Nick Mark on Katherine Kersten
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Kersten seems to claim that to "adopt a reflexive skepticism about America's role in the world" is to be brainwashed by the political left. So we'd be balanced and open-minded to adopt a reflexive credulity? How would that further anyone's intellectual development? "[T]o analyze American society through the lens of race, class and gender," it seems, is to kowtow to lefty ideologies. No question of what conclusion your analysis arrives at . simply accepting that those aspects of society are important and informative analytical elements is indicative of "ideological imbalance." Please. Kersten is not, as she claims to be, arguing for "unrestricted critical investigation," of which skepticism is a necessary part. Rather, she seems to want an academy that serves right-wing instead of left-wing ideologies, and she's using intellectually dishonest tactics to argue for it. It's the same method that worked so well to create the "liberal media bias" myth, and it's crap.
Hopefully the Star Tribune will publish his piece.
Speaking of which, there was a hilarious letter to the editor today about Kersten's piece. I include it below because of the Strib's link-breaking policies.
I had to laugh out loud when I read the Nov. 22 letter from a reader asking, "If most professors who have been lecturing for years really do have the power to indoctrinate students with a leftist ideology, then where did all the Republican voters on Nov. 5 come from?"
The most obvious answer? The voters clearly were not very well-educated. Some of us have been saying that about Republicans for years.
-- Kirsten Cackoski, Minneapolis.