Rhodes Scholarship Degenerates Into Farce
Robert Conquest famously noticed that any organization that is not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing. To that we can add the observation that anything that becomes left-wing sooner rather than later becomes a pathetic joke. This includes the formerly respected Rhodes Scholarship, which is now awarded on the same absurd basis Biden’s handlers use to pick cabinet officials: identity politics.
In a press release, American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust Elliot F. Gerson describes this year’s class:
“This year’s American Rhodes Scholars … reflect the remarkable diversity that characterizes and strengthens the United States. Twenty-one of the 32 are students of color; ten are Black, equal to the greatest number ever elected in one year in the United States. Fifteen are first-generation Americans or immigrants; and one is a Dreamer with active DACA status. Seventeen of the winners are women, 14 are men, and one is nonbinary.”
Only one “nonbinary” scholar! Try harder, Rhodes Trust!
What kind of “scholars” do you end up with when you select on the basis of Cultural Marxism? An example from the winner biographies answers the question:
Wilfried J.K. Zibell, Noorvik, is a senior at Harvard College where they major in Comparative Literature and Near Eastern Languages and Civilization. Wilfried comes from an Inuit (Nuurvik) subsistence village in the Alaskan arctic, and through education policymaking, language preservation and labor activism, has focused on the effects of colonialism. This past summer, he worked with his tribal association on its initial COVID-19 outbreak. His senior thesis compares comparative aspects of imperialism in Yiddish, in which he has done archival research, and Inupiat poetry. Wilfried served for two years on the Alaska State Board of Education and Early Development. At Oxford, Wilfried will do the M.Phil. in Economic and Social History.
Sounds fascinating, but what happened to his I mean their pronouns?
As Revolver notes,
Five of the thirty-two scholars will pursue a ridiculous masters degree in “Refugee and Forced Migration Studies.” Only a handful of honorees have biographies with no political buzzwords …
[A]n army of affirmative action choices and grievance politics specialists are presented as the best and brightest America has to offer. …
The Rhodes Scholarship is just a bauble for affirmative action beneficiaries and left-wing activists.
Like the Nobel Peace Prize and the New York Times, the Rhodes Scholarship has traded its prestige for moonbattery and is now a lame joke.
Maybe our woke ruling class is in on the joke, and passes out these awards so as to rub our noses in the debasement.
What was once an exercise in deception is now an overt humiliation ritual perpetrated against the public.
The solution is never to take seriously any award bestowed by the liberal establishment. In time, countermoonbats will develop their own, more meaningful awards.
On a tip from R F.
YOUR SUPPORT IS APPRECIATED
Donations buy time to produce more content. If you enjoy this site, please consider donating through Cash App to $moonbattery or through PayPal by clicking the button below:
[…] to moonbattery, previously prestigious awards like the Nobel Peace Prize and Rhodes Scholarship have degenerated into farce. New awards start out as farces — like two awards just unveiled at […]