Class clowns: the triumph of inanity over academia
From
Julian@julianlzb87@gmail.com to
alt.buddha.short.fat.guy on Thu Aug 13 13:28:55 2026
From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy
Daniel Defoe observed that plague victims rCynever perceivrCOd that they
were infectedrCO until they discovered the rCytokensrCO on their skin. By that point, rCynothing could follow but certain DeathrCO.
Something similar might be said of BritainrCOs universities. In recent
days, the Jason Arday affair has captured the worldrCOs attention because
of its absurdity. But the humiliation of Cambridge is not an early sign
of infection. It is just a particularly visible bubo.
At one level, ArdayrCOs fall reveals how, even in our most elite
universities, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) dogma has warped intellectual standards to the point of madness. Yet a deeper examination reveals poor Jason to be merely a poster boy for the increasingly fetid
system that is British higher education.
Take the London School of Economics (LSE), which has produced 21 Nobel
Prize winners, was ranked number one in the UK by the Times Good
University Guide last year and is internationally acclaimed for its
teaching on economics, finance and politics. However, all first-year
students must now take LSE100, the universityrCOs rCyflagship interdisciplinary courserCO. Students may choose to study one of three
modest questions: rCyHow can we transform our climate futures?rCO; rCyHow can we control AI?rCO; or rCyHow can we create a fair society?rCO. One student described the course as rCyfamous for being a massive waste of timerCO. What is lost in academic discipline is made up for in ideological indoctrination.
LSE students who opt to study rCyHow can we create a fair society?rCO
discover a course description asserting: rCyAs the expanding billionaire
class increasingly dominates political systems, while gender and
ethnicity gaps widen, the question of how to reach a fairer world is
both urgent and contentious.rCO Even stranger than the courses are the
people who teach them. Among them is Dr Alex Frankovitch, whose PhD
thesis was entitled rCyFucking and Being Fucked: Towards a Sexual Ethics
of Sex on DrugsrCO. One student recalls asking Frankovitch about Warren Buffett, only to discover that they (to use Dr FrankovitchrCOs preferred pronoun) had never heard of him.
Dr Carolina Are is, according to LSErCOs website, a rCydigital criminologistrCa researcher-activist and content creatorrCO who won a Sexual Freedom Award in 2019. She gives lectures on reducing rCyonline harmsrCO and rCyhow we can control AIrCO. When not contemplating manrCOs struggle against machine, she is a pole-dancer and instructor. The website linked to her university profile contains her showreel and invites visitors to rCylearn
a pole dance choreography, pole tricks, floorwork or twerk with me via Zoom!rCO Sadly, Friedrich Hayek, the father of modern free-market
economics, did not offer similar services when he taught at LSE.
Are is entitled to do what she wants in her free time. But what sets
alarm bells ringing about her academic standing is that pole-dancing
seems to be not just an outlet for relaxation, but the focal point of
her research.
One of her most recent papers is called rCyrCLSexy jailrCY and performative transparency: Evaluating shadowbanning notifications and appeals in InstagramrCOs Account Status amongst pole dancing content creatorsrCO. It examines the treatment of pole dancers, rCya demographic greatly affected
by algorithmic precarity in the creator economyrCO, and concludes that InstagramrCOs system has been rCyineffective and discriminatoryrCO. An important finding, no doubt, but is such material what LSE students
signed up for? One student complains of having to be careful not to use
any technical language in submitted work due to Dr ArerCOs lack of expertise.
When asked how students should put together a presentation for the
course, to be assessed for their final grade, Dr Are allegedly answered:
rCyI really hate when a white man gives the presentationrCa ItrCOs just so boring.rCO An LSE spokesperson said Dr Are rCyhas a relevant PhD and is qualified to teach on the courserCO and that she denies making the rCyboringrCO comment.
It would be comforting to dismiss all this as an eccentricity peculiar
to the LSE. But so many universities across the country are wasting
student time in much the same way. At Exeter, you can study for an MA
and PhD in magic and occult science. At Liverpool, you can pay -u6,850 a
year to do an MA in rCyThe Beatles, heritage and culturerCO. At Falmouth, students can undertake a BA in rCyEsports & LivestreamingrCO at the universityrCOs rCyrenowned Games AcademyrCO.
Students of global sustainable development have previously had the
chance to enrol in a rCysurviving the apocalypserCO module at Warwick. Given the growing instability of the world, that may sound potentially useful.
Yet the syllabus suggests projects on rCymushrooms and zombiesrCO and
insists the course has a rCysubtle (?) but unmasked convenor
neurodiversity (ADHD) guiding its set-up and deliveryrCO. IrCOm not sure IrCOm sufficiently neurodiverse to understand what that means.
Students on all these courses are eligible for undergraduate or
postgraduate loans. ItrCOs impossible to know what percentage of that financial support will ever be repaid to the taxpayer.
And itrCOs not as if prudent students can escape the madness by pursuing
more conventional subjects. Those studying English and comparative
literary studies at Warwick, for instance, can pick up 15 credits by
studying a module on rCyQueering the Literary Landscape: LGBTQ+ Literature
and Culture in the Contemporary WorldrCO. Even a maths degree offers no refuge. Students at Edinburgh might be surprised to learn that the
school of mathematics is committed to rCydecolonisingrCO. The faculty claims that rCythe history of mathematics typically centres cisgendered,
straight, white European menrCO and recommends that students should take implicit bias tests.
Madness in the lecture theatre is just the more visible by-product of a
much longer production line. Before students can study zombies, pole
dancing and astrology, academics must first turn these subjects into recognised fields of research.
Earlier this year, a team of five researchers published a paper on rCyDecolonising the sciences: Enhancing the experience of staff and
students from racially minoritised ethnic groups using LEGO-< Serious Play-<rCO. This work was the culmination of a study across three northern English universities in which 50 adult students, researchers, academics
and professional staff were asked to build Lego models representing
their experiences of racial inequality, institutional barriers and decolonisation. Participants constructed walls, ladders and bridges out
of Lego as metaphors for racism. Somehow this childish activity now constitutes academic research.
ThererCOs more. A researcher at Rose Bruford College, in south-east
London, is investigating rCythe lack of career development support for established drag performersrCO. The project is intended to contribute rCyto drag studies as a growing academic field, addressing a current lack of attention about how to sustain this historically working class and
popular performance formrCO.
Meanwhile, at Bath Spa, a senior lecturer in organisational behaviour
and leadership has received a grant to investigate rCycognitive and
emotional costs of identity regulation among ethnically diverse early
career professionalsrCO. The project bemoans that rCyprofessions in the UK often promote values like competence, meritocracy and individual
achievement, reflecting white and western normsrCO.
At least thatrCOs privately funded. The governmentrCOs Department for
Science, Innovation and Technology has just shelled out for a project at
the University of Essex entitled rCyTowards a queer communism: Past,
present and future horizons of liberationrCO.
None of this is new, of course. Frivolous and absurd studies have been
pouring out of higher education institutions since at least the 1970s.
In 2012, Robert J. Wallis of Richmond University published a paper
analysing peoplerCOs experiences jumping on a life-size inflatable
Stonehenge, concluding that rCybouncing on the artwork-cum-plaything
provided an immediate sensory and visceral experience which was
meaningful in relation to the real StonehengerCO. This somehow gazumped
Spinal Tap for Stonehenge silliness.
The difference today is that the rot appears to have spread throughout academia, from top to bottom. Even respected journals arenrCOt safe. I was surprised to find an article in Shakespeare Quarterly rCyrefusing to celebraterCO the quatercentenary of the publication of the 1623
Shakespeare First Folio. The author reasoned that we should not be rCydedicating our energies, at a time of international emergency, to the production of ever more scholarship on a 400-year-old bookrCO. If this is really his view, we have to wonder what he is doing in the English
department of Gonville and Caius, Cambridge.
The author goes on to blame the Folio for climate change, arguing that
Henry and EmilyrCOs Folger Shakespeare Library collection rCywas built from the money he made working for the Standard Oil Company and its later derivatives, which became the progenitors of ExxonMobilrCO. He then asks
us to reflect rCyon the extent to which modern cultural dispensations
float on an often unacknowledged reservoir of fossil fuelsrCO. Drill,
baby, drill.
Professor Jason Scott-Warren, who wrote the article, is the director of
the Cambridge Centre for Material Texts. He supervises graduates on
English and European Renaissance literature and has been arrested
several times for his environmental protest actions.
Sane students complain that, even in more prestigious universities, it
is nigh-on impossible to find a normal supervisor for a dissertation, so preoccupied is everyone with queering, decolonising or sticking
themselves to motorway bridges. ItrCOs a lot easier to condemn Shakespeare
for causing climate change than it is to properly analyse his work.
We will never really know what is going on in lecture theatres and supervisions. The University and College Union has long objected to unannounced lesson observation to assess an academicrCOs competence and
most students donrCOt complain. But in the pointless courses, the insane modules and the absurd journal articles, we can see the symptoms of a
morbid university disease in this country.
Faculties and academics have all broadly been left to their own devices
for decades. The Office for Students doesnrCOt regularly inspect what is happening inside university classes. Even after the introduction of the revised Teaching Excellence Framework, starting next year, no one will
ask if academia is providing any valuable insight or skills.
Student finance has guaranteed cash flow for many institutions which,
judging by the quality of their offering, should have gone under. But
the sickness is terminal for some. This month, after years of
difficulty, the University of Kent completed its merger with Greenwich. GreenwichrCOs vice-chancellor is CEO of the new rCysuper universityrCO rCo a triumph for the former polytechnic.
It would be easy to rue the decline of a formerly prestigious
institution. But a brief glance at how academics at Kent have spent
their time and resources tells a different story. Why did they fund a
study into rCywhat drives sex toy popularityrCO in 2023? Why is one of the senior lecturers in 18th century studies currently supervising a project
on queer readings of fan fiction and the rCyomegaverserCO?
ItrCOs not all decay. Many universities still have healthy organs,
uncorrupted by ideological inanity. Researchers at Kent, for instance,
were responsible for developing the retinal-imaging technology now used
in many hospitals, as well as genome sequencing parrots to understand
beak and feather disease. Yet while scientists slave away, their peers
in KentrCOs Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology are busy
publishing research about rCyracial and economic disparities in coastal
access and engagementrCO.
Academia lacks a proper incentive structure. There is no higher
authority to differentiate the value of curing cancer compared with
producing yet another autoethnography. Trusts like Wellcome, and our own government, are happy to hand out grants for the latter without pausing
to ask what itrCOs all for.
If your liferCOs great passion is the study of bouncy castles, pole
dancing or writing essays on autoethnography, there ought to be nothing
to stop you from working at Toys R Us, a gentlemanrCOs club or the
Guardian. But these people have all chosen to pursue academia. They are attracted to the status it confers. This was the world in which Jason
Arday thrived. His colleagues at Cambridge were carrying out research on
how fairy tales can break the gender binary in playgrounds or writing rCya self-portrait of an artist who teachesrCO. Is it really surprising that
his error-ridden thesis didnrCOt stand out against this backdrop?
Lara Brown
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