A recent Guardian article is headlined ‘Elite universities aren’t hotbeds of ‘wokery’: our research shows they’re rife with racism and classism’.
Now, authors aren’t usually responsible for their headlines, but in this case they’ve got no excuse. “It has become common,” Kalwant Bhopal and Martin Myers write, “to view elite universities as places of left-leaning “wokery””. You don’t say! But according to the authors, this is a “deliberate mirage”.
As evidence for their claim, they point out that students from wealthy backgrounds who went to expensive schools are overrepresented at elite universities, and that students from more modest backgrounds, including racial minorities, sometimes feel unwelcome there. There’s obviously some truth to this.
The problem, however, is that it’s not evidence for the claim Bhopal and Myers are making. The existence of snobbery in some parts of the student body does not negate the existence of woke activism in other parts of the student body – not to mention the faculty and university administration.
The authors argue that “beyond the culture wars caricature”, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale and Harvard remain “highly conservative institutions”. I beg to differ.
First, there’s DIE (diversity, inclusion and equity). If the aforementioned institutions were “highly conservative”, they’d employ armies of staff to promote conservative values, such as tradition or individual liberty. Instead, they employ armies of staff to promote progressive values. These days, you’re more likely to see an LGBT flag flying over an Oxbridge college than you are to see a Union Jack.
Second, there’s cancel culture. In the US, scholars are ten times more likely to be targeted for expressing right-wing views than for expressing left-wing views. And as I showed in a recent Substack article, incidents of cancel culture are most common at elite colleges. Which has seen the highest number since 2015? You guessed it: Harvard University. (Stanford is second and Yale is ranked 13.)
Third, there’s the views of the academics themselves. Sure, there might be one or two Tories lurking in Cambridge, and the occasional Country Club Republican at Yale. But by and large, the people working at elite universities are progressive in their politics. In fact, a recent survey of Harvard academics found that just 1.5% were conservative – compared 82% who were liberal (in the American sense).
So yes, you can argue that elite universities are “highly conservative”. You just have to ignore the values promoted by administrators, the antics of student activists, and the views of academics themselves.
Elite universities aren’t just a little bit woke. They’re among the wokest institutions in society.
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Oh good, more programmes about hunting, polo and shooting, which have been notably absent of late…
If the same people that push out all the ‘diverse’ BBC content are reviewing whether they suffer from group think then we can be sure that the programmes about hunting, polo and shooting will portray whitey as a racist toff wishing for the return of the Empire.
That’s a yes from me.😀
With an emphasis on attracting the BAME community no doubt.
Nah, golf. Where I live the local white working class men (most reviled group) are often great golf enthusiasts.
Golf gets at least some coverage (although the BBC has probably lost all the big events because it couldn’t find £5m out of its £5Bn budget to buy the TV rights). The minority activities that I am talking about, and the people who take part jn them, either get zero coverage, or the BBC believes that it can cast them in a negative light with impunity. But I didn’t really expect the BBC to redress the balance – they are stone deaf to anything outside their ‘minorities’ echo chamber
Good point
I remember fishing but not the others, apart from Jack Hargreaves catching rabbits which I watch on YouTube – most of the Out of Town and Old Country episodes are there (and I see that the excellent Talking Pictures channel is now showing them).
As Global Majority is the new Ethnic Minority this should mean that Britains are ethnic minorities?
You’d definitely think so from the TV adverts 😀.
“The BBC is to investigate potential “groupthink” in its storylines during a review of how it portrays ethnic minorities and class.”.
And while they’re at it, could someone ensure that the brief of this Groupthink Examination Board be widened, to include some experts familiar with the belief frameworks of some additional minorities? After all, the Holy Grail of our current bunch of wannabe politicians, reflected in much of the content of BBC ‘news’ ‘science’ and ‘medicine’, is utterly reliant on an absolute religious belief in inclusivity, which by definition, should be inclusive of all who hold sincere beliefs in recognised Codes of Ethics. Scientists and medics are distinct groups that come immediately to mind as being improperly excluded from this latest antic.
Or are such inconvenient Codes now excluded on the grounds that they are incompatible with the Codes of the political class and the State? The semi-religious pseudo-science and inverted medical beliefs of the BBC surely constitute one of the most fruitful opportunities for an in-depth inquiry into ‘groupthink’ of this century.
All these lies that were utilised by the influencers to intimidate the masses require brave men and women to push back . It is a difficult response when all around are singing the Sirens Song , but without push back , we are condemned to everlasting stupidity .
We has such a richness of culture in this country for such a small land. All of the different accents and each of those accents represents an entity that chose to come to these islands and became the spirit of the region. There is no way that you can argue that Scousers aren’t driven by their own particular daemon. Of course Liverpool is a very occult city. The Norse influence on Geordie for example. I remember attending a lecture given by an expert in Yorkshire dialect and visiting Norwegian students understood him far better than English people. This is just one example. You shouldn’t throw it away for the sake of money or cheap labour. Maybe it feels good to have cheap nannies or cheap pizza but such things are costly and irreversible.
The BBC is an ultra leftist propaganda machine and is beyond redemption. Anyone who funds it by paying the TV license is part of the problem.
Yes, how do devoutly committed groupthinkers get out of their groupthink and evaluate their attitudes objectively?
Maybe electric shock treatment would help, but after a whole century of thinking that they are the fount of all wisdom and oracle of the ages, the BBC really is beyond redemption. Abolition is the only remedy for this anachronistic and self-regarding institution.
The bloody fools who still pay the TV tax ARE a problem. They, too, are groupthinkers desperately clinging to memories of ‘Auntie Beeb’ as a cosy apple-cheeked old lady, when in fact she morphed into a Marxist Medusa Monster quite a while ago.
Somewhere in the bowels of the BBC building, new job applicants are told to find their way to an interview room down a series of corridors that fork left and right with no signs as to direction. Those that consistently choose to go left arrive in a room with ‘Welcome!’ on the door. Those who choose to go right open a door to the smelly outside bin area and the door automatically locks behind them.
i’m waiting for the occasional letter that gets sent to those who ‘no longer require’ a TV licence asking whether I still don’t need one. I rather enjoy constructing my appropriate reply!
Don’t let it fall apart there is still a chance to pull together as a country.
Tiniest bit of digging into the two ‘media experts’ to lead the ‘review’…
https://order-order.com/2023/07/06/bbc-hides-conflict-of-interest-in-advice-to-ofcom/
https://www.ft.com/content/24fe1010-ca9c-11e5-a8ef-ea66e967dd44
The BBC commented “The group has agreed that groupthink may be a problem within the group, and has therefore appointed two experts on groupthink who the group expects will agree with the groups concern about groupthink. It is very encouraging that the groupthink experts already agree with the group on all matters.”
I don’t watch the BBC, but I’d be interested to know when they decide to present Eastenders as it really is with the former East End white population effectively driven out and stabbings and shootings regularly carried out by various ethnic “minority” gang members.
I very much doubt if it is going to happen any time soon.
“and ensure that its coverage represents all political views” ————-ha ha ha ha ha ha jeez. ———–I nearly spat out my cornflakes and fell off the breakfast bar stool. This is like a leopard promising never to kill an antelope again. Or Farage joining the Green Party. So when does the brainwashing stop? Please do not hold your breath people