‘Antiracism’ At LSU

Being indoctrinated in 'critical race theory' is vital. Learning the underpinnings of our civilisation is not. Academia has become the enemy! 

From The American Conservative

By Rod Dreher

The racist “antiracist” madness has now come home to my alma mater, Louisiana State University. Before we go further, I should point out that this is the flagship public university in a very red state governed by a Republican legislature and a conservative Democratic governor.

The LSU Faculty Senate has a proposal before it — one that a source within the university tells me is fully expected to pass. It reads, in part:

 

Here’s the core of the proposal:

First Panel, TAC's 7th Annual Foreign Policy Conference What Does 2020 Mean For Foreign Policy

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AAAS2000 (African & African American Studies) would be a course in which students are indoctrinated in “antiracist” ideology, Critical Race Theory, and the like. From the description here, it is not mere history; it is highly ideologized history (“intersecting oppression”). And if this passes the LSU Faculty Senate, taking this course in left-wing racialism would be a requirement of graduating from LSU. Just imagine how difficult it would be for any student to challenge the professor in this class. To do so would cause one to out oneself as a racist, in the eyes of these ideologues. Dissenters will be intimidated into silence.

One of those dissenters works for the university, and reached out to me to say:

This proposal comes from faculty members affiliated with AAAS [African & African American Studies], but what is interesting is that the Black Student Athletes Association has provided the impetus for this proposal. This is just great: student athletes at LSU dictating academic requirements and curriculum for the entire university, with the complicity of LSU faculty who would like to impose a singular racial world view on all students enrolled in the university.

Here are the required courses all LSU undergraduates must take for their degrees. A single course counts for “three hours”; ergo, six hours of English composition means two classes, each stretching over a semester:

Add to that three hours of Grievance Studies, if the Faculty Senate proposal passes. So what’s going to go from the list above to make room for the mandatory Grievance Studies class? LSU requires no classes in Greek philosophy and thought, none in literature, none in history, none in philosophy, or in any of the foundations of a traditional Western education. You may take these courses to fulfill general requirements above, but you are not required to do so. But if this proposal passes the Faculty Senate, the university will have declared that it is more important for LSU graduates to have had instruction in “intersectional oppression” than Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Milton, Locke, or any of the other greats.

What does that tell you about the future of the university?

I am also told that LSU has imposed discriminatory guidelines for faculty hiring. Academic and professional merit and accomplishment? That’s on the back burner. Race is what matters. Don’t believe me? Here is a link to the Faculty Hiring guidebook that LSU’s office of Academic Affairs sent to its professors. 

Here are some excerpts. If, every time you see the word “Diversity Advocate” below, you replace it with “Commissar,” you will better understand what’s going on here:

More:

This is an astonishing abdication of academic integrity and responsibility, in favor of an ideology of racial preference. There should be lawsuits. How is it legal that race can be used to such an extent in determining hiring policies and curriculum requirements at a public university?

Remember me telling you that Louisiana is a very red state? Where is the legislature? Would the majority of taxpayers of the state of Louisiana — of which I am one — stand for this if they knew it was happening? I am a 1989 LSU graduate, and have my oldest child at LSU now as an undergraduate. I would like to consider sending one or both of my other children to LSU when the time comes. Will I be paying to have my children radicalized by a mandatory class on Critical Race Theory at a public university (or have my children compelled to learn ketman, the art of lying to power-holders to avoid getting in trouble)? Can I have confidence in the quality of instruction if the university is so fanatical about hiring on the basis of race? Note that LSU requires future hires to prove their “commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion” before hiring. I think about the best professors I had at LSU in the 1980s, and while I would bet that they were quite liberal politically, what if they weren’t? What if they were just really good at their jobs, and standouts in their fields, but could not or would not, on principle, demonstrate loyalty to the politicized criteria of “diversity, equity, and inclusion”? Who cares what they think privately? Can they teach well? Are they fair to all students? Do they produce quality research?

I have seen in my own profession (journalism) what happens when administrative elites prioritize hiring on the basis of race. It causes a decrease in the quality of the collective work, and resentment among people who are taking up the slack, and/or who were denied the opportunity to be fairly considered for those jobs, because they were the wrong race, or the wrong sex. But you can’t say anything about it, because to notice this publicly sets you out as a bigot. When a professional’s identity or loyalty to an ideology — left or right — matters as much or more than their competence in their field, then the work they do cannot help but decline.

Back to LSU. Because of the Covid crisis, LSU faces a $54.6 million budget shortfall this year. There will be no pay raises for faculty. But according to the LSU Roadmap To Diversity, a university statement of policy, the university remains committed increasing the diversity bureaucracy:

LSU’s Chief Diversity Officer makes $185,477 per year, according to the 2019 LSU Operating Budget.

In 2016, the then-president of LSU testified that the decade of budget cutting had cost the university around 500 faculty members. In 2018, the same president (who has since moved on) testified that LSU is “on the bottom” in terms of state spending per student. This is not the fault of the university, but of the state government. What do I know, I’m just a Louisiana taxpayer and father of an LSU student, but it would seem that after over ten years of cutting the university to the bone, that recruiting and holding on to the very best professors ought to be the most important goal of the state’s No. 1 public university. In my view, it is generally immoral to hire people based on their race or sex. But it is also absurd and infuriating for a university that is desperate to uphold its standards while the state is starving it to death to declare that it is going to surrender to this social-engineering fantasy that has captured other universities.

If well-endowed private universities want to do this to themselves, that’s their business. But LSU has to answer to the people of the state of Louisiana. How can the university justify racialist hiring, and imposing what sounds like a catechism in racial ideology on its undergraduates, especially given the many years of budget duress?  If the university were to impose a Commissar for guaranteeing 100 Percent Americanism to watch over the faculty hiring process, faculty would revolt — and they should!

Why should Louisiana taxpayers subsidize the inculcation into undergraduates an ideology that trains them to think that giving someone a leg up in hiring because of the color of their skin, or their sex, or their sexual orientation, or gender identity, is morally right? Why are we paying for the state’s flagship university to undermine the principle of fairness and non-discrimination, and to train young people to interpret the world in terms of power and oppression? If a state university can get away with this in a deep red state with a Republican-controlled legislature, then there’s no stopping the Social Justice Warrior ideologues anywhere.

Last word: this is the kind of thing that bugs me about us conservatives. We stay focused on performative nonsense (“Truuuuuump! He fights!”) that satisfies some emotionally, but changes nothing. Meanwhile, the Left marches through the institutions, and sets itself up to capture the minds of the next generation.