Girlifying the Academy

Heather Mac Donald has the bad news. Women are taking over higher American education. They are leading many of America’s greatest academic institutions and are putting their mark on these universities.

One suspects that this nefarious influence does not extend to science and engineering departments. One would like to imagine that these disciplines still have rigorous standards, and thus, that they have not yet succumbed to the temptation to turn education into therapy. Such is Mac Donald’s point and we would be hard put to disagree.

She begins her essay by pointing out that NYU has just chosen a new president. Her qualifications, slim as they are, include being a social worker and being something of an expert in the new trendy discipline of trauma studies:

So it is with New York University’s selection of its new president, Linda Mills, a licensed clinical social worker and an NYU social work professor. She researches trauma and bias, as well as race and gender in the legal academy. She is a documentary filmmaker and teaches advocacy filmmaking.

But, the outrage is selective. Mills and the other social worker types who now run universities tend to see violence being committed by white supremacists. They ignore the violence committed by people of color. In short they are making universities into indoctrination mills.

So Mills explained herself:

The parade of horribles continued: “Hate crimes are on the rise.” Mills and her audience picture white Trumpists beating up blacks, Asians, and gays, notwithstanding the fact that hate-crime suspects are disproportionately black. Invocation of climate change? Check. Invocation of the “constant threat of gun violence,” which, like climate change, can “feel overwhelming?” Check again. (Actually, the only people facing a “constant threat of gun violence” are residents of inner-city neighborhoods, who may be caught up in the dozens of fatal black-on-black shootings that occur daily across the country. The answer to that threat is proactive policing, a solution that most college presidents would dismiss as racist.)

One suspects that the free market will put quit to this social experiment. One suspects that parents will start balking at schools that have chosen to indoctrinate students in leftist ideology, at exorbitant prices. Thus, giving students no skills that might command respect in the marketplace. For all the drooling over trauma, the truth is, the products of these schools will be positively useless. What kind of job will you get with your degree in Trauma Studies?

When it comes to the Humanities and the Social Sciences, women make up a significant majority of students these days:

Mirroring the feminization of the bureaucracy is the feminization of the student body. Females earned 58 percent of all B.A.s in the 2019–2020 academic year; if present trends continue, they will soon constitute two-thirds of all B.A.s. At least 60 percent of all master’s degrees, and 54 percent of all Ph.D.s, now go to females.

Obviously, this does not include science and engineering degrees.

You might find it puzzling, but truth be told, the female students who are told that they are their traumas have suffered from more mental health issues and were more likely to turn therapy into a way of life:

The more females’ ranks increase, the more we hear about a mass nervous breakdown on campus. Female students disproportionately patronize the burgeoning university wellness centers, massage therapies, relaxation oases, calming corners, and healing circles.

Worse yet, female students and faculty tend to be more intolerant  of dissent. They tend to be more in favor of shutting down opposing points of view.

The most far-reaching effects of the feminized university are the intolerance of dissent from political orthodoxy and the attempt to require conformity to that orthodoxy. This intolerance is justified in the name of safety and “inclusivity.” It turns out that females and males assess the value of debate and the legitimacy of speech restrictions unequally. 

As long as the rhetoric of safety, threat, and trauma remains dominant, the push to shut down non-progressive speech will continue. And now the traumification of everyday life, like other modern academic trends, is fast spreading outside the campus. Emotional-healing coaches help the public “navigate” trauma in the “space of healing and self-development,” as a press release for one such coach, Rebeccah Silence, put it. 

When you set about making people stupid they become incapable of engaging in debate and discussion. They tend to become narrow minded bigots who think nothing of silencing the opposition, especially the male opposition.