The True University

For John, BLUF:  Camille Paglia is a true intellectual, capable of critical thinking.  Her opponents, the SJWs, not so much.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Rex Murphy:  Campus social-justice Maoists dared to come for Camille Paglia. Big mistake

Here is the sub-headline:

The answer to this cloddish, arrogant, self-righteous, ideological twaddle — the lexicon of social-justice hollow-heads everywhere — is: 'Just who do you think you are?'

From the Canadian National Post, by Mr Rex Murphy, 3 May 2019.

Here is the lede plus one:

Applying for university enrolment is obligingly confessional and constitutes a noble act of candour and an absence of stifling ego.  It says, in effect, “I recognize that I am ignorant of very much, have a real desire to escape immaturity of thought and to fit my mind as much as I can to expand my sensibility to the appreciation of the works of intellect and imagination.  Above all I want to encounter new ideas, escape the sludge of teenage thought, and expand my range of opinion.”

She is superbly intelligent; she is an excellent cultural scrutineer; and most of all, she is a woman who understands scholarship, rebukes its stand-ins and counterfeits, is never a servant to the fads and fashion of our mediocre present, and is a rare genuine warrior for classic education.  For 30 years she has been on the faculty of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia (UArts); she is tenured; she has written a succession of enlightening and enlightened books.

Recently there was a cabal of students who demanded she be fired, to be replaced by a "queer person of colour".

Fortunately, the University stood up to the mob, something economics is making more rare each semester.

The good news from this petty outrage that UArts actually stood up to these nuisances, refused their ludicrous demands, and — probably to no effect —President David Yager reminded them that universities are not censor-shops, that different ideas are good, and freedom of expression is the very heart of all intellectual exchange.  “Across our nation it is all too common that opinions expressed that differ from one another’s — especially those that are controversial — can spark passion and even outrage, often resulting in calls to suppress that speech. That simply cannot be allowed to happen,” wrote Yager, capturing the point succinctly.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff