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Why I left academia
- yosito 5y agoCan't be cancelled if you cancel yourself.
- FeepingCreature 5y agoOriginal post https://jpehs.co.uk/why-i-left-academia/ https://jpehs.co.uk/why-i-left-academia/
- tomp 5y ago@dang could maybe unflag it and replace it with this link.
- nkurz 5y agoResubmitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28605813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28605813
- dang 5y agoChanged above from https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/royal-holloway-music-professor-quits-cancel-culture-spd08wkfj https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/royal-holloway-music-prof.... Thanks!
- tester34 5y agoI do wonder what people 30, 50 or so years from now will think about those 'crazy times'
- valdiorn 5y agoIt will probably be reminiscent of the Red Scare; a bunch of fearmongering, self censcoring and witch-hunting with nothing useful coming of it.
- xroche 5y ago> Nineteenth-century musical works were the product of an imperial society. The classical musical canon must be decolonised. I can't wait to decolonize mathematics, physics, etc. and banish those arbitrary colonialists laws such as the law of gravitation, thermodynamics etc.
- Veen 5y agoIt's been underway for some time: https://theconversation.com/yes-mathematics-can-be-decolonised-heres-how-to-begin-65963 https://theconversation.com/yes-mathematics-can-be-decolonis...
- JoachimS 5y agoThat was imho a good article. As far as I understood, it did not argue that math should be thrown out and replaced because it was created, discovered by white men. It did state that students need to study math as a subject itself.
- tomp 5y agoI skimmed over it, and found it completely devoid of any reasonable content. The most actionable suggestion in the article was that students should use math to critically analyse society, which isn't really the subject of a mathematical education, but rather applied math / economics. Personally, I think a much better (personally and socially useful) field to apply / practice math is engineering, physics, or computing / data science. But in any case, that is a minor part of math education, IME.
- tigerlily 5y agoLord that article is giant cascading non sequitur.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mial 5y agoThis submission's title is editorialized. The politically charged term "cancel culture" is mentioned nowhere in the article. Edit: sorry, I confused the original blog post of the professor with the news article.
- oytis 5y agoDo I understand it right that he quit because he thinks schools _might_ cancel Beethoven and Wagner according to his interpretation of antiracism?
- Veen 5y agoMore that he finds musicology's dominant ideological framework and its consequences incompatible with what he considers the primary virtues of scholarship. He explains further in a blog article [0]: > But in recent years the dogmatic mode of thinking, in which uncritical commitments are enforced by mechanisms involving public humiliation, no-platforming, and attempts to have scholars fired, has become to seem like it has become endemic. Now, too many humanities scholars move in lock step with the general ideology of our time, dogmatically echoing the opinions of politicians, the media, and business [0]: https://jpehs.co.uk/why-i-left-academia/ https://jpehs.co.uk/why-i-left-academia/
- oytis 5y ago> An outcome of the second, critical statement could be that music departments continue to teach music by Beethoven, Wagner, and co., and use that music – whose quiddity as music is analysed in order to allow it to feed into the general framework – to offer intellectually critical insights into the social, political, economic, legal, and other structures of the world in which it was written, and later canonized, and now consumed by the musical public My impression is that is exactly what postcolonial approach to musicology does. Maybe it's getting worse as humanities are being underfunded in general.
- pvg 5y ago'explains' is overstating it a little given that he offers no actual evidence of a 'dominant ideological framework' - he literally makes up the statement he chooses to oppose.
- Veen 5y agoIt's a blog article explaining his decision to leave his job. It's not a news report or academic paper. He outlines his experience as he sees it. You can take him at his word or reject it, it's up to you. Perhaps you know more about the state of musicological scholarship and the debates within that community than he does.
- sodality2 5y ago>But in recent years the dogmatic mode of thinking, in which uncritical commitments are enforced by mechanisms involving public humiliation, no-platforming, and attempts to have scholars fired, has become to seem like it has become endemic. Now, too many humanities scholars move in lock step with the general ideology of our time, dogmatically echoing the opinions of politicians, the media, and business. It's more than cancel culture, per title, though. It seems like the problem is our current morality is being considered to always be the best, the golden standard from which history must be judged by. Which is, of course, ridiculous, but I think it's deeper than that. I think no one stops to think about what WE will be judged by in the future. No one likes to think they'll be our generation's slave owners, and in general, no one believes they do such atrocities current-day. Yet, we all rely on nearly slave labor, when we buy items from sweatshops (though this is "hard to avoid"). Or, we all economically support quasi-terrorist regimes, like Russia and China. Sure, we can't judge each other for that now. But can we do the same in 100 years? 250? To be clear cancel culture over inconsequential stuff (like tweeting a tasteless joke when you were 14) is absolutely ridiculous. It matters the severity, context, and the time scale. Is it "cancel culture" to fire an employee for posting Confederate flags on their Facebook? What about a Nazi flag? Where's the distinction?
- soco 5y agoI think the relativism is killing all sides' arguments. Everybody starts from a probably sensible argument, but then takes it to extremes with slippery slopes and strawmen until the start gets diluted or even lost, so that's how we get both neonazis and cancel culture and many other denominations at the same time which all claim being right. Was the initial statement right? Possibly, but that one is long gone and all the reaction and measures are a consequence of the later additions (aka slippery slopes and strawmen).
- linspace 5y ago> Is it "cancel culture" to fire an employee for posting Confederate flags on their Facebook? What about a Nazi flag? Where's the distinction? Yes and yes, and such firing would be considered illegal in a lot of places. It would be different if the employee made inappropriate comments at work or harassed other people, but you shouldn't go policing other's people out of work life. Evaluate employees by their job, not to protect the nazis, but to be fair to people irrespective of their gender or their race.
- addicted 5y agoHe left academia because he created a statement, that is not based on any actual music department’s statement, declared it dogmatic, and therefore CANCEL CULTURE oh no I must leave. The irony, of course, is that his blog post starts with talking about how he was an outsider, etc. If it wasn’t for the “cancel culture” of the past, that canceled people and rules that insisted that academia and other higher pursuits must only be available to people of a certain class, he himself would not have been able to ever enter academia. There may be elements of cancel culture that are bad. It may also be the worst thing in the history of this planet. But nothing in this individual’s blog post and reasoning suggests that’s the case.
- yardie 5y ago“ Richard Wagner’s racism and antisemitism have led some to argue that his music should not be taught” Who is some? Who is making this argument? Why do reporters use this nebulous nobody/everybody instead of directly stating who makes these kinds of statements.
- kypro 5y agoReporters do this all the time, presumably because it allows them to say what they want to say without having to prove anything.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- trentnix 5y agoBecause it allows them to give undeserved weight to dubious sources or inject their own opinion or the opinions of their friends or colleagues without disclosure or justification.
- drcongo 5y agoThe Times is a Murdoch rag, the modus operandi is start with the outrage you want to create and then find a story to shoehorn in there.
- heywherelogingo 5y agoIt's journalism, not an academic paper; it's common knowledge; it's to be expected.
- tpoacher 5y agoMy typical approach to such unfalsifiable anecdotes is to counter them with an equally unfalsifiable anecdote, such as: "Ah yes, I remember the person who argued this. It was a right wing nationalist who went on to kill several people, right?"
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Why do reporters use this nebulous nobody/everybody instead of directly stating who makes these kinds of statements. Media does it: and it is strong editorial policy/media market preference, because it allows a stronger, more emotionally engaging narrative to be crafted without literal untruth. People associate “engagement” with new/social media, but old media has been about it for centuries, just with less precise analytics.
- gbanfalvi 5y agoA generous reading makes me think that his music department is just widening their program to incorporate more non-western content. They asked him to change his course material in a way he doesn't like. If that's the case, it's something many arts departments around the world have been doing in the last few years. You can call it a product of "wokeness", but it's also a product of globalisation. > He said that music departments could stop teaching Beethoven and Wagner because their compositions were produced during a time of empire “in the frankly insane belief that doing so will somehow materially improve current living conditions for the economically, socially, sexually, religiously, or racially underprivileged”. They're never going to stop teaching Beethoven and Wagner and it sincerely sounds like he's misunderstanding the goals with most music departments' changes. On the other hand, there _are_ genuine issues with how music theory and history are taught today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA He's a professor of music history and theory. He edits a book series called "Music in Context". He's written about homosexuality in the world of opera. He doesn't seem like at outright conservative reactionary and I'd really like to understand what his grievances with his department are.
- emptyfile 5y agoSorry, I tried reading the original blog post but as non-english speaker I just have no idea what's it about. "Decolonization". Sorry, don't know what it is, or what cancel culture has with classical music. I have no clue where from his "decolonization" quotes are coming from. Is that supposed to be the general attitude towards music in UK universities? > Nineteenth-century musical works were the product of an imperial society. The classical musical canon must be decolonised. This is what you'll find written in Introduction to Music textbook at most UK unis? No? What is it then? I realize the author is writing his blog for his own audience. But this story of some hinted-at, vast struggle between him and cancel-culture in the field of musicology is totally unknown to me.
- drcongo 5y agoI came away feeling that this vast struggle is unknown to anyone but the author. He's made up a straw man to be mad at, and then cancelled himself like an hero.
- JanneVee 5y agoPerhaps or there is something else brewing behind the scenes. https://quillette.com/2021/06/27/podcast-155-heather-mac-donald-on-the-juilliard-schools-strange-anti-racist-meltdown/ https://quillette.com/2021/06/27/podcast-155-heather-mac-don... we might never know what is really happening.
- heywherelogingo 5y agoI know how you feel, your comment is unknown to me.
- neonnoodle 5y agoThis professor almost comes close to getting the actual point of what he dismisses as “cancel culture,” then veers off. From his essay: > Consider the following statement, which fairly well articulates an increasingly common view in musicology. Nineteenth-century musical works were the product of an imperial society. The classical musical canon must be decolonised. The statement, and the attitude that goes with it, are dogmatic by virtue of form, not content. It does not matter that the statement in the first sentence is one that I can assent to. It becomes dogmatic by virtue of the second sentence, which admits of no doubt, no criticism, no challenge. A critical statement – one that better represents the ideal of scholarship, and of undergraduate and postgraduate education, in my view – would read something more like the following. Nineteenth-century musical works were written during the period of empire, and they carry that history within them. But as well as being part of the imperial world in which they appeared, they are also musical works. As with a protest song written at the time of the Vietnam war (which fell during the US’s imperial epoch), a piece of classical music is simultaneously imbued with the history of its own time and also minimally separated from it as a partially autonomous object. As with a protest song, there therefore exists the possibility that it could offer a form of critique of existing social conditions. There is also the possibility that works of this kind will affirm the existing social conditions. What actually transpires in the music itself is therefore determinative of the question whether we can judge it to be for or against anything in particular. An outcome of the first, dogmatic statement could be that music departments stop teaching music by Beethoven, Wagner, and co., in the (frankly insane) belief that doing so will somehow materially improve current living conditions for the economically, socially, sexually, religiously, or racially underprivileged. > (end of quote) What he describes as the correct way of interpreting the history of music IS IN FACT WHAT “DECOLONIZING” THE CURRICULUM WOULD INVOLVE. The broad framework means looking beyond the canonization of great composers into the social and political role they inhabited, and being willing to give a hard look to people once simply beatified as “greats.” It doesn’t mean NOT teaching Beethoven, and nowhere can he find an actual example of a curriculum “canceling” Beethoven except in his thought experiment. I have noticed that people who complain about “critical race theory,” etc. seem not to recognize that re-examining history and culture is about adding to the sum total of human knowledge, not subtracting—restoring the perspectives of people whose lives and histories were purposefully left out of the historical record for centuries, and trying to get a more accurate view as a result.
- user-the-name 5y ago> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
- ceejayoz 5y agoThe same guidelines say to flag off-topic stuff instead of whining in the comments about it.
- true_religion 5y agoBeing from a former colony myself, I understand the virtue in decolonization of culture. Usually when that term is used, it means that we want to reinterpret history through the view of our native culture and not merely the notes and proclamations of our colonial masters at the time. For example, it can be used to focus on the tribal conflict that lead to X city being conquered, rather than simply mentioning how important it was for Britain to get one over on France. However, if you are talking about European music in Europe, and are sitting in a European university then what can you decolonize? The culture is the colonial power, if you remove the imperialism of it… aren’t you left with next to nothing?
- heywherelogingo 5y agoExactly. Eg South Africa renamed most (all?) road names to native names - is the UK going to change all British road names to African names because colonialism?
- true_religion 5y agoThe UK is a great example because for most of the islands history, some foreign power had seized land as part of an imperial conquest. First the Romans. Then the French and the Danes. Then finally, then “United Kingdom” was created via bloody conquest of a single tribal body over other tribes that spoke different languages and had different religions. Had the Spanish Armada not failed, the UK would likely have become a colony yet again. When I went to school, we were taught the Brits were benign and flawless. Imagine my surprise to learn that English still carries remnants of Britain’s history as a colonial backwater (e.g. cow vs beef).
- pg_1234 5y agoIf ZA makes all road names African, the UK should make all road names English.
- kbad1000 5y agoWhat would you say about Winston Churchill being celebrated as a hero while, Indians who are aware of the atrocities committed by him well call him a monster and an equivalent of Hitler? Shouldn't the British children be taught about the atrocities committed by British because, if you talk to general British public, they think that the British Raj was benevolent & a very good thing happened to the Indian subcontinent.