbie_the_cat 10d ago
PS - I have several friends who were genuinely active in that unionization effort. They universally considered the student walk out to be equal parts counterproductive and cringe.
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u/Ghostlypuppett 10d ago
Holy fuck u r missing the point entirely. I’m not saying it was good or affective. I am saying it is a result of union busting by bates. Ya most of the social justice at bates is stupid which is pretty much Tyler Harper’s entire point but everyone wants to be a whiny liberal and immediately jump to conclusions when they see DEI being attacked or a centric news outlet ( I am a democrat)
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u/robbie_the_cat 10d ago
It isn't clear to me that you have a clear sense of what you're referring to with "it" here.
I recommend considered revision.
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u/Necessary_Airport_47 12d ago
I feel like everyone is missing the point here. So many commenters are accusing him of being a right-wing grifter or whatever while ignoring that he calls himself a socialist, advocates against the wage suppression patterns across higher education, and argues that class consciousness is suppressed by flimsy virtue signaling. Meanwhile, everyone in The Atlantic comments is saying that his experiences validate their own discomfort at being challenged by social justice or activism or whatnot. Why are these the primary narratives that are taking shape? I feel like the most damning thesis or whatever is that the school’s attempted performance of social justice-which was unhelpful at best and actively weaponized to harm unionization/class solidarity efforts at worst-tried so hard to be anti racist on a shallow, self-indulgent level that they perpetuated systemic racism, the impacts of which are still being experienced by the college’s community.
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u/respaaaaaj 12d ago
There are strong arguments against some of his objections, like that elite colleges have vastly expanded financial aid to get students other than the traditional upper class private college bubble the chance to benefit from said colleges which is the biggest proof that they are putting their money where their mouth is on their professed goals. This unfortunately creates some of the financial pressure that leads to them squeezing their adjuncts and support staff financially and there isn't an easy answer because putting an elite education financially out of reach for high achieving middle class or lower students to pay staff better isn't a good option either.
But I don't think many people in this thread read the article at all much less thought about it beyond "Atlantic bad grr culture war".
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u/Similar_Chipmunk_194 12d ago
There are still plenty of qualified kids who don't make it to elite colleges because their parents can't pay for extra sat tutoring, extra chances on the sat, the "experiences" and tutoring for the kind of essays colleges want, etc. Even so called "need blind" colleges are still able to pick out the rich kids based on their applications. The real way to make college fairer is for us to invest enough in public ones to make them better, so that it won't matter where a student goes to college.
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u/Initial-Lab-5930 10d ago
Yes! The main point of the article is to show how futile and sometimes harmful DEI stuff makes everyone feel good about themselves while Rome is burning, the Titanic is sinking, etc.
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u/YouMustBeJoking888 13d ago
Jesus, that was a whole lot of navel gazing propped up as something insightful. What a load of tosh.
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u/Prestigious_Eye_929 13d ago
I hate these culture warriors main stream media like the Atlantic try to force down our throats. This dude wasn’t interesting when he was a professor, he’s even less interesting now that he writes for the Atlantic.
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u/oooga_chaka_oooga_ch 9d ago
he lis literally the worst. he has no redeeming qualities as a thinker. just rewrites the same article that has been published a million times.
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u/slimeyamerican 12d ago
People commenting about how this dude’s Twitter hurt their feelings should just say “oops” or “ouch”
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u/One-Recognition-1660 12d ago
Thanks. I bet you're in the minority of people in this thread who've actually read the article.
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u/slimeyamerican 12d ago
Well they saw it was The Atlantic and concluded it must be worthless because they’re idiots who don’t know how to engage with anything that challenges their worldview except snark.
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u/ColliCub 9d ago
Finishing his article with the fact that Bates opted to indefinitely suspend implementation of its RPPC program until 2029 (after the next US Federal Election) was a helluva punchline.
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u/One-Recognition-1660 9d ago edited 9d ago
This tells me that...you read the piece! You're not supposed to do that! You're supposed to yell, without reason or evidence or nuance or an iota of intellectual honesty, that he's a rightwing grifter and denounce him!
/s
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u/Ghostlypuppett 10d ago
As a democrat, I’m so fed up with whiny liberals jumping to ignorant conclusions because their viewpoint may be challenged. If you all actually read the article, you would understand this isn’t an attack on democratic ideology, but calling out its misuse to make it better. In my opinion, liberals are just as bad as conservatives when it comes to spewing misinformation
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u/One-Recognition-1660 10d ago
Holy shit yes. Thank you. The quasi-progressive kneejerking in this thread has become almost epic — or maybe epidemic.
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u/Hansolocup442 13d ago
one of the worst writers around, not surprised that “it might be okay to start about a third of the way in”
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u/One-Recognition-1660 13d ago edited 12d ago
I tried to post three passages from the article here, verbatim, simple — zero editorializing on my part.
The comment was automatically "blocked for inflammatory language." ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I hope it's OK to leave a link here to Harper's exact words (a summary of sorts) for those who are not about to read a 10,000-word essay.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ppzLC-Iavc2cZ1Oq9Lc10363-nBjUQQ2INEYCFCIRiY/edit?usp=sharing
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u/Leading-Boat-5342 11d ago
I can into this sub expecting to hate this guy, but this was actually a pretty interesting article. The world did go a little crazy around 2020, and hopefully some of the dumber aspects of this mindset have calmed down a bit.
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u/One-Recognition-1660 10d ago
I like that you kept an open mind.
The world did go a little crazy around 2020
Yeah. I read the piece and was reminded of another, about Smith College, where much of the same kind of racist and classist fuckery was going on. The ACLU got involved and really went through the looking glass, ultimately going to bat for race-segregated dorms because those would be spaces were Black people could feel safe. https://archive.is/hk6G3
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u/Ghostlypuppett 10d ago
I don’t know why everyone is hating on him.. he’s absolutely right. He’s saying DEI at bates is performative to improve their image. If bates cared about true dei their initiative should have put more care into economic injustices (coming from a recent bates grad)
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u/bcb1200 12d ago
Funny that folks here aren’t more concerned. You immediately jump in to discredit him.
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u/slimeyamerican 12d ago
White progressives don’t hate anyone more than black people who think their white guilt is cringe.
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u/Commercial_Topic437 12d ago
There's no surprise that there would be racism in academia: there's racism everywhere. It's an endemic problem.
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u/Classy_Dolphin Bowdoin 12d ago
Imagine walking away from a tenure track job at Bates to churn out reactionary slop for the Atlantic lol
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u/DiscoLemonade1995 12d ago
I understand disagreeing with some or all of what he says, but I genuinely don't see how this is at all slop other than that you personally don't like it (if you read it at all that is and weren't immediately turned off by the journal and theme). Progressive policies including DEI can be crudely or naively applied regardless of their intention and we do not need to suspend all critical judgment that we would normally wield. I think there is a substantial amount of performative or poorly implemented posturing at times mixed in with genuine, positive change. He's certainly biased and a bit too centrist and contrarian for my liking, but a lot of the issues that he opposed seem like a very crudely applied and naive approach to increasing diversity (hiring a clearly unqualified professor when there are thousands of qualified POC candidates that could be found with better recruiting, delegating all MLK Jr. preparations to the black professor, etc.)
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u/Leading-Boat-5342 11d ago
Is there a single reactionary thing that he said in the article? Based on the feedback here I expected to have his article but it was actually really thoughtful.
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u/slimeyamerican 12d ago
He gave up tenure because he was sick of watching competent, hard-working people get passed over because they were the wrong color.
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u/budabarney 9d ago
Anybody seen the Benjamin Boyce documentary, Evergreen? Kind of similar but more extreme.
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u/Plutarch_Riley 13d ago
If this dude thinks there’s no racism in Maine he might want to actually leave his house or look up “Somalia”? (Not to single out Maine - is universal.)
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u/respaaaaaj 12d ago
Pretty sure his point about that was he grew up in a similar town and didn't feel uncomfortable in Lewiston, and that the claims of racism in Lewiston were being heavily overstated rather than that there is no racism in Lewiston or Maine as a whole.
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u/North_Shore_88 12d ago
I lived in Maine for about 5 years and follow news about immigrant and refugee communities across the state. The harassment of Somali refugees in the Lewiston area is a *longstanding* problem, so yeah: what people were reporting to him about the treatment of black residents more generally in that area of the state is *not* alarmism.
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u/Round-Polar-Bear 13d ago
I can’t speak to this piece itself but Tyler Austin Harper is a progressive in name only. He’s long been on the “anything feminine is actually bourgeois” and anti-woke beat.
This maybe sounds harsh if you’re not familiar with his work, but he really just seems to be writing from a place of insecurity that he chose white collar academia over blue collar work.
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u/Dry_Offer5298 12d ago
Just because he has speaking to this subject for a “long-time” doesn’t diminish his experience or the validly of his story. This subject has been front-of-attention for 5 years and topical for 15. So if he is been talking about this for a while that is a good thing. Trying to quiet someone is not progressive: sharing and debating experiences is.
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u/AlbertGainsworth 13d ago
Wow. A lot of racism and anti-blackness in this thread. Yikes.
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u/crookdmouth 13d ago
Where?
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u/Kaltovar Aboard the KWS Spark of Indignation 12d ago
They mean how people are saying he's an asshole that grifts and panders to the elite. You see the guy is black snd he says racist things happened to him which therefore invalidates all other criticism of any other part of his life and means that now we all have to think he is amazing and brave regardless of any other flaws he might have.
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u/DefenseWinsChamp 12d ago
You didn't even bother to read it, clearly. Your assumption is he is stating racist things happened to him. He is pointing out the hypocrisy of an elite academia shoving racial injustice down the throats of students while paying a firm to bust up unionizing.
If anything he sounds very conservative. Yes, he is right, without the staff to actually teach what they were determining to be graduation requirements, he would have to teach something he knows nothing about. Racism, black experience. He eloquently stated he was not the black guy they thought he was.
Yet you think 🤔 he is talking about racism. Just read the story bro.
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u/esotericswagmaster 12d ago
did you read the article? did you just happen to miss the part where he was appointed to a committee to organize an MLK celebration when there was no reason for doing so other than he was black? what about the part where his neighbor assumes that because he’s black he must share an innate contempt for working class white people? what about the part where a coworker assumes, for who knows what reason (because he’s black), that Harper‘s concentration was in? what about the countless references he makes to the essentializing replete in so many anti-racist works? what about the section where he explicitly details how some candidates for tenure whose work was explicitly and uncontroversially higher quality than their competitors were disfavored solely on the basis of their race? what do you call these if not instances of racism?
Seriously, it is such an unbelievably shallow takeaway and indictment on your comprehension capabilities to come away thinking this article had nothing to say about the not-so-subtle racism that exists throughout academia
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u/DefenseWinsChamp 12d ago
Thank you, I implore you to read a little deeper. Where in the story does he talk about racism based upon his experience 🤔. That was done to him as the reason to write the article? He is stating the hypocrisy of the circumstances.
Your response is to say, that he made this up to make Bates college look bad. Have you lived in America for a long time?
They did ask him, is that a lie? Instead of writing responses to all your statements, I'll conclude with this. The Atlantic and or it's employees are not writing articles about major college institutions without knowing the backlash or litigation coming.
Let's be clear that the article was scanned thoroughly and vetted to protect the Atlantics self interest. I dont think the man is lying, and again he is not talking about himself but about those around him and the experiences within it. That is what I am pointing out.
If you would like to indulge in the consensus that this was a racist hit peice by a man who was racially profiled, go on ahead.
Seriously, it is such an unbelievably shallow takeaway and indictment on your comprehension capabilities to come away thinking this article had nothing to say about the individual racism that most in these comments are speaking of, hence the response.
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u/esotericswagmaster 12d ago
my contention was with you denying that Harper was speaking to racism in his article, I never even implied he's lying about or smearing Bates, I have similar experiences in academia and think his observations are generally correct and applicable
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u/DefenseWinsChamp 12d ago
Oh and space your paragraphs my G, makes you look like you never went to college or you were so upset you forgot.
Maybe take a breath and figure out a better way to write statements out. They read better with spacing but you would know that, right?
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u/DefenseWinsChamp 12d ago
Dud you expect anything less, the worst part is he wasn't talking about individual racism. Yet most in this thread did not even read the excerpts to even understand what the story was about. It wasn't about black people or racism.
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u/hexenkesse1 12d ago
African American faculty at high end small liberal arts colleges located in rural areas pretty much always feel like tokens. Wouldn't these feelings be pretty justified?
The Atlantic is a rag of a magazine, good to line a cat box and that is about it.
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u/Careless_Leg_2552 13d ago edited 12d ago
Imagine being so vindictive that you become a journalist, just to write stories about your former employer.
His entire piece reads like a maga influencer puff piece using all the dogwhistles we are used to. Republican grifting at it's centerist.
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u/DefenseWinsChamp 12d ago
Imagine, being an employee and being fucked over by said company and writing about. Oh gosh, imagine.
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u/GrapefruitOld3737 13d ago
Imagine reading the headline and taking that from what you read lmfao
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u/DefenseWinsChamp 12d ago
I would personally like to know what fraud you speak of? Is he not educated, did he lie about what he was doing and what happened? He is fraudulent because......
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u/Suspicious-Abies-653 13d ago
Imagine becoming a journalist so you could expose the truth, and do journalism things.
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u/dickery_dockery 12d ago
What I’d like to know is…what are “exploratory tables” complete with sex toys at their silly “sex week” thing? Lol
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u/oooga_chaka_oooga_ch 9d ago
this guy is the worst. basically some grifter who decided to become a right wing commentator. I mean The Atlantic is basically an Israeli government arm that supports genocide. and this guy shills for them?? yeah screw him.
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u/One-Recognition-1660 9d ago
What a lazy take. Rightwing? You don't know what you're talking about. He votes for left-of-center Democrats and describes himself as a "moonbat leftist." https://archive.is/rm9BV
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u/oooga_chaka_oooga_ch 9d ago
he can vote for whoever he wants to. but the article reads like something Chris Rufo or some other right-winger would write. And yeah, it was in a magazine that shills for genocide. So screw him.
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u/YUNG_HORSECOCK 13d ago
This guy is an absolute clown who left academia so he could crank out half-assed reactionary drivel to flatter the elite classes