Why are people saying this is brave? Caplan simply went with the tide in 2020, and he's going with the tide now. The anti woke momentum and voice is dramatically larger than the woke one now.
Still losing the battle though. Sadly, this stuff is as strong as ever in academia. The left always wins, three steps forward and (perhaps) one step backward, but still marches on. We are fighting a rear guard action.
Bryan did a similar thing with Ukraine. At the start of the war (when a peace deal was on the table) he rebuked Hanania for mimizing the threat of Putler and said that he can’t be appeased.
Now he says that in fact appeasement arguements aren’t that big a deal and we should prefer a bad peace if that’s all we can get.
All that changed is the level of moral panic he would have to put up with, but it’s too late for Ukraine.
This type of thinking from GMU and other universities is only possible because the terms Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion all have two different meanings.
One meaning (the “Be Nice” part) is used in public debates, media, public relations for organizations, and damage control after public scandals
The hidden meaning is implemented by bureaucracy behind closed doors.
One can see this in Mark Cuban saying that the easiest way to eliminate DEI pushback is to search and delete “equality of outcome”, as if that wasn’t the very definition of “equity”. But it goes to show you that the motte and Bailey really does work.
I worked in GMU's graduate admissions departments from 2010 to 2019, and the last two or three years of that time, we went from professional development day with fun and helpful workshops on "dealing with difficult customers" and Toastmasters, to mandatory DEI exercises where you voted conservatives to be eaten by zombies (this is not an exaggeration, this is an actual exercise they made us do). It was disgusting and disheartening.
I thought GMU with its Mercatus Center was a hotbed of libertarianism.
Your account reminds me of the sexual harassment policy adopted at the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 1998. Although the policy applied to both sexes, for practical purposes it was directed against men. The policy had a particularly troubling feature: Whether an act counted as sexual harassment or not depended not on the nature of the act itself but upon how the woman in question reacted to it. The act counted as sexual harassment if and only if the woman didn't welcome it. Unless a man could read a woman's mind, he couldn't predict whether a given act would be sexual harassment or not. So he couldn't predict whether the act would be a punishable offense or not.
No, the incel controversy was around 2018 if I remember correctly. During the Summer of Floyd, Hanson made an "insensitive" tweet about Juneteenth. He had to apologize for it to save his job.
When considering the benefits of this proposal, one must not forget that both committee and subcommittee meetings will often include a crudite platter and the yearly kickoff will include a mid-priced chardonnay and some cubed cheese. These are the conditions under which great minds will eradicate the scourge of racism on GMU campus.
> Since the authoritarian tide has temporarily receded, I’m now going to do what I should have done back in 2020: critique the statement line-by-line.
Wokeness hasn't just receded; it has as near as vanished into the ether as makes no difference. You are kicking at a dead horse and it's cringe.
The primary threat to the open society now comes from the Rightoid International - populists, MAGA, tradcaths, groypers, etc. and their global affiliates. It would be more productive to address that threat.
There are liberal which show great disdain for woke. That indicates to me this woke thing is a fad. Hopefully, it will disappear. Don't expect contrition. Be happy it just quietly goes away.
I suspect it will fizzle out. It will start when the pension funds tank and the financial institutions in charge of them quietly divest themselves of their diverse people and let competency assert itself.
Disney seem to be gearing up for this as everything they are doing is tanking.
While I tend to lean 'liberal" (whatever that means nowadays) I agree with every word Bryan wrote.
I remember attending 3 (just three - that was my limit of "toleration"!) "Leftist" groups in the early 1970s in NY City. My God, such long winded, bizarre extremist, materialist notions.
I was already a fan of EF Schumacher's anarchic anti-statist socialism based in Christian mystic perspectives so found the heavily intellectualized materialistic obsession with out-groups that these obviously upper middle class Leftists would never associate with to be deeply hypocritical.
I never imagined this academically-based extremist unbalanced thought would reach wide swaths of the public. Perhaps one unexpected gift of Trump's grift has been to expose the absurdity of this extreme woke stuff and bring us - all of us - back to simple, everyday caring for each other without trying to impose some legalistic nonsense on the world.
What does supposed "grift" by Trump have anything to do with this?
If you mean Trump's election, ok. But what does supposed "grift" have to do in the slightest with what the woke academy has done? Seriously, even a tiny little bit? Are you claiming this supposed "grift" is what got him elected?
What they are espousing is not "legalistic". Those who "lean 'liberal'" who have allowed leftists to take over academia and the Democrat party is why we have 50% of 18-24 year olds choosing "Back Hamas", and have an Administration that is bending over backwards to publicly rake Israel over the coals and kowtow to radical leftists in order to win the presidency.
Alright. Substitute for "grift" - breaking countless laws with impunity over 50 years, hardly ever opening his mouth without lying, trying to overthrow the government, showing daily signs of increasing dementia, attempting to blackmail the head of a foreign government desperately in need to help in order to support a lie, and just generally being an odious human being, "the most damaged human being I ever met" as one of his high level officials described him - associating that with extreme lies about "wokeness" in contrast to Bryan's clear sensible critique of woke extremism - all of that seems to have radically shifted people's interest (even among the MAGA-ites) away from hearing about DEI, woke, etc.
By the way, I said "lean toward liberal" because as someone with generally anarchic leanings who has profound respect for that aspect of genuine conservatism that honors the best of tradition and warns against overly rapid change of institutions AND is very wary of knee jerk appeals to government funding to solve every issue - I very much would welcome a genuine conservative party and find much to celebrate about genuine conservatism.
Hmmm.... I wasn't trying to defend Trump. I just asked what his "grift" - and now your replacement with your list of several ways you believe he is a "bad" person - have anything to do with what woke academia has done, or even why it's been exposed.
Are you claiming that all of this "badness" about Trump is the reason he was elected (and so was able to highlight to the rest of us what was going on with the woke)?
I guess I should be charitable and just replace your "Trump's 'grift'" with "that odious Bad Orange Man's 2016 election". But it doesn't change the fact that you chose to introduce an irrelevant, largely false cheap shot into the discussion about the woke academy.
Re: my 2nd paragraph, I took your "lean liberal" as meaning you generally vote for Democrats and have continued to do so for the last 15 years. If I got that part wrong, then my sincere apologies for implicitly accusing you of being part of the problem (of course, either way Bryan "Myth of the Rational Voter" Caplan himself would never make such an accusation, so here I too am guilty of inserting a [more-relevant] cheap shot myself... ).
Hi Andy, appreciate your thoughtful rethinking of what I wrote.
Let's see if I can make it really simple.
I heard about all this "woke" stuff back in the 1970s; different language but same obnoxious extremism. I never in a million years thought it would take hold.
But then some think tanks hired David Horowitz and others in the early 1990s to develop ways to use talk radio, and later the net, to drum up nonsense about it.
With social media some on the left got caught up in it in the last 10 years and it's become utterly unbearable in academia.
But (here's the part where Trump and his associates come in), the far right populists grabbed on to it (Ron DeSantis, anybody?) and took it SO far over the top the public finally tired of it and I hear from an increasing number of academics that the situation has gotten much better, at least in their classes and departments.
TLDR: The overreach, largely spearheaded by Trump, of the far right populists has helped defuse and ultimately weaken much of the overemphasis on woke (despite the continued clinging of some students to extreme versions of it - though ultimately, most students just want to make it through school and get a job in the real world, not obsess about pronouns)
I hope that helps. I do think that Trump's odiousness has been a tremendous help in making the whole woke obsession die away. But, hey, I could be wrong and just inserting a cheap shot.
Why are people saying this is brave? Caplan simply went with the tide in 2020, and he's going with the tide now. The anti woke momentum and voice is dramatically larger than the woke one now.
Yeah, this isn't brave. But it's still better for him to speak out late than to not speak out at all.
Yes, but there should be some moral searching and a real commitment to doing better in the future.
Still losing the battle though. Sadly, this stuff is as strong as ever in academia. The left always wins, three steps forward and (perhaps) one step backward, but still marches on. We are fighting a rear guard action.
Bryan did a similar thing with Ukraine. At the start of the war (when a peace deal was on the table) he rebuked Hanania for mimizing the threat of Putler and said that he can’t be appeased.
Now he says that in fact appeasement arguements aren’t that big a deal and we should prefer a bad peace if that’s all we can get.
All that changed is the level of moral panic he would have to put up with, but it’s too late for Ukraine.
This type of thinking from GMU and other universities is only possible because the terms Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion all have two different meanings.
One meaning (the “Be Nice” part) is used in public debates, media, public relations for organizations, and damage control after public scandals
The hidden meaning is implemented by bureaucracy behind closed doors.
I go into more detail here:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/understanding-diversity-equity-and
Masterful, as always!
One can see this in Mark Cuban saying that the easiest way to eliminate DEI pushback is to search and delete “equality of outcome”, as if that wasn’t the very definition of “equity”. But it goes to show you that the motte and Bailey really does work.
Hi Bryan - great article.
Wha has changed to make you feel safe publishing this? I could use some good news
I worked in GMU's graduate admissions departments from 2010 to 2019, and the last two or three years of that time, we went from professional development day with fun and helpful workshops on "dealing with difficult customers" and Toastmasters, to mandatory DEI exercises where you voted conservatives to be eaten by zombies (this is not an exaggeration, this is an actual exercise they made us do). It was disgusting and disheartening.
Excellent, courageous post, Bryan.
We must overcome the intimidation.
That starts by overcoming our denial about our being intimidated.
I thought GMU with its Mercatus Center was a hotbed of libertarianism.
Your account reminds me of the sexual harassment policy adopted at the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 1998. Although the policy applied to both sexes, for practical purposes it was directed against men. The policy had a particularly troubling feature: Whether an act counted as sexual harassment or not depended not on the nature of the act itself but upon how the woman in question reacted to it. The act counted as sexual harassment if and only if the woman didn't welcome it. Unless a man could read a woman's mind, he couldn't predict whether a given act would be sexual harassment or not. So he couldn't predict whether the act would be a punishable offense or not.
> George Mason was already persecuting a close friend
Who?
Robin Hanson, I'd bet
Wasn't that around the time Hanson was being hounded for discussing a hypothetical right to sex for incels?
No, the incel controversy was around 2018 if I remember correctly. During the Summer of Floyd, Hanson made an "insensitive" tweet about Juneteenth. He had to apologize for it to save his job.
http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/JuneteenthApology.html
"It's only Macarthyism when they go after the ones that think like me"
Oh yea. Forgot.
Do change your will from GMU to Mercatus.
When considering the benefits of this proposal, one must not forget that both committee and subcommittee meetings will often include a crudite platter and the yearly kickoff will include a mid-priced chardonnay and some cubed cheese. These are the conditions under which great minds will eradicate the scourge of racism on GMU campus.
> Since the authoritarian tide has temporarily receded, I’m now going to do what I should have done back in 2020: critique the statement line-by-line.
Wokeness hasn't just receded; it has as near as vanished into the ether as makes no difference. You are kicking at a dead horse and it's cringe.
The primary threat to the open society now comes from the Rightoid International - populists, MAGA, tradcaths, groypers, etc. and their global affiliates. It would be more productive to address that threat.
"I was a little too scared to publicly oppose..."
You know things are bad when even Bryan Caplan is afraid to talk.
Bet on it? My bet is that GMU is drowning in 'racism'.....White on White Racism.
There are liberal which show great disdain for woke. That indicates to me this woke thing is a fad. Hopefully, it will disappear. Don't expect contrition. Be happy it just quietly goes away.
I suspect it will fizzle out. It will start when the pension funds tank and the financial institutions in charge of them quietly divest themselves of their diverse people and let competency assert itself.
Disney seem to be gearing up for this as everything they are doing is tanking.
It already is; that's why Caplan is writing this now.
Unfortunately the only ones who will be persuaded by this excellent analysis are certain not to be part of the GMU administration.
Great post Bryan!
While I tend to lean 'liberal" (whatever that means nowadays) I agree with every word Bryan wrote.
I remember attending 3 (just three - that was my limit of "toleration"!) "Leftist" groups in the early 1970s in NY City. My God, such long winded, bizarre extremist, materialist notions.
I was already a fan of EF Schumacher's anarchic anti-statist socialism based in Christian mystic perspectives so found the heavily intellectualized materialistic obsession with out-groups that these obviously upper middle class Leftists would never associate with to be deeply hypocritical.
I never imagined this academically-based extremist unbalanced thought would reach wide swaths of the public. Perhaps one unexpected gift of Trump's grift has been to expose the absurdity of this extreme woke stuff and bring us - all of us - back to simple, everyday caring for each other without trying to impose some legalistic nonsense on the world.
What does supposed "grift" by Trump have anything to do with this?
If you mean Trump's election, ok. But what does supposed "grift" have to do in the slightest with what the woke academy has done? Seriously, even a tiny little bit? Are you claiming this supposed "grift" is what got him elected?
What they are espousing is not "legalistic". Those who "lean 'liberal'" who have allowed leftists to take over academia and the Democrat party is why we have 50% of 18-24 year olds choosing "Back Hamas", and have an Administration that is bending over backwards to publicly rake Israel over the coals and kowtow to radical leftists in order to win the presidency.
Alright. Substitute for "grift" - breaking countless laws with impunity over 50 years, hardly ever opening his mouth without lying, trying to overthrow the government, showing daily signs of increasing dementia, attempting to blackmail the head of a foreign government desperately in need to help in order to support a lie, and just generally being an odious human being, "the most damaged human being I ever met" as one of his high level officials described him - associating that with extreme lies about "wokeness" in contrast to Bryan's clear sensible critique of woke extremism - all of that seems to have radically shifted people's interest (even among the MAGA-ites) away from hearing about DEI, woke, etc.
By the way, I said "lean toward liberal" because as someone with generally anarchic leanings who has profound respect for that aspect of genuine conservatism that honors the best of tradition and warns against overly rapid change of institutions AND is very wary of knee jerk appeals to government funding to solve every issue - I very much would welcome a genuine conservative party and find much to celebrate about genuine conservatism.
Hmmm.... I wasn't trying to defend Trump. I just asked what his "grift" - and now your replacement with your list of several ways you believe he is a "bad" person - have anything to do with what woke academia has done, or even why it's been exposed.
Are you claiming that all of this "badness" about Trump is the reason he was elected (and so was able to highlight to the rest of us what was going on with the woke)?
I guess I should be charitable and just replace your "Trump's 'grift'" with "that odious Bad Orange Man's 2016 election". But it doesn't change the fact that you chose to introduce an irrelevant, largely false cheap shot into the discussion about the woke academy.
Re: my 2nd paragraph, I took your "lean liberal" as meaning you generally vote for Democrats and have continued to do so for the last 15 years. If I got that part wrong, then my sincere apologies for implicitly accusing you of being part of the problem (of course, either way Bryan "Myth of the Rational Voter" Caplan himself would never make such an accusation, so here I too am guilty of inserting a [more-relevant] cheap shot myself... ).
Hi Andy, appreciate your thoughtful rethinking of what I wrote.
Let's see if I can make it really simple.
I heard about all this "woke" stuff back in the 1970s; different language but same obnoxious extremism. I never in a million years thought it would take hold.
But then some think tanks hired David Horowitz and others in the early 1990s to develop ways to use talk radio, and later the net, to drum up nonsense about it.
With social media some on the left got caught up in it in the last 10 years and it's become utterly unbearable in academia.
But (here's the part where Trump and his associates come in), the far right populists grabbed on to it (Ron DeSantis, anybody?) and took it SO far over the top the public finally tired of it and I hear from an increasing number of academics that the situation has gotten much better, at least in their classes and departments.
TLDR: The overreach, largely spearheaded by Trump, of the far right populists has helped defuse and ultimately weaken much of the overemphasis on woke (despite the continued clinging of some students to extreme versions of it - though ultimately, most students just want to make it through school and get a job in the real world, not obsess about pronouns)
I hope that helps. I do think that Trump's odiousness has been a tremendous help in making the whole woke obsession die away. But, hey, I could be wrong and just inserting a cheap shot.