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Trace doesn't mean to, but I see an invitation for conservatives to organize their own Long March. If he means to it is because he has no fear that conservatives have a chance to do this. If conservatives do capture the institutions, produce equivalent cultural output, then I am confident Trace would partly ask for cooperation rather than bark for an imaginary assault. Just based on what I have read from the guy.
If more conservatives became sociologists they would, at worst, complain less about it. At best, they may help to right the ship. There is no cost or effort on behalf of these institutions-- which are responsible for their standing, public facing reputation, and credibility. That's what good stewards inside an institution are meant to facilitate. They are a curator who considers and advocates for the institution. They protect it and enrich it. The institution forever remains larger than themselves and lasts longer than their lives. The mission was changed, the principles were subverted, and our institutions sought different kinds of stewards.
We can bicker over who to blame and why conservatives fell out, were pushed out, or lost interest in the humanities over the past 50 years. We might also consider whether the same conservative professors in 1960 can even be created anymore. This doesn't move us any closer to fixing them. Neither does standing high up in the fort to yell down "bring more men and a longer ladder!" Not when an apparent cannon is nearby and a fuse lit.
I like museums. I like libraries, too. Free children's books are amazing. We're keeping those, though. Personally, I don't care about a hypothetical target of 20-80 or 40-60 ideological split among librarians, anthropologists, or in psychology departments. We are so far beyond parity and so far off the ground that destruction feels better to many. This includes educated people here. I'd like the institutions be slanted in direction that I can easily (dis)miss. My tolerance for the slant is higher than Jim from North Carolina who, while uninterested 30 years ago, now has learned a stronger distaste for concepts like higher education. The value of a university education in these fields is objectively lower than the past. Beyond that, it is going to require change and effort for his son to return to his father's previously uninterested position.
I'm not sure it matters if Trace means to tease conservatives to start their own Long March because he does not consider this possible, or if he really does want to egg more conservatives to bootstrap back into sociology departments. It is defensive rhetoric about preserving stuff he values, aimed at people who also value it, but not at people he believes should value them. If one were to genuinely try, then how does one convince someone who no longer is uninterested, but actively places negative value on your institution, that you are worth preserving?
To do so, we're looking at a project of a generation if we were to tear stuff down and start over. The destruction method, besides being an overstatement of what's occurring, would be quick and painful. Reform, on the other hand, might never happen. There needs to be outreach, invitations, scholarships, hard work, propaganda, genuine accounting, and a renewed interest in stewardship. Those could all be indicators of reform. It is a lot more than anyone offers. If people want change to occur as reform, then begin the reform! Start a new department. Aim it at undergrads from Missouri. Cut the Exceptional Black Lesbian Celebration exhibit from the Smithsonian. That one is easy.
A long view is good, but few are prepared to wait 40 years for enough conservatives to apply, enter, and manage to fix anthropology. Not when we can't be certain what higher education will look like in 20. Not when the cannon is right there, fuse lit.
The institutions should function in a way that they can manage their own reputation and credibility. If Trace wants anthropology saved rather than smashed, then anthropology's movers must move to facilitate this. If the nascent conservative friendly institutions mature and reproduce they may threaten the old regime and spur reform. Trump is doing some stuff, but Trump is gone in a few years. If he sticks to his guns, then 4 years is a good amount of time to change policy and stewardship. I doubt sociology will be saved in that time frame. I doubt it will even try to be saved ever. Museums might redirect. That's plenty of time to find better stewards, realign the mission, create some outreach, and start fixing the brand. 4 years isn't that long though. Easy to wait it out.
I wrote about the trans half, too. I have some questions about trans medicine and research. I'll save it for another time.
The Blue Tribe's Long March succeeded because the Red Tribe was either entirely unaware of it happening or assumed that it's politically irrelevant. It's never going to happen the other way around.
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Let's say you're stuck on a deserted island with a small group and the only one of you who knows anything at all about food preparation is Sylvester Graham. Obviously, most of you are going to hate whatever Sylvester cooks (I'm assuming for the sake of argument that he can't be reasoned out of his position that spices are evil), so what then do you do? You could kill him in his sleep to rid the world of his bland slop, and you would be happy at first, but then you might all starve. Or you could ask him to teach you how to cook and try to figure out yourself which elements are intrinsic to the process and which are just his kooky ideology talking, all the while continuing to eat his terrible food.
For the latter course to be preferable at least two things have to be true: the activity in question must be intrinsically necessary or valuable in some way and the existing gatekeepers must possess some special knowledge that cannot be trivially rederived from first principles in the event that they all drop dead. In the case of Sylvester, perhaps some of you argue that since everyone eats it should be easy enough to figure out how to prepare food on your own, and others argue that only Sylvester knows which plants are safe to eat and which are poisonous and that this is information you can't afford to lose. In the case of the Academy, its defenders would have to make the case that America's economic prosperity is dependent on its activities and that the Trump administration's attacks will harm that capacity in some demonstrable way e.g. capricious defunding of federal grants leads to a mass exodus of scientists to Europe, causing the collapse of the American phamaceutical, chemical, energy, etc. industries because PhD's take years to train and cannot be replaced on a dime.
You’re assuming n this question that no one else can learn to cook. Or t go back to the original question, that no one other than trans-positive progressives can run museums. Libraries, or university departments. Which is not true. What is true is that through the selection process, open conservatives are weeded out, and that the constant DEI shibboleths mean that any conservatives are cowed into silence.
Destroy and rebuild works better simply because the people in power positions in those institutions have no intention of allowing anything to happen. Graham won’t be giving cooking lessons to his enemies. In those cases, it’s simply better to get rid of him and even if at first you burn the roast, you learn quickly, rather than suffer the harm while getting nothing from him.
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First of all: lmao. I did not know the connection from Graham (crackers) to the rest of the cereal craze. Kellogg's Cereal Cure All Dietary Sanitorium was built on the pillars of greatness. Bedeviled spices be damned.
I will think of Graham when I seasonally sully his crackers with delicious, sweetened cream cheese filling and fruit.
Some areas can make the case better than others. Regardless, I don't believe this admin is committed to a root-and-stem method that leads to a mass exodus or a system collapse. It continues towards a (somehow) calculated oversight. The verdict is out for me as to whether they'll do a good (or any sort of lasting) job for the R&D parts. Social sciences, which I was thinking of, is another matter and mostly outside of the administration's reach for what they've shown.
If I'm picking up what you're laying down, then I'll say that "willing, interested, and put in the effort" is intrinsically valuable. Knowledge Producers do produce things I won't, can't, or don't want to. They do so as a privilege that society bestowed on them, sure. Is can't/won't/don't-want-to a skill issue? Also, yes. Some amateur historians do great work without institutional support. I bet there's a number of hobbyist anthropologists I find more interesting than esteemed academics in the field pushing the ideological laden theory of the day. I am no utilitybot. I don't want to kill all men who wear glasses. We can afford to pursue and enjoy things other than maximizing our chances to go to Mars. All men have a desire to know, and that's good. Knowledge Production is good. It can be boring, uninteresting, or stuffy, but it shouldn't be in a position to be scorned generally.
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This is what Skibboleth rejects, "demanding liberals think conservative thoughts for them". It can't be conservatives doing this, after all, because the conservatives have been successfully removed from the positions where they could do so. OK, rejection noted. Bring on the cannon.
Couldn't Trump & al try forcing appointments, as the middle solution?
Trace highlighted the New College of Florida as a potential example. There's ways that's had an impact, but in turn it's increasingly obvious that this will only last just so long as DeSantis is willing to burn a lot of political capital on it. Not Republicans in general, given the recent immigration enforcement mess, but DeSantis specifically.
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If the enemy is unwilling to cooperate why go for a middle solution that will let them try again when Conservatives fall out of power instead of a Final Solution?
As other people have said, I think appointing lots of qualified conservatives to tenured positions is more likely to help the conservative agenda weather another Democratic presidency than simply freezing everything. If you just fire people and lock down buildings, the Dems can just un-lock them and re-hire everyone. Harder to do that if the vacancies are filled.
but even if filled, the progs will do their march again, pushing conservatives out under false pretenses (be it #metoo2, racism accusations, or a new moral panic). And what I think the conversation is about razing the institution instead of freezzing it.
There's no such thing as "razing" an institution in a democracy that swings back and forth. Anything one party can slash by executive order, the other party can resurrect by executive order. It's either an actual bloody coup, or you accept that the best you're going to get is slowing down the other side's reconstruction when they're voted back in. Stopping it altogether is a fool's errand. With that in mind, I think appointments would be 'stickier', on top of being more pro-social.
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