A great contrast to another article currently trending on HN, with no discussion yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10815072 https://news.ycombinator.com

A great contrast to another article currently trending on HN, with no discussion yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10815072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10815072 I read "Gettin’ bodied by Classics: the joys and challenges of public scholarship" (to whose HN discussion I linked above) and thought, wow, cool, who is Hermes Trismegistus and what's the reference? Hey, those articles on exclusion, inclusion, and the ideas of citizenship from antiquity to today sound really interesting. Wow, a Princeton classicist doing something I can understand! I'm going to look at buying his book, this guy is rad. (Halfway through morning coffee, so excuse the shallowness of the thoughts.) I read this OP and started rolling my eyes again. Right, right, kids these days, telling kids to think about their Halloween costumes is so PC (telling kids to think! can't have that! wait, next paragraph he wants kids to think, just about something else). As I continued to read, I realized why we have such different experiences in part: I teach math. I can see that my students did learn something this semester. Now most of them can discuss geometric Brownian motion. That's cool. As the author here says, Many of the engineers who were painted purple during frosh week are now running the institutions where we teach. And they weren’t kidding when they were pissing on our guitars in the quad. It was a promissory note on the future — a future they could feel in their bones belonged to them, not us. I'm one of them -- the heathen, uneducated STEM people! If I call his thoughts about Camus "fluff" he no longer has any defense! Needing to be polite in his response renders him... gosh, impotent? in the face of such trenchant criticism. Hm. Things are different on the STEM side of campus than the classics side. Many on that side say that they're terrified of their students (http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid) but it seems to me that these folks are terrified of discussion -- and the other thing to note is that every single one of them brings up the fear of losing their job over a discussion. It's curious, in one of the only professions in the world with tenure. Why are all these guys afraid of losing their job for challenging the PC SJW orthodoxy or whatever? For professors with tenure, this is a fear entirely unsupported by statistics. The only case even marginally close is when Salaita had a job offer withdrawn because of his views on Israel and Palestine, and I think he was on what would be stereotyped as the PC side at the moment. So, tenure gives golden handcuffs -- you can't move institutions -- but you'll still have your job even if you're a grump. Ok, so why are these profs on the liberal arts side scared? Because of the adjunctivization of higher ed -- no tenure for most (including me). One great discussion here: http://www.vox.com/2015/6/5/8736591/liberal-professor-identity http://www.vox.com/2015/6/5/8736591/liberal-professor-identi... Because of the corporatization of higher ed: more discussion here. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2015/05/college_students_are_not_customers_a_political_shorthand_that_needs_to_die.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2015/05/college... Because the STEM and business profs are "winning," as the OP said. Because he can't see his own relevance anymore, unlike Dan-el Padilla Peralta. Because he can't connect with his students anymore. It's hilarious that these problems are so acutely felt when more American kids than ever feel required to go to college. The audience is bigger than ever. That means the message can't be as niche, but this is still an opportunity. Hate online education? Why, and what are you going to do about it? Hate telling students they should be thoughtful when considering cultural appropriation? Have the cojones to join the discussion in a more substantive way than "overcoddled kids these days!"