Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Project Luminas's avatar

Thank you for this review! What role does Mounk give to critical pedagogy? I ask because my grad school education covered many of the theorists Mounk argues by the 2010s helped social justice became popular on campuses. I would add that the driving vehicle of teacher training degrees like my two MAs at UMASS Boston (2012-15) and CSUSB (18-20) was seminars on Freirean critical pedagogy. Freire references these theorists yet made it all sound enobling and liberating. Students believe identity synthesis and oppression narratives second because professors and teachers do first, especially English professors. I’m not for required trainings, because I endured multiple, but this book should be as promoted as Kendi and DiAngelo have been. Erec Smith’s controversial (welcomed by me) Critique of Antiracism in Composition Studies details how disempowering identity synthesis/antiracism is to our writing students. Most in my discipline DO recite DiAngelo/Kendi and volumes of obscure theory that convince them they’re on the ‘right side’ of this identity synthesis history. Remaining in an echo chamber is close-mindedness. And it pervades most liberal and progressive professors in my 3 graduate degrees. It’s why I write about it on my Substack Project Luminas. It’s a suffocating scholarly silo. Sure, appeal to their noblest desires, and I do, but I won’t coddle professors out of their professional peer pressure. If we accept the premise they are reason-driven, then why didn’t they lead the rational charge against these harmful ideas all along?

Expand full comment
David Cearley's avatar

What we're seeing on the left today, is the end result of identity politics, pure Tribalism. The validity and acceptance of grievances are determined not by an ethical code, but by your group's ranking on progressive's victim matrix.

Palestinians rank higher than Jews, therefore Palestinians aren't required to meet the same ethical standards for their actions. Thr slaughter of thousands, rape, pillaging, the beheading of infants, burning people alive, and kidnapping hundreds are all excusable simply because the people committing those atrocities are Palestinians.

Do we really want to return to a tribal world, without equality, and where ethics are entirely relative?

Expand full comment
33 more comments...

No posts