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> Karl Steel, an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, called the trio’s work "simply n
by Sniffnoy 8y ago
> Karl Steel, an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, called the trio’s work "simply not rigorous research" and described three objections to it. It is too narrow in disciplinary scope, he said. It focuses on exposing weaknesses in gender and ethnic studies, conspicuously ideological fields, when that effort would be better spent looking at more-substantive problems like the replication crisis in psychology, or unfounded scholarly claims in cold fusion or laissez-faire economics.
Yeah... that's the point! The whole point here is that you have these "conspicuously ideological" fields or subfields, which are not doing real scholarship, not interested in truth, but which rather are pushing a specific position and attempting to label as evil and shout down anyone who disagrees; and yet they're able to get away with claiming that they're doing real work, that this is what real scholarship is, and it's seriously damaging, especially (as the hoaxers note) to anyone who does want to do real truth-seeking work in these areas.
Sure, to those of us who realize what's going on, more hardly needs to be said. But lots of people don't, and the "grievance scholars" are slowly convincing the rest of academia that real scholarship consists not of neutral methods and honest argument, but agreeing with the grievance scholars in all things, and finding ways to inject it whether it's relevant or not. The point of this hoax is to make obvious what already should be.
To put it another way -- "grievance studies" is, as Dr. Steel says, an easy epistemological target. But it's a hard social target. It's built up a layer of protection around itself consisting not of truth but of social pressure and demands to conform or be ostracized. No claim, true or false, should be so protected, and that shield needs to be shattered. It's only an "easy target" in the imaginary world where people are rational and such transparent bullshit doesn't work. But in reality, it does, which is why there's a need to puncture it.
- harryh 8y agoAlso "not rigorous research" != "effort would be better spent looking at more-substantive problems." Rigor and importance are orthogonal concepts. Someone could do research of great rigor on a completely unimportant problem and people do bad research all the time on important ones.
- tomlock 8y ago> and the "grievance scholars" are slowly convincing the rest of academia that real scholarship consists not of neutral methods and honest argument, but agreeing with the grievance scholars in all things, and finding ways to inject it whether it's relevant or not. What degrees or disciplines would you characterise as "grievance scholars", and what evidence do you have that suggests the influence those disciplines have over scholarship is increasing? The amount of degrees awarded in women's studies over the last 10 years has significantly dropped.
- Sniffnoy 8y agoSo, first off, "grievance studies" isn't my term. But as for evidence... well, I don't have statistics; it's more of a "look around you" thing. It's not clear to me why I would care about the number of degrees awarded in women's studies; that doesn't at all seem a reliable proxy for what I do care about, i.e., to what extent the academy is becoming less free and more ideological.
- tomlock 8y agoSo, is it fair for me to say that your criticism of "grievance studies", a criticism of its unscientific and fallible nature, is anecdotal?
- Sniffnoy 8y ago...yes? Although, perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but it seems to me that you've entirely mistaken what my complaint is; as best as I can tell you're trying to imply that my complaint is hypocritical by lacking large-scale statistics, when I'm not complaining about a lack of large-scale statistics at all, but rather such things as argument from consequences, lack of freedom of argument, etc.
- tomlock 8y agoBut if your argument kind of hinges on the idea that these disciplines axiomatically believe in their righteousness due to their lack of scientific data, wouldn't it be quite strange to say you believe they're making scholarship more ideological, without the data to back that axiom up?
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- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago>> The whole point here is that you have these "conspicuously ideological" fields or subfields, which are not doing real scholarship, not interested in truth, but which rather are pushing a specific position and attempting to label as evil and shout down anyone who disagrees; Yeah, look- it's not that simple. In academia, we have to allow discussion and debate to be carried out freely, but obviously it doesn't make sense to dictate the subject of a debate and call it "free"! And the only people who are qualified to choose the subject of the debate are academics themselves- because nobody else has the expertise to make that decision. So if academics choose to debate identity politics and "Theory"- well, that's what they get to debate. If the debate is done in a rotten manner that is not conducive to good scholarship, now that's another matter, but if the question is if those fields should exist, the answer is yes, and the reason is that they do (it's a tautology, OK?). It's a feature, not a bug. It's a bit like in a democracy you must allow everyone their political opinion, even those people who are against democracy itself? In academia, we must allow all academics the ability to investigate the subjects of their interest, else we don't have academia, we just have a closed club of people who agree with each other- so, just like the fields targeted by the hoax.
- Sniffnoy 8y agoHuh? I'm not claiming that these topics should be off-limits; I'm saying that the actual existing departments presently studying them are rotten. In short I'm not sure we're disagreeing here. Edit: If you like, you can replace my use of "fields and subfields" above with "departments and segments of such". That's probably fairer in other ways, too.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y agoYeah, OK, maybe I misread your comment.