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During the last election, the cry of \u201cRACIST,\u201d the great weapon of the Left for decades, was finally blunted after being bashed into the head of everyone the Left considers an enemy\u2026basically half the country had this weapon smashed into their heads for voting for Trump, so it\u2019s no small wonder the weapon doesn\u2019t work as well as it used to.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re casting about for a new weapon, and one of the big candidates is the cry of \u201cPRIVILEGE.\u201d This is, of course, a code word for RACIST, and can be used almost interchangeably. Much like with racism, almost everything can be blamed on privilege, and it\u2019s already being used excessively:<\/p>\n
A Purdue University engineering professor recently lamented the emphasis on academic “rigor,” calling it a \u201cdirty deed\u201d that upholds \u201cwhite male heterosexual privilege.\u201d<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Academic rigor is not merely making a claim, but backing up that claim with facts and coherent arguments. For what it\u2019s worth, a mathematically rigorous argument generally isn\u2019t open to debate–pretty much by definition, if a mathematical assertion is open to debate, it\u2019s not rigorous. Other fields aren\u2019t so objective, and so a part of more qualitative arguments is debating and discussing the assertions.<\/p>\n I\u2019d noticed long ago that certain fields (Hi African Studies!) generally don\u2019t do debate and discussion. Any challenge to an assertion made there is either shouted down, responded to with a cry of RACISM, or both.<\/p>\n I\u2019m inclined to believe academic rigor is a good thing, and the proper way to generate new, valid, knowledge. Lack of rigor, lack of discussion, is only good for spreading ideology. At best.<\/p>\n The one making this claim about the \u201cprivilege\u201d of academic rigor heads an Engineering department. How could an engineering professor argue that rigor is unimportant? Buildings and bridges don\u2019t remain standing because you yell at them or threaten to call them RACIST, after all.<\/p>\n Defining rigor as \u201cthe aspirational quality academics apply to disciplinary standards of quality,\u201d Riley asserts that \u201crigor is used to maintain disciplinary boundaries, with exclusionary implications for marginalized groups and marginalized ways of knowing.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Ok, so let\u2019s go with this definition of rigor. When was quality determined to be a bad thing? When was rigor used to maintain boundaries? These seem natural questions to ask, but no argument is provided to answer them.<\/p>\n \u201cWays of knowing\u201d? What? Gravity is pretty hard rule not to follow\u2026it\u2019s not \u201cwhite\u201d to obey and understand the rules of gravity, and I\u2019m unaware of alternative \u201cways of knowing\u201d how to adhere to those gravity laws. Similarly, there are many broad rules of engineering (eg, Newton\u2019s Laws) where there only is one way of knowing the facts of how reality works. I assure the gentle reader that great minds have considered getting around those laws, because doing so would be a tremendous advancement in human knowledge.<\/p>\n But you have to actually know the laws before you can try to work around them. It\u2019s not a white thing (I\u2019ll never understand why the nuts making these sorts of claims just ignore China), nor is it a male thing (the professor making these claims identifies as female, which may or not be the same thing as actually being female anymore).<\/p>\n Riley also argues that academic rigor can be used to exclude women and minorities, saying, \u201cRigor may be a defining tool, revealing how structural forces of power and privilege operate to exclude men of color and women, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, first-generation and low-income students, and non-traditionally aged students.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Can someone get this person a mirror? She was head of the Department of Engineering at Purdue for over a decade. And yet she\u2019s arguing the system kept her from rising to the top. I have to wonder a bit about what sort of engineer she is:<\/a><\/p>\n Riley is the author of\u2026Engineering and Social Justice\u2026Riley earned\u2026a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in Engineering and Public Policy.<\/em><\/p>\n The reality is she\u2019s a Social Justice Warrior with an Administration degree, and she\u2019s head of a school of Engineering Education\u2026not exactly a school of Engineering.<\/p>\n Let that sink in: this department is not being run by an engineer. She got a Ph.D. in Administration, not engineering.<\/p>\n To fight this, Riley calls for engineering programs to \u201cdo away with\u201d the notion of academic rigor completely, saying, \u201cThis is not about reinventing rigor for everyone, it is about doing away with the concept altogether so we can welcome other ways of knowing. Other ways of being\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n Is anybody else a bit worried about driving over a bridge built by engineers from this school? Would Riley really want her children on such a bridge? I suspect her tolerance for \u201cother ways of knowing\u201d would diminish markedly if her or her children\u2019s life hung in the balance. Gravity, schmavity, right?<\/p>\n I\u2019m really hard pressed to believe she actually believes these things she\u2019s saying.<\/p>\n Campus Reform reached out to Riley multiple times for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.<\/em><\/p>\n Well, it is clear from the above she does believe her own work should not be open to debate, or even comment, but luckily the article I\u2019m quoting from has a few comments from readers, uniformly dismissive of this \u201cother ways of knowing\u201d nonsense.<\/p>\n At some point companies will not recruit Purdue. This happened at Stanford. If an engineering product is defective people die\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n The above comment shows I\u2019m not alone in thinking that engineering is one of the many things in the modern world which should be pursued rigorously. Another comment asks the question I\u2019ve been dancing around:<\/p>\n Wow I thought that engineering was about designing and building things , all this time it\u2019s been another white haven, but why are there so many Asian and Indian engineers? More importantly why does this woman have a job?<\/p>\n When SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) take over a campus, they put themselves in \u201cleadership\u201d positions, from which they can enforce their lunacy. I can\u2019t help but suspect that\u2019s what happened here. From her position as department head, you can bet she pressures her underlings to follow her SJW ideals\u2026or else. You can also bet she makes certain that all future hires are SJWs only.<\/p>\n Eventually, you\u2019ll have a whole department of people with pseudo-engineering degrees, yet allegedly teaching engineers. I\u2019ve seen it happen in math, so I can easily conceive it happening elsewhere.<\/p>\n In any event, Purdue has just nuked the credibility of their engineering degrees.<\/p>\n www.professorconfess.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"