You may think humanity majors are lazy and irresponsible, goofing off as they procrastinate on the scary leap into adulthood, acquiring useless degrees and living off loans in the hope that Democrats will make good on promises to cancel their debt. But try walking a mile in their Birkenstocks. For example, Luciana Parisi, Professor in Media Philosophy at the Program in Literature and the Computational Media Art and Culture at Duke University, is giving a speech this Friday. The John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke provides a description:

Recursivity is a generic dispositif of power at the core of the colonial logic of capital. It defines the entanglement of algorithmic functions in computational prediction with the rules of knowing. Recursive algorithms give us the droste effect of a spiral of the same. Today, recursivity returns in the automated condition of planetary incarceration through hyperdisciplinary confinement and necropolitical killing enmeshed with algorithmic solutions of self-governance packed in our mobile phones. However, since speculative computation has indeterminacy as input, it has the capacity to trans-originate collective, cosmotechnical, abolitionist conditions of knowing. The COVID-19 contingency summons us to refuse the recursive violence defining immunity and to embrace the mutations of collective desire demanding the total abolition of the exceptional auto-immunity of the Universal Man.

Imagine being assigned to sit through something like this. Then imagine having to write a paper about it that must go on for many pages.

Future apparatchiks in the liberal establishment must learn not only to endure but to generate massive quantities of pretentious BS. I don’t envy them.

Not all will secure positions in the halls of ivy, media, bureaucracy, or Democratic Party. Many will end up as baristas. But all have to wade neck-deep through this stuff.

On a tip from Steve T.

Wondering where the hard left managed to find so many clueless young people to flood the streets, demanding the destruction of their own country on behalf of a malign ideology? Steven Lysenko, Assistant Principal of Spencerport High School in upstate New York, provides a clue.

Lysenko is among the mostly peaceful protesters who have terrorized nearby Rochester. We know this from a video he posted on social media.

Via Fox News:

“We didn’t do anything but chant and sing,” Lysenko says in the video clip. “Our peacekeepers ended up shooting pepper spray at us for singing and chanting and telling them what a s—-y-assed job they were doing. They can f— right off America! F— the police. F— Rochester Police Department.”

The school does not officially endorse Lysenko’s foul language. Far worse, it endorses his ideology:

The uproar caused by the video prompted the Spencerport Central School District to release a statement insisting that although the district supports “racial equality and systemic change,” it does not condone an employee using profane language on social media.

To pledge support for “systemic change” in response to 550 riots is to support the riots themselves.

Lysenko’s social media accounts are replete with posts declaring his support of Black Lives Matter and social justice-related causes.

What Lysenko has presented to the public is likely mild compared to what impressionable young minds are subjected to in classrooms under the authority of himself and likeminded educrats.

If his name sounds familiar, you could be thinking of Trofim Lysenko, whose crackpot agricultural theories were imposed by Stalin, resulting in a decline in crop yields, the suppression of genetics research in the USSR, and the dismissal, imprisonment, or even execution of thousands of scientists who were suspected of not agreeing with him. In the long run, the crackpot ideology that prevails in American public schools may prove even more harmful.

On a tip from Adam.

The thought police have a voracious appetite for transgressors, whom they must extract extraordinary satisfaction from punishing. Because racial slurs are rarely used in this country except when permitted (i.e., when used by blacks or when directed against whites), PC inquisitors invent new ones, designating previously neutral words like “Negro” and “Chinaman” as forbidden. Still there are not enough language infractions, so authorities seize upon innocuous words that vaguely sound like slurs. A DC bureaucrat was forced out of his job for saying “niggardly.” More recently, an accomplished professor at the University of Southern California has been suspended:

Greg Patton, a professor at the university’s Marshall School of Business, was giving a lecture about the use of “filler words” in speech during a recent online class when he used the word in question, saying, “If you have a lot of ‘ums and errs,’ this is culturally specific, so based on your native language. Like in China, the common word is ‘that, that, that.’ So in China it might be ‘nèi ge, nèi ge, nèi ge.’”

USC educrats say Patton is taking “a short term pause while we are reviewing to better understand the situation and to take any appropriate next steps.” That is, he must sit in the doghouse until this blows over. Or maybe it won’t blow over, social justice warriors will call for his head, and he will be canceled like Mike Adams.

As survivors of the Chinese Cultural Revolution could tell you, teaching is a dangerous job in totalitarian countries during ideological purges. Even those without a noncompliant thought in their heads might find themselves in big trouble.

On a tip from MrRightWingDave.

On a tip from Bill589.

A judge has ruled that the University of California, the largest university system in the country, is not allowed to use the ACT and SAT tests in admissions, even on an optional basis, because disabilities.

The idea is that COVID-19 restrictions make it harder for people with disabilities to take the tests.

The “test optional” policy at most UC campuses affords privileged, non-disabled students a “second look” in admissions, said Brad Seligman, the Alameda County Superior Court Judge who issued the preliminary injunction in the case of Kawika Smith v. Regents of the University of California on Tuesday.

“Non-disabled” now equals “privileged.” Privilege must be destroyed, so that there will be equity.

At the same time, he said, a “second look” would be denied to less privileged students and students with disabilities who are unable to access the tests. Therefore, the conclusion is to do away with the tests all together.

Because they are objective measures of a student’s aptitude, the ACT and SAT have been on the way out anyway. According to the prevailing ideology, merit is both classist…

Research has repeatedly proved that students from wealthy families score higher on the SAT and ACT, compared to students from low-income families.

…and racist:

“Hispanic and African-American students from comparable socioeconomic families scored lower than their Asian-American and White peers,” according to a 2013 paper titled “Race, Poverty and SAT Scores.”

If current trends continue, soon no able-bodied Caucasian will be allowed into college, since “diversity” will be the only admittance standard permitted. By then, Democrats will have made college “free.” They will have to, or no one will be willing to go into debt to attend. Moonbattery is rotting higher education into an obscenely expensive joke.

On a tip from Steve T.

No wonder some teachers fret that virtual classrooms will expose their propagandizing to parents. The moonbattery injected into vulnerable young minds is over the top:

Wylie ISD, a school district north of Dallas, is under fire after some students were given an assignment including a political cartoon that compared police officers to slave owners and KKK members.

Educrats say the cartoon was unauthorized. Whether it is inconsistent with the political environment of the school or of public schools in general is another question.

Behold today’s lesson, presented in a social studies class at Cooper Junior High:

You do not optimize children’s future by encouraging them to view white people and the police as demons.

On a tip from Varla.

Even the COVID-19 lockdowns may have a silver lining. At least virtual classrooms have given parents an opportunity to witness what is being done to their children’s vulnerable minds by the leftist ideologues who dominate education. Earlier this month, Daily Wire quoted teacher Matthew R. Kay (author of the book Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom):

So, this fall, virtual class discussions will have many potential spectators — parents, siblings, etc. — in the same room. We’ll never be quite sure who is overhearing the discourse. What does this do for our equity/inclusion work?

How much have students depended on the (somewhat) secure barriers of our physical classrooms to encourage vulnerability? How many of us have installed some version of “what happens here stays here” to help this?

While conversations about race are in my wheelhouse, and remain a concern in this no-walls environment — I am most intrigued by the damage that “helicopter/snowplow” parents can do in honest conversations about gender/sexuality …

Teaching children to hate themselves for being Caucasian and to embrace harmful alternative sexualities becomes more challenging with someone who means the child well scowling in the background.

On a tip from gregtuco.

The finely honed minds of academia provide a sophisticated appraisal of prominent political figures. Since UT Austin is a little moonbatty, we’ll turn to Professor Filipe Castro at more conservative Texas A&M. He takes to social media to educate the world:

“We have a moron as president and everyday [sic] he paints the walls of the Oval Office with his own sh[**], and the republicans- including Lying Ted [Cruz] and [John] Corny Cornyn- clean the walls and the carpet, wipe the drool of [sic] his mouth, and pretend that he is normal,” the professor wrote.

Castro referred to Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, advocating to “lock them in some institution where we don’t have to be confronted with their vulgarity and their stupidity.”

Imagine how vulgar these people must be if a guy who shouts about the President of the United States smearing feces on the wall finds them offensive.

Castro also referred to Trump as a “fat klansman,” Melania Trump as “bought from a catalog” and Trump administration officials as “savages and misfits all physically deformed and resentful of their deformities.”

“I always though [sic] that this was going to have a normal end, with trump having a heart attack on top of his daughter and crushing her with his fat, and Kushner having to try to resuscitate her (for the money) from drawing in trump’s vomit of Pepsi and half-chewed chicken nuggets, swallowed in big chucks…,” Castro continued in the same post.

Keep up the good work, Professor Castro. Someone has to take prominent Republicans to task for their vulgarity.

On a tip from Rapinhoe.

Universities are the primary incubator of leftist ideology, concocting ever more extreme manifestations of political correctness that are soon picked up by the media and the Democratic Party. It should come as no surprise that academia is also at the cutting edge of COVID-19 tyranny, which will be extended for as long as it serves its purpose, then revived the next time a bug goes around. Michigan’s Albion College leads the way by requiring students to download an app that tracks their location and health data:

The school is working to create a “COVID-bubble” on campus, and asking students stay within the school’s 4.5-mile perimeter for the entire semester; if a student leaves campus, the app will notify the administration, and the student could be temporarily suspended.

As with the John Lewis funeral, the restrictions imposed on little people do not apply to those in charge:

Though students are required to remain on campus, professors and administrators are not. When asked about this potential loophole in its “COVID-bubble,” the school declined to comment.

Students must sign a form consenting to specimen collection and lab tests. They are given a list of “approved businesses” they are permitted to frequent. To leave the campus for approved activities like medical appointments, they must fill out a form 5 days in advance.

[S]tudents who fail to comply with these guidelines will be locked out of their dorms and other on-campus buildings.

College has already largely eradicated the concept of free speech among students. Freedom of movement, freedom of association, and privacy rights may follow.

On a tip from ScrewyPuppy.

“Equity” is a popular goal among leftists. The only way to achieve it is to impose a ceiling above the lowest common denominator. That’s why educrats in exceedingly wealthy Fairfax County, Virginia do not approve of “pandemic pods” — small groups tutored at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

From a message to parents sent by Fairfax County Public Schools:

While FCPS doesn’t and can’t control these private tutoring groups, we do have concerns that they may widen the gap in educational access and equity for all students. Many parents cannot afford private instruction. Many working families can’t provide transportation to and from a tutoring pod, even if they could afford to pay for the service.

We have received some requests from parents who would like to cluster groups or pods of students together with a specific teacher. From both a logistical perspective, and in the interest of educational equity, FCPS cannot accommodate such requests.

If every kid can’t have tutoring, no kid should have it.

Thomas Lifson extends the mentality:

By the same logic, parents who remain married and raise their children in intact families are being unfair to children whose parents cannot maintain their marriage, because many studies show that children with a mother and father at home do better. Taking the logic even farther, parents who don’t become drug addicts are being unfair to children whose parents enslave themselves to heroin, crack, methamphetamine, or even alcohol.

Excellence is the enemy of equity, as is personal responsibility.

On tips from R F and Mr. Freemarket.