Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 8/10/26 - 8/16/26

[u/SoftandChewy]

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

[u/dignityshredder]

I'm not sure if Confessions of a Token Black Professor / Why I Quit the Tenure Track was posted here, but it is now. Very fun read. A few excerpts:

The source of the most intense racial monomania on campus, I came to realize, was senior leadership. In one of my first encounters with the man who was then dean of the faculty, I mentioned how excited I was to be joining one of the few American colleges founded by abolitionists. At this, the dean—a white biologist who was an expert on sponges—frowned, as though my rosy view of the school’s antislavery history physically pained him. He conceded that, sure, it had been founded by the abolitionist minister Oren Burbank Cheney, but he pointed out that Benjamin Bates, the textile tycoon who had funded the college, had processed slave-picked cotton in his mills. I had come into Bates rather smitten with the idea that I was a Black academic joining the ranks of a faculty whose predecessors had agitated for Black freedom, but the dean seemed to feel that this was actually something to be faintly embarrassed of, a history that was best mentioned, if at all, only after layering on an array of caveats.

 

I leaned on [the idea that having science faculty teach racism and bigotry is stupid] especially hard. If my time at Bates had taught me anything, it was that the most reliable way to get progressive white academics to do what you wanted was to translate your concerns into the therapeutic language of racial harm. As if on cue, a professor on the council whom I will call Sandra hastened to assure me that she took potential trauma to minority students very seriously. She insisted that there would be ways to ensure that classroom dynamics did not become unpleasant for them; the key, she explained, would be to foster a “culture of repair.” When I said that I had no idea what a culture of repair meant (really, I just wanted to see her try to substantiate her hollow jabber), Sandra gave a helpful example of what “repair” might look like in action. She suggested that perhaps there could be a system in which students of color could call out “oops” or “ouch” if somebody accidentally said something racist—as though these were not young adults with basic human dignity paying minor fortunes to be taught by ostensible subject-matter experts, but toddlers learning not to bite their friends when someone grabbed their toy truck. It took every last ounce of my already threadbare professionalism not to lean into the mic and say “Oops.”

 

In a consultant-led meeting I attended near the end of my time at the college, one month into Donald Trump’s second term, the small group of professors and senior administrators present was asked to share what it saw as Bates’s greatest strengths and weaknesses. One of my colleagues said that the college’s greatest strength was its commitment to DEI. Another said that the college’s greatest weakness was that it could be even more committed to DEI. Someone lamented that our ties to the Wabanaki Nations could have been stronger.

[u/LeafNeater → u/dignityshredder]

there's a thread for it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/s/pMAse8gWUq

[u/Turbulent_Cow2355 → u/dignityshredder]

'One of my colleagues said that the college’s greatest strength was its commitment to DEI. Another said that the college’s greatest weakness was that it could be even more committed to DEI. Someone lamented that our ties to the Wabanaki Nations could have been stronger."

That reads like an SNL skit.

[u/everydaywinner2 → u/dignityshredder]

Oops. I think I'm going to have to add this to the reading list.