Despite the Philistine chest-thumping of the CodeBros and “IFL Science” types, the Humanities are essential to saving Western culture.
Or, at least, they should be.
The problem is that the Humanities have been subjected to a decades-long assault by the Long March left. To the point that Humanities faculties today are wall-to-wall leftists (before the CodeBros start smirking, bear in mind that two-thirds of Computer Science and four-fifths of Engineering academics identify as left; Engineering is also the discipline overwhelmingly most likely to produce jihadis).
Still, the sad fact remains that the Humanities are leading the destruction of universities as places of ideas, debate and free speech.
But, having correctly identified that Humanities faculties are intellectual wastelands, Judith Brett gets the root cause hilariously wrong.
You see, apparently it’s conservatives’ fault that woke universities no longer teach Shakespeare to undergraduates who can barely read, let alone think.
Across the country, many of Australia’s humanities and social science departments are imploding: minimal language teaching; faculties without philosophy; English departments with no subject on Shakespeare, let alone Australian literature; visual art departments studying no art history prior to 1900; politics departments with nothing on America and barely anything on Australia; and so on.
But isn’t that what the woke left want? Isn’t this the brave, new, “de-colonised” curriculum we were promised wouldn’t offend and upset “students of colour”?
Ah, no, you fool: it’s all a dastardly far-right plot.
The hostility of the Coalition to the humanities is deep-seated. As one senior university manager told me, ‘‘Every interaction I have with Canberra turns into a diatribe about Marxist feminist identity theorists crushing academic freedom.’’
Because… they are?
Who, after all, are the people using threats of violence to have peer-reviewed papers struck from the record and academics silenced, if they dare question the far-left narrative on colonial history or transgenderism?
Who are the students and faculty physically attacking people for promoting free speech?
It is not identity politics but the shrinking of humanities and social science faculties and curriculum across the country that is the biggest threat to our young people’s education, preventing them from studying the cultural riches of the past and knowing much about world history.
The Age
Just ignore those left-wingers toppling the statues and banning the books.
Above all, don’t blame teachers if kids can’t read, write or count past ten without taking off their shoes.
At least they can count 57 genders and demonstrate the finer points of applying a sex toy.
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