Items of Interest, Residuum of Mystery Edition
"So, are universities ideological monoliths?"
Frank Auerbach, rest in peace.
, The fall of the AAUP. “One of the great disappointments of my professional life has been watching the decline of the American Association of University Professors, formerly the gold standard for defense of academic freedom on campus. …since the beginning of my career back in 2001, the national AAUP have gone from being principled (if slow and plodding) defenders of academic freedom to increasingly partisan critics of freedom of speech and the First Amendment — taking institutional positions that directly threaten academic freedom.”Scott Alexander, How Did You Do On The AI Art Turing Test? “Humans keep insisting that AI art is hideous slop. But also, when you peel off the labels, many of them can’t tell AI art from some of the greatest artists in history.”
Laura Waxmann, S.F.’s art museums are still struggling. Are more of them at risk for closing? “More than half a dozen nonprofit arts and cultural institutions reviewed by the Chronicle have experienced significant revenue decreases, most say attendance remains below pre-pandemic levels and some have had issues with fundraising in recent years. Many have opted for layoffs and most have or will be seeing leadership changes. One will be shifting online for much of the next year. Another reported a $30 million deficit last year.”
Mark Oppenheimer, Why Is the National Book Award Going to a Publisher of Antisemitic Books? “If your mission is Afrocentric propaganda, you might overlook the antisemitism of the authors you publish because you think they will lift black people up, and you’re not too worried if, at the same time, they push Jews down.”
Michael W. Clune, We Asked for It. “The costs of explicitly tying the academic enterprise to partisan politics in a democracy were eminently foreseeable and are now coming into sharp focus. Public opinion of higher education is at an all-time low. The incoming Trump administration plans to use the accreditation process to end the politicization of higher education—and to tax and fine institutions up to ‘100 percent’ of their endowment. I believe these threats are serious because of a simple political calculation of my own: If Trump announced that he was taxing wealthy endowments down to zero, the majority of Americans would stand up and cheer.”
Joel Kotkin, How the Left Betrayed the Jews. “Much of the Left’s decision to abandon the Jews can be explained on grounds of political expediency. … Yet the roots of the great betrayal lie far deeper than the current tragedies in Gaza and Lebanon. The intellectual poison originates with the canon of left-wing literature.”
, I’m a Black Ph.D. and here’s why I left academia. “I have little confidence in academia. My confidence was initially shaken by the fact that critical thinking, a key outcome of a college education, became critical feeling. Sadly, that critical feeling skewed negative and reflected intolerance of anything that did not center and emphasize resentment toward Western Civilization. I discovered this when I was told by colleagues, in vitriolic fashion, that the concepts of argumentation, knowledge of standard English, and reason, itself, were considered ‘White ways of knowing.’”John Byron Kuhner, The Men Behind the Met. “There is always a residuum of mystery in individual choice. But I now see one obvious reason why my grandfather came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: He had been invited. A group of wealthy men had built the institution in the hope that men like my grandfather—ditchdiggers, pipe fitters, bricklayers, and others who labored to manufacture, build, and repair—would learn of the glories of men and women who likewise worked with their hands: artists.”
Heather Mac Donald, Trump and the Academic Cocoon. “‘We need answers for our critics who believe we are an ideological monolith, whether they are right or not.’ So, are universities ideological monoliths? Blight does not say. Is the existence of ‘leftist ideological purity’ a real problem within academia? Blight is mum. He juxtaposes academia’s ‘stress [on] our racial, ethnic and gendered parts’ with the need, in a democracy, to have the ‘whole and the parts ... sing together.’ He is quick to add, however, that identity-based fields are ‘important and established for good reasons.’ God help him had he not included that caveat.”
R.J. Snell, Two Cheers for Viewpoint Diversity. “If we admit that we do not understand, interlocutors are no longer advocates or opponents but engaged in the work of shared inquiry. Interlocutors mutually inquiring are friends with a common good—understanding—and intellectual exchange is an act of mutual assistance. Questions no longer intend to prove or disprove, establish or defeat, but to understand, which comes at no expense to the other.”
Auguste Meyrat, The Acolyte Election. “Harris’s campaign was like the television series The Acolyte that streamed on Disney+ earlier this year. The show had an ambiguously ethnic but painfully dull actress playing the protagonist, an equally diverse and uninteresting surrounding cast, a big well-known franchise (Star Wars), an aggressively progressive feminist narrative (complete with communist space witches), and a massive budget to make everything look legitimate. In other words, the show was appallingly fake. Consequently, it tanked and was not renewed for another season.”
Paul du Quenoy, The EU Is Beset by Pesky Notions of Free Speech. “Rooting her decision in a German law that broadly forbids political activism opposing the country’s constitutional order, she dispatched 339 police officers to raid 14 locations, including Compact’s offices, the offices of its parent company, and the homes of its staff and shareholders. The police seized technical equipment, office furniture, vehicles, merchandise, liquid assets, and just about anything else they could physically take, as well as bank accounts. Compact’s video production subsidiary was also closed. The magazine’s websites were blocked, and its social media accounts were contacted with an eye toward forcing them to shut down. Germany’s Federal Administrative Court later suspended the ban pending the results of a full investigation, but Compact’s ultimate fate remains unknown and will be decided in a legal battle between a relatively small publication and a national government with practically unlimited resources.”
Newly launched: The Omni-American Review.
On now: “Wild Horizons: Scenes of the Natural World From Across India and the Himalayas” at Kapoor Galleries through January 31.
Content at DMJ is free but paid subscriptions keep it coming. Please consider one for yourself and thank you for reading.
Our current title in the Asynchronous Studio Book Club is Working Space by Frank Stella. For more information, see the ASBC homepage.
The current exhibition in the Dissident Museum is David Curcio: The Point of the Needle.
Dissident Muse’s first publication, Backseat Driver by James Croak, is available now at Amazon.
Aphorisms for Artists: 100 Ways Toward Better Art by Walter Darby Bannard is out now at Allworth Press. More information is available at the site for the book. If you own it already, thank you; please consider reviewing the book at Amazon, B&N, or Goodreads.
Regarding Blight, I believe his game is called wanting to have it both ways. I regret to inform him that does not work, and it is worse than a waste of time--it looks both lame and bogus.
No more Auerbach, I miss him already. However, he's one I have to be careful with because his work makes me want to paint like he painted.