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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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If they hold on to that, and the admin holds too and cuts them off, I think it's a win. I loathe current Harvard dominating ideology, but I support the principle that in a free country, which America still one day may become, people are free to hold any ideology, even extremely loathsome, as long as it does not involve infringing other's rights. Taking my money to do stuff that is loathsome to me comes pretty close, in my opinion, to infringing my rights, but if Harvard stops taking tax money (or at least takes them in no other sense than a cab driver transporting a government official takes the tax money) then I'd be ok with such setup. Secretly, in my heart, I'd desire for them to disappear in the flames of Hell, but I realize that the reality can't be so because everybody has their own desires and they are contradictory and the way to have a society is to have some desires moderated by the existence of others. The tricky part is how to ensure they don't just keep their ideology and resume taking my money once Trump is gone.

I would have loved to see that viewpoint diversity report on an Abstract Algebra class.

In the context of the woke academia, "viewpoint diversity" is largely bullshit. The premise of the wokism is that genetical diversity somehow magically generates viewpoint diversity (as long as there aren't too many people of European descent because somehow they are all defective in this way) and that is supremely beneficial. Of course, nobody even bothers to support this claim because this is an axiom, and nobody even bothers to check there's an actual viewpoint diversity because nobody in fact wants it. This requirement just looks like calling the bluff on it - "ah, you love diversity? OK, let's measure you on that". Of course they'd refuse since neither they can measure it nor they ever wanted to.