We Have Never Been Woke
October 8, 2024 10:43 AM Subscribe
Musa al-Gharbi has a book to sell. Musa al-Gharbi describes himself as an "experimental philosopher" with a concentration in "applied social epistemology" and a focus on national security and foreign policy questions. He has questions that make Liberal elites uncomfortable .
Stopped reading at "almost saintlike".
There's a real point to be made that the nexus of not making waves about economic justice while emphasizing an often absurd set of socially "progressive" views is electoral poison: Saint Bernie was as successful as he was precisely because he reversed this, but his base of support was almost entirely white, so I'm not sure what to think, here.
The Democratic establishment would indeed be way more wildly successful electorally were they to switch emphases and pound on worker rights and higher minimum wages while soft-pedaling the social issues—but of course that would piss off the all-important donor class, without whom the Democrats would be unable to compete in our entirely corrupt electoral system. Not sure this guy is the right messenger for that.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 11:18 AM on October 8 [6 favorites]
There's a real point to be made that the nexus of not making waves about economic justice while emphasizing an often absurd set of socially "progressive" views is electoral poison: Saint Bernie was as successful as he was precisely because he reversed this, but his base of support was almost entirely white, so I'm not sure what to think, here.
The Democratic establishment would indeed be way more wildly successful electorally were they to switch emphases and pound on worker rights and higher minimum wages while soft-pedaling the social issues—but of course that would piss off the all-important donor class, without whom the Democrats would be unable to compete in our entirely corrupt electoral system. Not sure this guy is the right messenger for that.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 11:18 AM on October 8 [6 favorites]
"Elena van Stee: Give us an introduction to the book. Tell us, what’s your central argument, and what are the key insights that you hope readers will take away?
Musa al-Gharbi: So, the puzzle the book is trying to figure out is that starting in the period between the world wars and accelerating in the 1970s, there were these shifts in the global economic order that favored people who work in the symbolic professions—people like academics and journalists, finance people and so on and so forth. People who manipulate symbols and data and ideas instead of providing physical goods and services to people.
One thing that’s interesting about people like us is that, from the outset, a lot of our professions have been oriented around altruism and the common good. And so, what you might expect is that as people like us have increased in power—as we’ve gained more power over institutions, over the functioning of the government, over political parties, and as we have more wealth concentrated in our hands—what you might expect is that inequalities would be shrinking."
I mean, I think I can solve his puzzle. One of these things is not like the other. The Academics and Journalists are not exactly favored in the global economic order, if anything these are cursed professions when it comes to remuneration, and so it's not particularly fair to blame increasing inequality on them. The finance people on the other hand are well paid and have power, but are not really known for their dedication to equality.
If any other academics need puzzles solved hit me up on Fiverr I will manipulate symbols and data for you. Please, rent is coming due.
posted by Balna Watya at 11:30 AM on October 8 [74 favorites]
Musa al-Gharbi: So, the puzzle the book is trying to figure out is that starting in the period between the world wars and accelerating in the 1970s, there were these shifts in the global economic order that favored people who work in the symbolic professions—people like academics and journalists, finance people and so on and so forth. People who manipulate symbols and data and ideas instead of providing physical goods and services to people.
One thing that’s interesting about people like us is that, from the outset, a lot of our professions have been oriented around altruism and the common good. And so, what you might expect is that as people like us have increased in power—as we’ve gained more power over institutions, over the functioning of the government, over political parties, and as we have more wealth concentrated in our hands—what you might expect is that inequalities would be shrinking."
I mean, I think I can solve his puzzle. One of these things is not like the other. The Academics and Journalists are not exactly favored in the global economic order, if anything these are cursed professions when it comes to remuneration, and so it's not particularly fair to blame increasing inequality on them. The finance people on the other hand are well paid and have power, but are not really known for their dedication to equality.
If any other academics need puzzles solved hit me up on Fiverr I will manipulate symbols and data for you. Please, rent is coming due.
posted by Balna Watya at 11:30 AM on October 8 [74 favorites]
It took me a bit to understand what his politics even are- the article is super vague for a while- but " a plurality of Americans reside in almost precisely the same headspace—supportive of New Deal-like interventionism, but not at all thrilled with strange elite belief systems like the social construction of gender and critical race theory" finally explains what kind of guy we're talking about here.
The article author is "Tablet’s social critic at large, a Research Fellow at Heterodox Academy’s Segal Center for Academic Pluralism" which makes me want to roll my eyes so far back in my head I could do myself an injury
(The Tablet is a conservative magazine that publishes opinions like "The Jews Should Stand With Eric Adams" and "Back in the USSA: In America as in postapartheid South Africa, an obsession with ‘racial justice’ can be a harbinger of social and economic collapse")
posted by BungaDunga at 11:31 AM on October 8 [55 favorites]
The article author is "Tablet’s social critic at large, a Research Fellow at Heterodox Academy’s Segal Center for Academic Pluralism" which makes me want to roll my eyes so far back in my head I could do myself an injury
(The Tablet is a conservative magazine that publishes opinions like "The Jews Should Stand With Eric Adams" and "Back in the USSA: In America as in postapartheid South Africa, an obsession with ‘racial justice’ can be a harbinger of social and economic collapse")
posted by BungaDunga at 11:31 AM on October 8 [55 favorites]
the "Heterodox Academy" was founded by Jonathan Haidt and a Cato Institute & Federalist Society guy because of course it was
posted by BungaDunga at 11:39 AM on October 8 [39 favorites]
posted by BungaDunga at 11:39 AM on October 8 [39 favorites]
I'm still working through the piece. I picked up on the author's sophomoric love of his own erudition as a signifier that it was a conservative pseudo-intellectual piece, but I can say that I agree with some of the points made so far while expecting to disagree with the eventual conclusions.
posted by Ickster at 11:43 AM on October 8 [3 favorites]
posted by Ickster at 11:43 AM on October 8 [3 favorites]
“ The article author is "Tablet’s social critic at large, a Research Fellow at Heterodox Academy’s Segal Center for Academic Pluralism" which makes me want to roll my eyes so far back in my head I could do myself an injury”
I wish that the article had led with this so I would have wasted my time.
posted by youthenrage at 11:45 AM on October 8 [13 favorites]
I wish that the article had led with this so I would have wasted my time.
posted by youthenrage at 11:45 AM on October 8 [13 favorites]
but assumes everyone on the left is simply playing a part.
That seems like the standard viewpoint of conservative "intellectuals." How could anyone seriously believe in things like anti-imperialism or gender equality? Pish posh, they must be joking!
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:46 AM on October 8 [18 favorites]
That seems like the standard viewpoint of conservative "intellectuals." How could anyone seriously believe in things like anti-imperialism or gender equality? Pish posh, they must be joking!
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:46 AM on October 8 [18 favorites]
it's also weird that both the author and al-Garbi are currently research fellows at the same Heterodox Academy and the article only mentions that connection at the very end in the author bio
posted by BungaDunga at 11:46 AM on October 8 [33 favorites]
posted by BungaDunga at 11:46 AM on October 8 [33 favorites]
finally explains what kind of guy we're talking about here
What kind of guy are we talking about here? …
Anyway, I’m reading this and I’m like, yeah, a lot of his critiques of the elites (well, a certain type of elite) ring true. But I’m also a gay dude who’s probably included in the cultural project and group of people he seems to find, I dunno, expendable, to broaden the Democratic base. OTOH, I’m annoyed by elite gay white men and lesbians claiming to represent me and other queer people’s interest while their straight benefactors push some abomination like Pete Buttigieg who clearly is tone deaf and even harmful when it comes to people of color and poor people (of which, many are queer). I mean, with liberal friends like these, it’s (almost) like who needs enemies. But of course the enemies are worse … but elite liberals are hardly cuddly warm allies either.
posted by flamk at 11:48 AM on October 8 [6 favorites]
What kind of guy are we talking about here? …
Anyway, I’m reading this and I’m like, yeah, a lot of his critiques of the elites (well, a certain type of elite) ring true. But I’m also a gay dude who’s probably included in the cultural project and group of people he seems to find, I dunno, expendable, to broaden the Democratic base. OTOH, I’m annoyed by elite gay white men and lesbians claiming to represent me and other queer people’s interest while their straight benefactors push some abomination like Pete Buttigieg who clearly is tone deaf and even harmful when it comes to people of color and poor people (of which, many are queer). I mean, with liberal friends like these, it’s (almost) like who needs enemies. But of course the enemies are worse … but elite liberals are hardly cuddly warm allies either.
posted by flamk at 11:48 AM on October 8 [6 favorites]
I admit there was a lot not to like about that Tablet piece, and I was shaking my head at parts of it. Yes, Americans of all stripes have always liked New Deal-type redistribution, at least if it's directed at them. But too many White Americans were against extending the New Deal to everybody, which is an under-explored point in why the New Deal coalition did not endure.
Likewise the catalog of supposed Left shibboleths, which has some parodies. All men being complicit in rape culture would be a pretty radical position, if anybody actually holds that.
Anyway I think al-Gharbi does offer a different angle on something that's a familiar critique to me, that the D Party quit trying to make working people's lives better, where that conflicts with corporate profits. The lack of any meaningful D Party support for labor unionism from 1968 until the Biden admin, basically, is a big part of our problem today. We did hear some noises from H. Clinton in 2016, about repealing Taft-Hartley, but it's really noteworthy how little the D Party had to say about that law for the preceding (checks notes) 69 years. And I thought the Tablet piece was worth reading through to the end myself.
My take on that last is, there is no reason why the D Party has to stop insisting that non-cishet people are people, or why we should shut up about abortion, while also turning things around on the labor support front. "Culture war" issues are not some distraction, they are the pointy end of the spear where the right is trying to dehumanize people and rub them out.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 11:51 AM on October 8 [12 favorites]
Likewise the catalog of supposed Left shibboleths, which has some parodies. All men being complicit in rape culture would be a pretty radical position, if anybody actually holds that.
Anyway I think al-Gharbi does offer a different angle on something that's a familiar critique to me, that the D Party quit trying to make working people's lives better, where that conflicts with corporate profits. The lack of any meaningful D Party support for labor unionism from 1968 until the Biden admin, basically, is a big part of our problem today. We did hear some noises from H. Clinton in 2016, about repealing Taft-Hartley, but it's really noteworthy how little the D Party had to say about that law for the preceding (checks notes) 69 years. And I thought the Tablet piece was worth reading through to the end myself.
My take on that last is, there is no reason why the D Party has to stop insisting that non-cishet people are people, or why we should shut up about abortion, while also turning things around on the labor support front. "Culture war" issues are not some distraction, they are the pointy end of the spear where the right is trying to dehumanize people and rub them out.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 11:51 AM on October 8 [12 favorites]
I mean, the title of the fucking article is "Is Musa Al-Gharbi the Last Academic Who Can Tell the Truth?" Gimme a break.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:52 AM on October 8 [20 favorites]
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:52 AM on October 8 [20 favorites]
the kind of guy who takes money from a conservative elite institution to write mean (if, yeah, sometimes directionally true or occasionally interesting) things about elite liberals, while insisting that he's representing the salt-of-the-earth Real Americans
posted by BungaDunga at 11:53 AM on October 8 [17 favorites]
posted by BungaDunga at 11:53 AM on October 8 [17 favorites]
(I'm probably being unfair; he seems like a smart guy, he might have some interesting ideas in there somewhere!)
posted by BungaDunga at 11:55 AM on October 8
posted by BungaDunga at 11:55 AM on October 8
A short time later, Al-Gharbi found himself opening rejection letters from both of the Ph.D. programs he applied to at the University of Arizona—despite already holding the titles of outreach scholar and research fellow at the institution.
LOL now I know he's a fucking joke. Or at least a whiny baby. Grad programs are competitive, you aren't entitled to admission.
Not only was Al-Gharbi refused admission to the university’s Ph.D. programs despite unassailable credentials;
hahahl omfg. Author is a moron.
And yes, very very very good students, who are very very very good on paper, have a better shot at getting into top programs then they do lower ranked one.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:56 AM on October 8 [22 favorites]
LOL now I know he's a fucking joke. Or at least a whiny baby. Grad programs are competitive, you aren't entitled to admission.
Not only was Al-Gharbi refused admission to the university’s Ph.D. programs despite unassailable credentials;
hahahl omfg. Author is a moron.
And yes, very very very good students, who are very very very good on paper, have a better shot at getting into top programs then they do lower ranked one.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:56 AM on October 8 [22 favorites]
I mean, if elite liberals were less concerned about people writing mean things about them then maybe less people on this planet would suffer?? Seems like a small trade off to make, but I guess they can't be bothered.
posted by flamk at 11:56 AM on October 8 [1 favorite]
posted by flamk at 11:56 AM on October 8 [1 favorite]
Nothing wrong with being mean to liberals. It's just cringe to do it like this.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:59 AM on October 8 [12 favorites]
posted by BungaDunga at 11:59 AM on October 8 [12 favorites]
Fair.
posted by flamk at 12:02 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
posted by flamk at 12:02 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
Musa al-Gharbi is featured today on This Is Hell -- probably better to actually listen to the author explain himself than rely on what sounds like questionable interpretations of his book. TIH's longform interviews are always insightful and not the kind of thing you hear anywhere else.
posted by Pedantzilla at 12:06 PM on October 8 [4 favorites]
posted by Pedantzilla at 12:06 PM on October 8 [4 favorites]
Is Musa Al-Gharbi the Last Academic Who Can Tell the Truth?
He’s the last academic who can hold a cordial conversation with a guy unable to distinguish objective reality from his conspiracy theories.
It’s actually really interesting how the classic antisemitic canard that academia is controlled by a Conspiracy of “elite east coast leftist ideologues punishing thought crimes” has lately been deployed by right wing Jews who are happy to get on the bandwagon with antisemites, and now apparently, my Muslims were so happy to climb aboard the same gravy train
posted by Jon_Evil at 12:08 PM on October 8 [9 favorites]
He’s the last academic who can hold a cordial conversation with a guy unable to distinguish objective reality from his conspiracy theories.
It’s actually really interesting how the classic antisemitic canard that academia is controlled by a Conspiracy of “elite east coast leftist ideologues punishing thought crimes” has lately been deployed by right wing Jews who are happy to get on the bandwagon with antisemites, and now apparently, my Muslims were so happy to climb aboard the same gravy train
posted by Jon_Evil at 12:08 PM on October 8 [9 favorites]
He presents himself as someone whose beliefs don't line up neatly with standard left/right standards: "..when I first started writing for the public, I pretty much only wrote for left-leaning outlets. ... If I want to convince conservatives of something, I have to go to conservative outlets." "I’ve never been clearly on the left or right... I skew more towards populism socially and left on economic things. But also I’m very sensitive to the kinds of things libertarians criticize about government overreach. I’m kind of a mess ideologically, really,”
Granted, presenting yourself as a fresh, thoughtful, independent thinker who isn't bound by narrow ideological boundaries is a great sales pitch. Still, it's a good ideal to aspire to, and I look forward to reading the book and considering his ideas.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:09 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
Granted, presenting yourself as a fresh, thoughtful, independent thinker who isn't bound by narrow ideological boundaries is a great sales pitch. Still, it's a good ideal to aspire to, and I look forward to reading the book and considering his ideas.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:09 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
Uh correct me if I'm wrong but he's not saying anything about a conspiracy?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:10 PM on October 8
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:10 PM on October 8
Anyway I think al-Gharbi does offer a different angle on something that's a familiar critique to me, that the D Party quit trying to make working people's lives better, where that conflicts with corporate profits. The lack of any meaningful D Party support for labor unionism from 1968 until the Biden admin, basically, is a big part of our problem today. We did hear some noises from H. Clinton in 2016, about repealing Taft-Hartley, but it's really noteworthy how little the D Party had to say about that law for the preceding (checks notes) 69 years. And I thought the Tablet piece was worth reading through to the end myself.
That's like, the standard and very, very often covered Left critique of centrism (a category which includes most Democrats), and has been for decades, as you note. What is al-Gharbi's different angle on it?
My take on that last is, there is no reason why the D Party has to stop insisting that non-cishet people are people, or why we should shut up about abortion, while also turning things around on the labor support front. "Culture war" issues are not some distraction, they are the pointy end of the spear where the right is trying to dehumanize people and rub them out.
Seconding.
posted by eviemath at 12:16 PM on October 8 [13 favorites]
That's like, the standard and very, very often covered Left critique of centrism (a category which includes most Democrats), and has been for decades, as you note. What is al-Gharbi's different angle on it?
My take on that last is, there is no reason why the D Party has to stop insisting that non-cishet people are people, or why we should shut up about abortion, while also turning things around on the labor support front. "Culture war" issues are not some distraction, they are the pointy end of the spear where the right is trying to dehumanize people and rub them out.
Seconding.
posted by eviemath at 12:16 PM on October 8 [13 favorites]
Uh correct me if I'm wrong but he's not saying anything about a conspiracy?
Does he say it outright? No, he's not that stupid. But given how he couches his description of the academy as well as choosing to align with Jonathan Haidt, it's pretty clear where he's positioning himself when he gets described with lines like "they also underestimated his ability to resist the coastal contempt for Middle America."
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:20 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
Does he say it outright? No, he's not that stupid. But given how he couches his description of the academy as well as choosing to align with Jonathan Haidt, it's pretty clear where he's positioning himself when he gets described with lines like "they also underestimated his ability to resist the coastal contempt for Middle America."
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:20 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
My take on that last is, there is no reason why the D Party has to stop insisting that non-cishet people are people, or why we should shut up about abortion, while also turning things around on the labor support front. "Culture war" issues are not some distraction, they are the pointy end of the spear where the right is trying to dehumanize people and rub them out.
kinda funny how that's always the part that the "heterodox" thinkers fixate on, isn't it.
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 12:20 PM on October 8 [12 favorites]
kinda funny how that's always the part that the "heterodox" thinkers fixate on, isn't it.
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 12:20 PM on October 8 [12 favorites]
Big red flags on "experimental philosopher" and "applied social epistemology" confirmed by some comments here that saved me a longer read. Thank you for your service.
posted by blendor at 12:22 PM on October 8 [15 favorites]
posted by blendor at 12:22 PM on October 8 [15 favorites]
I don't know what people would expect from Tablet; I would think it's on the level of "do not link to this" as, like, the Breitbart Report or some other very-far-right site. Just because it sounds academic doesn't mean it is!
posted by sagc at 12:23 PM on October 8 [11 favorites]
posted by sagc at 12:23 PM on October 8 [11 favorites]
For all his bloviating, al-Gharbi only has ~ 350 lifetime citations.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:25 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:25 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
Just because it sounds academic doesn't mean it is!
it's apparently a good grift, though, appealing to people who think it's deep to dress up "i'm fiscally liberal and socially conservative" with $20 words
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 12:29 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
it's apparently a good grift, though, appealing to people who think it's deep to dress up "i'm fiscally liberal and socially conservative" with $20 words
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 12:29 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
This is the same magazine that attempted to rehabilitate both Palmer Luckey and /r/The_Donald in the same article
posted by credulous at 12:39 PM on October 8 [4 favorites]
posted by credulous at 12:39 PM on October 8 [4 favorites]
Ah, yes, Tablet, the magazine for real free thinkers, and certainly not right-wing fascists and bigots:
The critiques that Senderovich and others articulated center on several articles that Tablet has published in the past five years, including a June piece attacking gender-affirming care for trans people and a piece from last year imploring synagogues not to require Covid-19 vaccines. Several of the magazine’s regular contributors are outspoken Trump supporters whose pieces have, for example, attacked the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid and celebrated the former president’s ultranationalist speeches, and much of the magazine’s content is focused on decrying liberal “wokeness.”posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 12:52 PM on October 8 [25 favorites]
[. . .] As the Trump era dawned, however, the magazine’s political leanings became harder to ignore. Senderovich had published seven articles on Soviet Jewish literature and culture in Tablet between 2011 and 2015, but in 2017 he was dismayed to see a series of pieces in which Leibovitz defended Sebastian Gorka, a Trump adviser accused of having ties to Nazi groups in Hungary. Senderovich took to Facebook to call on fellow academic Tablet contributors to organize to protest the magazine’s “racism and Nazi apologia.” (In response, Newhouse accused Senderovich of practicing a form of Stalinism.)
[. . .] In the ensuing years, Tablet began to publish more right-wing pieces that pushed boundaries and prompted reader backlash. In June 2020, Newhouse’s husband, literary editor David Samuels, printed a 10,000-word interview with the antisemitic white nationalist scholar Kevin MacDonald, arguing in a lengthy introduction that exposing and understanding his views would be more effective than censoring them. In a June 2021 piece, former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician Natan Sharansky and Canadian historian Gil Troy dubbed Jewish anti-Zionists “un-Jews,” accusing them of nefariously attempting to destroy Jewish identity from within. As the magazine has become increasingly associated with such views, fewer leftist and liberal writers have seen it as an appropriate forum for their work: Last year, after a long period of voicing his criticisms of Tablet content in direct conversations with Newhouse and other editors, he said, Magid left the masthead. “I ultimately felt it was moving in a direction that I just didn’t feel comfortable associating with,” he said.
For some AJS members, Tablet made a particularly unforgivable decision this past June when, amid legislative attacks on the rights of trans children across the country, the magazine published an article by the writer Jennifer Bilek—a frequent crusader against trans rights—that framed philanthropic support for gender-affirming care from the billionaire family of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker as a vast medical, legal, and educational conspiracy to “solidify the idea that humans are not a sexually dimorphic species.” “This is not just a view that’s going to upset a few woke people,” said Neis. Pieces like Bilek’s “are part of a broader campaign of stoking fear and violence toward trans people, with legislative effects that have embodied harm. AJS can’t be neutral about this.”
As it happens, a plurality of Americans reside in almost precisely the same headspace—supportive of New Deal-like interventionism, but not at all thrilled with strange elite belief systems like the social construction of gender and critical race theory
What the fuck are they even talking about here? The report they link to in the Tablet article does not even address CRT or "gender issues" one single time. I would agree that the majority of voters are not thrilled with hearing about gender and CRT all the time, but not because too many liberal elites are preening over it, but because the conservative fixation on it is fucking off-putting. The sentiment of the median voter is very likely "Idk, I don't really get most of this stuff dude" but this has proven electorally to be a negative response to conservatives constantly screeching about Trans Kids In The Bathroom and CRT, not liberals playing defense against it.
And yet they still want to make this a thing! It's like this guy definitely has a kernel of truth to what he's saying for sure, but conservative outlets and orgs just hear "WOKE ELITE" and are glad to use him to bolster their lame narrative about this stuff: The Jordan Peterson-lite version of "see, liberal elites won't let you do free speech in academia because woke is the new orthodox religion" or whatever. They'll even pretend they care about working class people for a second as a trade off because shit, it's true - liberals really have strayed from their interests and they are GLAD to outflank them even if only rhetorically. And it's a lane that will remain open for them as long as that continues to be the case.
posted by windbox at 12:56 PM on October 8 [8 favorites]
What the fuck are they even talking about here? The report they link to in the Tablet article does not even address CRT or "gender issues" one single time. I would agree that the majority of voters are not thrilled with hearing about gender and CRT all the time, but not because too many liberal elites are preening over it, but because the conservative fixation on it is fucking off-putting. The sentiment of the median voter is very likely "Idk, I don't really get most of this stuff dude" but this has proven electorally to be a negative response to conservatives constantly screeching about Trans Kids In The Bathroom and CRT, not liberals playing defense against it.
And yet they still want to make this a thing! It's like this guy definitely has a kernel of truth to what he's saying for sure, but conservative outlets and orgs just hear "WOKE ELITE" and are glad to use him to bolster their lame narrative about this stuff: The Jordan Peterson-lite version of "see, liberal elites won't let you do free speech in academia because woke is the new orthodox religion" or whatever. They'll even pretend they care about working class people for a second as a trade off because shit, it's true - liberals really have strayed from their interests and they are GLAD to outflank them even if only rhetorically. And it's a lane that will remain open for them as long as that continues to be the case.
posted by windbox at 12:56 PM on October 8 [8 favorites]
There's a real point to be made that the nexus of not making waves about economic justice while emphasizing an often absurd set of socially "progressive" views is electoral poison: Saint Bernie was as successful as he was precisely because he reversed this, but his base of support was almost entirely white, so I'm not sure what to think, here.
I don't want to cause a derail, but that was truer in 2016 than it was in 2020, in which Sanders attracted a much more diverse coalition in part because it was a smaller coalition, with fewer white people who were effectively protest voting against Hillary Clinton owing to sexism, longtime dislike, relentless propaganda, Sanders's own contradictory statements about immigration, etc. The 2020 coalition were there because they believed in the cause much more than the 2016 coalition was, thanks to the broader array of options available to primary voters in 2020. Because it was a smaller coalition, and not a bigger one built in the years between 2016 and 2020, they lost.
In the aggregate, white people, because they tend to vote for Republican racism, disliked Bernie Sanders, but Sanders's support among Democrats was also not disproportionately white. In the Massachusetts primary, for instance, it was notable that Sanders won a huge portion of the Hispanic vote, which actually gave him the plurality of the non-white vote. The white person's pick was Biden.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 1:02 PM on October 8 [6 favorites]
I don't want to cause a derail, but that was truer in 2016 than it was in 2020, in which Sanders attracted a much more diverse coalition in part because it was a smaller coalition, with fewer white people who were effectively protest voting against Hillary Clinton owing to sexism, longtime dislike, relentless propaganda, Sanders's own contradictory statements about immigration, etc. The 2020 coalition were there because they believed in the cause much more than the 2016 coalition was, thanks to the broader array of options available to primary voters in 2020. Because it was a smaller coalition, and not a bigger one built in the years between 2016 and 2020, they lost.
In the aggregate, white people, because they tend to vote for Republican racism, disliked Bernie Sanders, but Sanders's support among Democrats was also not disproportionately white. In the Massachusetts primary, for instance, it was notable that Sanders won a huge portion of the Hispanic vote, which actually gave him the plurality of the non-white vote. The white person's pick was Biden.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 1:02 PM on October 8 [6 favorites]
I skimmed the intro to his book and it's at least less annoying than the Tablet article.
posted by BungaDunga at 1:07 PM on October 8 [2 favorites]
posted by BungaDunga at 1:07 PM on October 8 [2 favorites]
The Democratic establishment would indeed be way more wildly successful electorally were they to switch emphases and pound on worker rights and higher minimum wages while soft-pedaling the social issues—but of course that would piss off the all-important donor class, without whom the Democrats would be unable to compete in our entirely corrupt electoral system.
Speaking as a Democratic donor who has contributed many tens of dollars, you're right that I'd be pretty pissed if the party abandoned social issues in favor of embracing racism just to win elections.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:24 PM on October 8 [9 favorites]
Speaking as a Democratic donor who has contributed many tens of dollars, you're right that I'd be pretty pissed if the party abandoned social issues in favor of embracing racism just to win elections.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:24 PM on October 8 [9 favorites]
Pretty empty article. Lots of talk about how brave his positions are, little talk about what he actually believes.
The dem shift from working class policy to "elite" policy is part of a world wide trend since the ~50s 60s.[1] Agree it's something we need to turn around as it's def part of why there are so many working class folks who feel disaffected enough by it all to turn republican.
[1]: Capitol and Ideology
posted by macrael at 1:52 PM on October 8 [7 favorites]
The dem shift from working class policy to "elite" policy is part of a world wide trend since the ~50s 60s.[1] Agree it's something we need to turn around as it's def part of why there are so many working class folks who feel disaffected enough by it all to turn republican.
[1]: Capitol and Ideology
posted by macrael at 1:52 PM on October 8 [7 favorites]
but his base of support was almost entirely white
Rustic Etruscan got there first, but Bernie did pretty well with Latin voters in the Southwest if I recall correctly (which definitely does not necessarily contradict the idea that leading with economic populism was his strength).
That said I think there’s evidence that “liberal elites” of a sort are among the furthest left on economic issues as well, though to a significant extent this is because “elite” is conflated with education.
posted by atoxyl at 1:53 PM on October 8
Rustic Etruscan got there first, but Bernie did pretty well with Latin voters in the Southwest if I recall correctly (which definitely does not necessarily contradict the idea that leading with economic populism was his strength).
That said I think there’s evidence that “liberal elites” of a sort are among the furthest left on economic issues as well, though to a significant extent this is because “elite” is conflated with education.
posted by atoxyl at 1:53 PM on October 8
A lot of younger white collar folks don’t necessarily feel so “elite” in practice these days.
posted by atoxyl at 1:56 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
posted by atoxyl at 1:56 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
His argument was more nuanced than the anti-imperialist routine common among the academic pseudo-left: Al-Gharbi clarified that the United States was a threat to Middle East stability precisely because its “policies in Iraq, Libya and Syria have largely paved the way for ISIS’s emergence as a major regional actor.”That is precisely what the actual left has been saying since 9/11. This is the median left position.
Campus Watch, a right-wing organization that clumsily opposes the radicalization of higher education.That's being quite charitable, but those are the kinds of freaks you have to take seriously if you accept the plausibilty of the threat of "campus radicalization" (i.e., telling the truth about Israel)
Donald Trump and his supporters are part of a fascist tradition. Racism is a uniquely American problem. All men are complicit in “rape culture.” Like a bad penny, these are the kinds of “truths” that keep cropping up in university discourse todayCorrect. Incorrect but that's not what that link says. Debatable but you would have to be curious enough to try to understand what that phrase even means to even evaluate that claim.
Crap writing in a right wing mag about an unexceptional thinker. It's not hard to figure out what actually happened. Moderate progressive in the conservative academy gets bit by it, realizes they were cynically lying about being progressive, takes the work that pays. The plaudits from this genuinely stupid interviewer aren't doing him favors, but he should have checked before giving the interview.
It is quite telling that in an article about smashing the elite intellectual conformity that plagues the academy, neither the writer nor the subject has anything to say about the single issue that most unites the ruling class of this country, conformity on which was enforced violently by cops and frat boy gangs on campuses nationwide.
posted by jy4m at 2:04 PM on October 8 [5 favorites]
(Trump is a) supposed fascist... Like a bad penny, (Donald Trump and his supporters being part of a fascist tradition) are the kinds of “truths” that keep cropping up in university discourse today
Yeah, it's not like Trump constantly does textbook fascist shit like referring to immigrants as vermin and threatening to jail his opponents.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:05 PM on October 8 [14 favorites]
Yeah, it's not like Trump constantly does textbook fascist shit like referring to immigrants as vermin and threatening to jail his opponents.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:05 PM on October 8 [14 favorites]
Do you really want to make the liberal elites uncomfortable? Start arguing for communism and the abolition of all power structures.
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:07 PM on October 8 [9 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:07 PM on October 8 [9 favorites]
I really just want to understand what specifically a liberal elite actually is at some point. Even just admitting the existence of the other guy's weird ideas of cultural boogeymen seems like a losing strategy.
posted by mhoye at 2:19 PM on October 8 [10 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 2:19 PM on October 8 [10 favorites]
What the fuck are they even talking about here?
Yeah this article is very bad. I suppose I should read the author in another venue, because I do like to read about foreign policy
Getting conservatives to not want to bomb Syria, though; that cannot be done by an intellectual. What you want to be is a political organizer, not an intellectual.
posted by eustatic at 2:35 PM on October 8
Yeah this article is very bad. I suppose I should read the author in another venue, because I do like to read about foreign policy
Getting conservatives to not want to bomb Syria, though; that cannot be done by an intellectual. What you want to be is a political organizer, not an intellectual.
posted by eustatic at 2:35 PM on October 8
Yeah, there's some interesting elements of Al-Gharbi's work for sure, I'd read it. I'm academic adjacent (everyone I know and love is an academic) and the description of a DEI elite makes sense to me. Tons of higher up, full professors & admins raking in the money that talk a great game about anti-racism (they even make up admin positions to do it) but sure hate supporting any worker efforts or internal democratic effots to equitably distribute wealth and power in academe.
But what's up with Duncan Moench's over the top fawning writing? "Saintlike"? The LAST academic who can tell the truth? Did he get passed over for a tenure track gig?
posted by RajahKing at 2:46 PM on October 8 [3 favorites]
But what's up with Duncan Moench's over the top fawning writing? "Saintlike"? The LAST academic who can tell the truth? Did he get passed over for a tenure track gig?
posted by RajahKing at 2:46 PM on October 8 [3 favorites]
"The Democratic establishment would indeed be way more wildly successful electorally were they to switch emphases and pound on worker rights and higher minimum wages while soft-pedaling the social issues"
Please name one of these so-called "social issues" that we could soft-pedal that isn't, in reality, a knife-fight for actual people's human rights.
posted by Horkus at 2:49 PM on October 8 [11 favorites]
Please name one of these so-called "social issues" that we could soft-pedal that isn't, in reality, a knife-fight for actual people's human rights.
posted by Horkus at 2:49 PM on October 8 [11 favorites]
I hear if we give them the Socialists, they'll leave the trade unionists and the Jews alone.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:53 PM on October 8 [29 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:53 PM on October 8 [29 favorites]
Remarkably full of grievance and yet remarkably lacking in actual content. Based on this article, I have no idea whether al-Gharbi has interesting ideas or not and am leaning towards "not."
But perhaps this is actually part of the strategy: Such writing is meant to appeal to conservatives, who he apparently is more interesting in talking to? I dunno. It's certainly not written for someone who is more interested in substantive political writing than in breathlessly phrased, pseudo-erudite conservative talking points.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:55 PM on October 8 [4 favorites]
But perhaps this is actually part of the strategy: Such writing is meant to appeal to conservatives, who he apparently is more interesting in talking to? I dunno. It's certainly not written for someone who is more interested in substantive political writing than in breathlessly phrased, pseudo-erudite conservative talking points.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:55 PM on October 8 [4 favorites]
Anything he says or tablet says about elite use of DEI language for centrist lenses has been said better and smarter by Femi Taiwo. There’s probably something along the lines of “everything original in his book is dumb, every smart thing in his book is unoriginal” these aren’t new claims.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:00 PM on October 8 [8 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:00 PM on October 8 [8 favorites]
I would agree that the majority of voters are not thrilled with hearing about gender and CRT all the time, but not because too many liberal elites are preening over it, but because the conservative fixation on it is fucking off-putting. The sentiment of the median voter is very likely "Idk, I don't really get most of this stuff dude" but this has proven electorally to be a negative response to conservatives constantly screeching about Trans Kids In The Bathroom and CRT, not liberals playing defense against it
Yeah this is weird and feels like a tell of the author himself residing in a certain ideological bubble. If a Democrat wants to make a completely cynical run to the right to try to win - and let me be clear, this is not saying they should, just describing what the realpolitik assessment might look like - the obvious issues that people actually care about right now are immigration and crime. That’s what the link used by the article to support the quoted assertion actually says! And it’s what every candidate actually does when they make a cynical run to the right, because they’ve seen the polling, too. “Gender and CRT” is nowhere on the list of issues that people care about, and has never been a winner outside of, like, already firmly Republican school district politics. And of course some “socially liberal” positions (on abortion being the obvious one) are definite winners, in many places that are electorally important.
posted by atoxyl at 3:18 PM on October 8 [7 favorites]
Yeah this is weird and feels like a tell of the author himself residing in a certain ideological bubble. If a Democrat wants to make a completely cynical run to the right to try to win - and let me be clear, this is not saying they should, just describing what the realpolitik assessment might look like - the obvious issues that people actually care about right now are immigration and crime. That’s what the link used by the article to support the quoted assertion actually says! And it’s what every candidate actually does when they make a cynical run to the right, because they’ve seen the polling, too. “Gender and CRT” is nowhere on the list of issues that people care about, and has never been a winner outside of, like, already firmly Republican school district politics. And of course some “socially liberal” positions (on abortion being the obvious one) are definite winners, in many places that are electorally important.
posted by atoxyl at 3:18 PM on October 8 [7 favorites]
The Tablet piece is from 2021, is there a reason it's relevant right now? Is his book out, did he get the PhD? I have questions.
posted by chaz at 3:22 PM on October 8 [9 favorites]
posted by chaz at 3:22 PM on October 8 [9 favorites]
The Democratic establishment would indeed be way more wildly successful electorally were they to switch emphases and pound on worker rights and higher minimum wages while soft-pedaling the social issues—but of course that would piss off the all-important donor class, without whom the Democrats would be unable to compete in our entirely corrupt electoral system.
The Biden Administration has been one of the most pro-labor administrations in decades - and in return you have the head of one of the largest and most socially conservative unions publicly attacking the Democratic Party after speaking at the RNC earlier this year.
I don't think the problem is fighting for worker rights.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:45 PM on October 8 [7 favorites]
The Biden Administration has been one of the most pro-labor administrations in decades - and in return you have the head of one of the largest and most socially conservative unions publicly attacking the Democratic Party after speaking at the RNC earlier this year.
I don't think the problem is fighting for worker rights.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:45 PM on October 8 [7 favorites]
Ugh. Why is this here now?
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 3:53 PM on October 8 [3 favorites]
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 3:53 PM on October 8 [3 favorites]
Yes he received his PhD and was further cancelled by getting a coveted tenure track job.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:10 PM on October 8 [11 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:10 PM on October 8 [11 favorites]
Thanks, as someone who spends most of my waking hours fretting about woke, I am glad that there are Serious Academics™ with Important Ideas™ who are also very worried about woke.
posted by Vulgar Euphemism at 4:25 PM on October 8 [4 favorites]
posted by Vulgar Euphemism at 4:25 PM on October 8 [4 favorites]
(That tablet article is really execrable, so coy about what the guy is pushing and so smugly self-congratulatory about how brilliant both subject and author are.)
posted by Vulgar Euphemism at 4:33 PM on October 8 [3 favorites]
posted by Vulgar Euphemism at 4:33 PM on October 8 [3 favorites]
Seconding MisanthropicPainforest; Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò has a much more nuanced and interesting take on how powerful institutions tend to co-opt identity issues into a "let's get one token middle-class person of color and one token middle-class queer person into the board room" thing that doesn't meaningfully engage with structural racism, ableism, etc.
posted by Jeanne at 4:37 PM on October 8 [8 favorites]
posted by Jeanne at 4:37 PM on October 8 [8 favorites]
I'm not even really sure why I read as much of that article as I did; I guess I kept waiting for a point to emerge. Who the fuck is this guy? Honestly, if he hasn't become hugely important to my life in the three years since this article was published, I probably don't need to find out.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:45 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:45 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
His bio says he's a professor of communication, but tbh, he's a horrible communicator. My takeaway was that he stands opposed to things that Conservatives hate about what they like to think leftists and liberals stand for but which really nobody, in fact, believes. As for what he does believe..... Yeah, that's just mush, or else completely unstated. So really he's just a grifter telling conservatives what they want to hear. Does he realize this about himself? Hard to say. He could be just a complete mess.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 5:14 PM on October 8 [3 favorites]
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 5:14 PM on October 8 [3 favorites]
"we" - he can speak for himself. man i am tired of the "gotcha" headlines that have been invading the blue.
posted by lapolla at 5:26 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
posted by lapolla at 5:26 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
Strawman incarnate
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 6:36 PM on October 8
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 6:36 PM on October 8
Big red flags on "experimental philosopher" and "applied social epistemology" ...
I haven't read the piece, I'm not familiar with Musa al-Gharbi, except for a brief glance at his CV, and I have no interest in defending him or the piece. But experimental philosophy and applied social epistemology are not in themselves red flags. I'm an experimental philosopher. Perfectly reasonable thing to be. :) And plausible for the author to say, since according to his CV, Jonathan Weinberg, who is himself an epistemologist and an experimental philosopher, was the chair of his Philosophy MA thesis committee.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 7:13 PM on October 8 [4 favorites]
I haven't read the piece, I'm not familiar with Musa al-Gharbi, except for a brief glance at his CV, and I have no interest in defending him or the piece. But experimental philosophy and applied social epistemology are not in themselves red flags. I'm an experimental philosopher. Perfectly reasonable thing to be. :) And plausible for the author to say, since according to his CV, Jonathan Weinberg, who is himself an epistemologist and an experimental philosopher, was the chair of his Philosophy MA thesis committee.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 7:13 PM on October 8 [4 favorites]
"Soft-pedal the social issues" here was intended to mean "foreground economic issues", not "ignore social issues". Sorry for the lack of clarity: I had a cat on my lap. Or, alternatively, use the Republicans' focus on social issues as a means to call them weird busybodies and focus on the meta: "Hey look, the fascists are finding another small, almost entirely harmless non-mainstream group for you to hate again! If they can make you hate [trans people, atheists, whoever] more than the oligarchs who really deserve your hate, then you'll vote for the oligarchs who oppress us all because you think they'll protect you from this sometimes superficially odd but actually nonthreatening group!"
But that would really piss off the million-dollar donor class.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 8:02 PM on October 8
But that would really piss off the million-dollar donor class.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 8:02 PM on October 8
For some reason this article reminded me of this Kathy Burke tweet.
posted by Dysk at 8:08 PM on October 8 [2 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 8:08 PM on October 8 [2 favorites]
the incompetence of the boomer political class in fighting for better working conditions—and its support for exporting working-class jobs overseas—has driven American working people further to the cultural right, regardless of race, sexual preference, or other identity issues that white American leftists obsess over
Ok, so, yes, boomers are the ones outsourcing customer service jobs to india or north africa, they're the ones busting up unions or closing franchises that unionize. How does this "drive people to the cultural right". How does the author imagine this plays out in folks' minds. "Well, I got laid off, surely the conservative policy of allowing corporations to do whatever the f@#& they want will better serve me" Like, do I just not understand or is the train of the author's thought totally off the rails.
posted by signsofrain at 9:25 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
Ok, so, yes, boomers are the ones outsourcing customer service jobs to india or north africa, they're the ones busting up unions or closing franchises that unionize. How does this "drive people to the cultural right". How does the author imagine this plays out in folks' minds. "Well, I got laid off, surely the conservative policy of allowing corporations to do whatever the f@#& they want will better serve me" Like, do I just not understand or is the train of the author's thought totally off the rails.
posted by signsofrain at 9:25 PM on October 8 [1 favorite]
Cool news article. Apropos of nothing, here's a Behind the Bastards podcast two-episode series everyone should check out:
How Conservatism Won: Robert sits down with David Bell to discuss how a consortium of rich failsons got together to fund a network of right wing think tanks and shift American culture in a fun new direction. (note: it was not actually fun at all)
posted by AlSweigart at 9:50 PM on October 8 [8 favorites]
How Conservatism Won: Robert sits down with David Bell to discuss how a consortium of rich failsons got together to fund a network of right wing think tanks and shift American culture in a fun new direction. (note: it was not actually fun at all)
posted by AlSweigart at 9:50 PM on October 8 [8 favorites]
The Tablet article is basically just a puff piece. After reading it I still have little idea of the specifics of Musa al-Gharbi's ideas. That said, some of the points brought up aren't entirely off base. Funnily, academics as a group actually have less favorable views of DEI than the general population because they (not wrongly) see it in practice mostly as a performative checklist for institutions to launder their reputations.
posted by ndr at 11:15 PM on October 8 [2 favorites]
I mean, I think I can solve his puzzle. One of these things is not like the other. The Academics and Journalists are not exactly favored in the global economic order, if anything these are cursed professions when it comes to remuneration, and so it's not particularly fair to blame increasing inequality on them. The finance people on the other hand are well paid and have power, but are not really known for their dedication to equality.This is a bit fallacious isn't it? It's true academics and journalists don't get compensated much in monetary terms for the work they do, but that doesn't mean they have no influence. In fact, it means the people who actually stick with it tend to really believe in their calling. There's hardly a thread about politics here where people don't complain about the bias and quality of journalism, so we clearly believe what they do matters. Ideas developed and propagated from academics and journalists to make a more just and equitable world, such as ESG, fair trade, etc have been adopted in part by finance and corporations. Are they working? I don't know.
There's a real point to be made that the nexus of not making waves about economic justice while emphasizing an often absurd set of socially "progressive" views is electoral poison: Saint Bernie was as successful as he was precisely because he reversed this, but his base of support was almost entirely white, so I'm not sure what to think, here.That's really not true. The best predictor of support for Bernie Sanders is age. Particularly among the older Black folk, the Democrats have accumulated a lot of credit for the role they played in the Civil Rights movement, but that's not enough for the younger generations.
posted by ndr at 11:15 PM on October 8 [2 favorites]
Also in what world are academics poorly compensated as a whole? It's not a useful way to talk about it really, because it's actually two groups - early career academics who are often paid poorly and have bad career prospects, and senior academics who are usually paid really quite bloody well. Reducing that down to "academics are paid poorly" misses the detail that it is only some academics that are not valued. The dangling carrot of the well paid senior position* is a large part of why the system as it stands works at all.
*(Yes, not everyone, and yes, you might well be disillusioned with your chances personally and not necessarily be wrong, but it is still a real factor, and people do still get hired for professorships and as research fellows and so on.)
posted by Dysk at 1:56 AM on October 9
*(Yes, not everyone, and yes, you might well be disillusioned with your chances personally and not necessarily be wrong, but it is still a real factor, and people do still get hired for professorships and as research fellows and so on.)
posted by Dysk at 1:56 AM on October 9
Granted, presenting yourself as a fresh, thoughtful, independent thinker who isn't bound by narrow ideological boundaries is a great sales pitch.
Yes, because whenever someone labels themself as an independent thinker they are undoubtedly announcing they are really straight up deeply right-wing libertarian. He made that laughably easy, as they tend to do.
posted by waving at 4:21 AM on October 9 [4 favorites]
Yes, because whenever someone labels themself as an independent thinker they are undoubtedly announcing they are really straight up deeply right-wing libertarian. He made that laughably easy, as they tend to do.
posted by waving at 4:21 AM on October 9 [4 favorites]
Ok, so, yes, boomers are the ones outsourcing customer service jobs to india or north africa, they're the ones busting up unions or closing franchises that unionize. How does this "drive people to the cultural right".
Really, read anything by Thomas Frank (well, except maybe Conquest of Cool - that doesn't really cover this topic), he's been explaining for decades now how this dynamic works. As just one example, I don't remember now if this specific anecdote is in What's the Matter with Kansas but when he was doing the book tour/interview circuit for it I remember him talking about a friend of his in Kansas, one of a family of farming Dems who'd been devotees since Roosevelt's New Deal, who told him after Clinton signed NAFTA "Well, I guess I'm never voting Democrat again." The Dem apologists liked to crow about how WTMWK spelled out how the GOP convinced "the uneducated" to vote against their economic interests by selling culture wars that they never (until recently) seemed to win, but they always conveniently ignored the entire other half of the book that explains that this was only possible b/c the Dems had abandoned them in favor of the neoliberal order, so why not vote for the only issues they were given the option to vote for? Issues that were inflamed and distorted yes by Fox "News" but really by Rush Limbaugh (back in the day) and the whole nationwide network of AM right-wing hate radio stations he represented that are frequently the only stations you can get outside of cities -- because the Dems also abandoned trying to speak to them at all and refused to fund and support their own rural media.
posted by Pedantzilla at 5:17 AM on October 9 [5 favorites]
I, too, checked out his CV. If anyone's curious, he's an assistant prof at SUNY Stony Brook and teaches one journalism class called Storytelling and Narrative Design. I don't know about the impact factor of the sociology journals he's published in; not my area. His book was published by Princeton University Press.
I still think he's a charlatan.
posted by Snowishberlin at 5:18 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]
I still think he's a charlatan.
posted by Snowishberlin at 5:18 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]
Academics are not paid well. It is very improbable for any PhD student to get to the level of a senior academic that’s making big bucks. At Cambridge/Oxford they start around 38,000 pounds a year. At a small SLAC you’re looking at 55-70, a big R1 starting around 85k. I remember reading about a prof at Umass Lowell who said that he made more in his first year, 20 years ago, than he does now due to inflation and a lack of COL raises. The point isn’t that boo boo this isn’t a lot of money, the point is that the only people who can afford to become academics nowadays are rich people.
Frankly, it’s false that ‘only some academics are not valued’. It’s most. I think something like Cal State Long Beach has more students than all the ivies combined. But who can afford to move to Long Beach and make 70k a year?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:36 AM on October 9 [3 favorites]
Frankly, it’s false that ‘only some academics are not valued’. It’s most. I think something like Cal State Long Beach has more students than all the ivies combined. But who can afford to move to Long Beach and make 70k a year?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:36 AM on October 9 [3 favorites]
Let me put it this way: being a public high school teacher is a better financial decision than being a professor.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:43 AM on October 9 [3 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:43 AM on October 9 [3 favorites]
At Cambridge/Oxford they start around 38,000 pounds a year.
Which is above the UK median for a starting salary. My spouse recently got their PhD, we are definitely not rich (nor were we while they were studying, I worked warehousing), but we are now able to survive on just their salary, despite them not working full time. In a junior research position. Where they work with several people (academics, not administrators) making six figures. At a post 92 nowhere near London, so far from the best paying in the sector.
It's competitive as heck, and the required qualifications (at least some of which is self serving credentialism) are substantial, but if you can become a career academic, it is really not a bad place to be, even if inflation has eroded it somewhat compared to periods in the past.
posted by Dysk at 6:14 AM on October 9
Which is above the UK median for a starting salary. My spouse recently got their PhD, we are definitely not rich (nor were we while they were studying, I worked warehousing), but we are now able to survive on just their salary, despite them not working full time. In a junior research position. Where they work with several people (academics, not administrators) making six figures. At a post 92 nowhere near London, so far from the best paying in the sector.
It's competitive as heck, and the required qualifications (at least some of which is self serving credentialism) are substantial, but if you can become a career academic, it is really not a bad place to be, even if inflation has eroded it somewhat compared to periods in the past.
posted by Dysk at 6:14 AM on October 9
This would be an apt comparison if people with Phds weren't already far into their career/life. Comparing a 30 year old with a family, a phd, and multiple postdocs to starting salaries for 20 year olds fresh out of college is not an apt comparison.
In the US being an academic is a less remunerative career path than nearly every other white collar job, save for possibly a social worker.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:19 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]
In the US being an academic is a less remunerative career path than nearly every other white collar job, save for possibly a social worker.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:19 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]
Mate, I'm just as far into my career and life, I've no hope of making more than half as much as the smallest numbers we've described.
posted by Dysk at 6:21 AM on October 9
posted by Dysk at 6:21 AM on October 9
A lot of these complaints about how XYZ don't make enough boil down to a lack of respect for what they do, as if teaching adults isn't worthwhile. Imagine responding to a complaint that nurses/teachers/social workers/daycare workers don't make enough with "but it could be worse!". Its just grating.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:27 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:27 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]
If it's about respect for the thing, then say that! But as someone coming from a background of doing work that is also worthy of dignity and respect, but is paid far, far less, seeing academia described as 'poorly paid' makes my head spin.
posted by Dysk at 6:35 AM on October 9
posted by Dysk at 6:35 AM on October 9
But then, I'm originally from Denmark which has an intense degree of wage compression compared to here. The background I'm from, there shouldn't be the kinds of pay differences that lead to people being paid twice minimum wage thinking themselves underpaid because they can point to others whose salary is an even bigger multiple. Nobody should make that much more than anyone else, all jobs are worthy of decent pay.
posted by Dysk at 6:39 AM on October 9
posted by Dysk at 6:39 AM on October 9
ok, then, its poorly paid*
*relative to any other similar profession for people with similar skills and background, and relative to any other outside option they may have with their education, or almost any other white collar profession
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:39 AM on October 9 [2 favorites]
*relative to any other similar profession for people with similar skills and background, and relative to any other outside option they may have with their education, or almost any other white collar profession
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:39 AM on October 9 [2 favorites]
relative to any other similar profession for people with similar skills and background,
This is the bit that irks me, I think. It assumes that some people just deserve better than others.
posted by Dysk at 6:42 AM on October 9
This is the bit that irks me, I think. It assumes that some people just deserve better than others.
posted by Dysk at 6:42 AM on October 9
How so
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:53 AM on October 9
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:53 AM on October 9
Funnily, academics as a group actually have less favorable views of DEI than the general population because they (not wrongly) see it in practice mostly as a performative checklist for institutions to launder their reputations.
This has generally been my experience. I'm at a university that just axed its entire DEI program to preempt the State GA and the Supreme Court. When the DEI program still existed, several of us took the DEI in research certification, and our biggest criticism was that the administration was using this as a fig leaf to say they were practicing SEI without making any kind of structural changes to hiring, admin, etc.
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 6:59 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]
This has generally been my experience. I'm at a university that just axed its entire DEI program to preempt the State GA and the Supreme Court. When the DEI program still existed, several of us took the DEI in research certification, and our biggest criticism was that the administration was using this as a fig leaf to say they were practicing SEI without making any kind of structural changes to hiring, admin, etc.
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 6:59 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]
Of course, the article is attempting to pull a rhetorical trick by conflating unfavorable opinions toward DEI initiatives with unfavorable opinions toward their stated goals. "Look, these people don't think DEI initiatives actually work to address systemic issues, so clearly they agree with us that there are no systemic issues."
It attempts to use this trick more than once. I'm sure its audience will fall for it.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:16 AM on October 9 [5 favorites]
It attempts to use this trick more than once. I'm sure its audience will fall for it.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:16 AM on October 9 [5 favorites]
Well, I'm thinking I should not have included the link to the Tablet thing, and it's a lesson about knowing what kind of place you're linking to.
Amidst all the noise there were a couple of al-Gharbi's remarks that I would have liked seen get some engagement. One of which is namely that if D's want to re-assemble the New Deal coalition only bigger and better, they do have to deal with the fact that not everybody sees the appeal of some progressive goals for inclusiveness. A good start on that dealing would be to forthrightly renounce the notion that "market-based solutions" are always to be preferred, and to recognize out loud that organized labor has never made progress when it did not have the support of a D President and that organized labor's support is critical to Ds. Biden has been the best labor President of any of our lifetimes (unless you're Biden's age and you personally remember President Truman) and D Presidents need to keep that up.
Another was his point about "preaching to the choir." There is very little effort these days to engage the conservatives on any substantial topic, and a lot of that has to do with their unwillingness to honestly participate in that. There really is a lot of invincible ignorance out there, even once you've gotten past the pure bad-faith talk. To the extent that someone can go to those people and argue in favor of nonviolence and in favor of the humanity of the victims of say a bombing campaign against Syria, and keep it up without losing his shit, I'm in favor of it. He might not change a lot of minds but even one is not too few.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:12 AM on October 9 [4 favorites]
Amidst all the noise there were a couple of al-Gharbi's remarks that I would have liked seen get some engagement. One of which is namely that if D's want to re-assemble the New Deal coalition only bigger and better, they do have to deal with the fact that not everybody sees the appeal of some progressive goals for inclusiveness. A good start on that dealing would be to forthrightly renounce the notion that "market-based solutions" are always to be preferred, and to recognize out loud that organized labor has never made progress when it did not have the support of a D President and that organized labor's support is critical to Ds. Biden has been the best labor President of any of our lifetimes (unless you're Biden's age and you personally remember President Truman) and D Presidents need to keep that up.
Another was his point about "preaching to the choir." There is very little effort these days to engage the conservatives on any substantial topic, and a lot of that has to do with their unwillingness to honestly participate in that. There really is a lot of invincible ignorance out there, even once you've gotten past the pure bad-faith talk. To the extent that someone can go to those people and argue in favor of nonviolence and in favor of the humanity of the victims of say a bombing campaign against Syria, and keep it up without losing his shit, I'm in favor of it. He might not change a lot of minds but even one is not too few.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:12 AM on October 9 [4 favorites]
How does renouncing market based solutions line up with "progressive goals for inclusiveness"? Those seem like entirely separate concerns.
posted by sagc at 8:22 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]
posted by sagc at 8:22 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]
The idea that Democrats need to be stronger on economic issues like supporting organized labor is a mainstream position among progressive Democrats. The issue with presenting it as al-Gharbi's bold, unconventional idea is that - in this article at least - that's being used to sell him as "the only academic who can speak truth," the truth being of course that all this social justice stuff is just hurting Democrats, that people don't care about it, or are at worst being alienated by it, and perhaps Democrats ought to just stop fighting back so hard against conservative efforts to demonize marginalized people for political gain. We can throw a few people under the bus, surely.
It's a Trojan Horse, in other words. And it's not even his horse.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:01 AM on October 9 [4 favorites]
It's a Trojan Horse, in other words. And it's not even his horse.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:01 AM on October 9 [4 favorites]
One of which is namely that if D's want to re-assemble the New Deal coalition only bigger and better,
Here's the thing - I actually don't want to reassemble the New Deal coalition, because the New Deal coalition was infamously built on white supremacy - something that gets elided over when people wax poetic about it. As I've pointed out in other threads, the whole point of why identity politics became A Thing is because these groups face issues specific to them that need to be addressed - a higher minimum wage doesn't help you if you don't get hired due to racial discrimination, for example.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:02 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]
Here's the thing - I actually don't want to reassemble the New Deal coalition, because the New Deal coalition was infamously built on white supremacy - something that gets elided over when people wax poetic about it. As I've pointed out in other threads, the whole point of why identity politics became A Thing is because these groups face issues specific to them that need to be addressed - a higher minimum wage doesn't help you if you don't get hired due to racial discrimination, for example.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:02 AM on October 9 [1 favorite]
>> Granted, presenting yourself as a fresh, thoughtful, independent thinker who isn't bound by narrow ideological boundaries is a great sales pitch.
> Yes, because whenever someone labels themself as an independent thinker they are undoubtedly announcing they are really straight up deeply right-wing libertarian.
"It is I, Jonny Edgelord, here to shock you with some dangerous ideas! [...] So get this: I have every boring conservative belief ever. [...] What I support and argue for is indistinguishable from William F. Buckley but I am somehow thirty-two."
posted by AlSweigart at 9:10 AM on October 9 [11 favorites]
> Yes, because whenever someone labels themself as an independent thinker they are undoubtedly announcing they are really straight up deeply right-wing libertarian.
"It is I, Jonny Edgelord, here to shock you with some dangerous ideas! [...] So get this: I have every boring conservative belief ever. [...] What I support and argue for is indistinguishable from William F. Buckley but I am somehow thirty-two."
posted by AlSweigart at 9:10 AM on October 9 [11 favorites]
. A good start on that dealing would be to forthrightly renounce the notion that "market-based solutions" are always to be preferred
Bidenomics has basically already done this: When President Biden came into office, public investment as a share of the economy had fallen from 7% in the 1960s to half that. A core tenet of Bidenomics is that targeted public investment can attract more private sector investment, rather than crowd it out. This is particularly true in sectors that are central to the long-term economic and national security interests of the United States—from improving our infrastructure, to semiconductors, to investing in clean energy and climate security.
Targeted public investment is not a market-based solution, it's a recognition that the markets aren't allocating capital well enough and that the government needs to shovel money at a problem to get stuff done.
posted by BungaDunga at 1:06 PM on October 9 [3 favorites]
Bidenomics has basically already done this: When President Biden came into office, public investment as a share of the economy had fallen from 7% in the 1960s to half that. A core tenet of Bidenomics is that targeted public investment can attract more private sector investment, rather than crowd it out. This is particularly true in sectors that are central to the long-term economic and national security interests of the United States—from improving our infrastructure, to semiconductors, to investing in clean energy and climate security.
Targeted public investment is not a market-based solution, it's a recognition that the markets aren't allocating capital well enough and that the government needs to shovel money at a problem to get stuff done.
posted by BungaDunga at 1:06 PM on October 9 [3 favorites]
a higher minimum wage doesn't help you if you don't get hired due to racial discrimination, for example.
On the other hand, targeting low unemployment does end up producing smaller racial gaps in employment simply because with a tight labor market even racists will start hiring anyone who is available.
posted by BungaDunga at 1:12 PM on October 9 [1 favorite]
On the other hand, targeting low unemployment does end up producing smaller racial gaps in employment simply because with a tight labor market even racists will start hiring anyone who is available.
posted by BungaDunga at 1:12 PM on October 9 [1 favorite]
> Here's the thing - I actually don't want to reassemble the New Deal coalition, because the New Deal coalition was infamously built on white supremacy
Yeah, that's the point where the "only bigger and better" part was supposed to come in.
> Bidenomics has basically already done this:
Yeah, that's the part about "Biden has been the best labor President of any of our lifetimes (unless you're Biden's age and you personally remember President Truman) and D Presidents need to keep that up."
Great illustrations of my point, which is that people seem to be looking for reasons to dismiss this guy rather than admit he might have something to say that's worth hearing. Look, I'm really sorry I linked to Tablet, OK?
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 1:32 PM on October 9
Yeah, that's the point where the "only bigger and better" part was supposed to come in.
> Bidenomics has basically already done this:
Yeah, that's the part about "Biden has been the best labor President of any of our lifetimes (unless you're Biden's age and you personally remember President Truman) and D Presidents need to keep that up."
Great illustrations of my point, which is that people seem to be looking for reasons to dismiss this guy rather than admit he might have something to say that's worth hearing. Look, I'm really sorry I linked to Tablet, OK?
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 1:32 PM on October 9
yeah you're right we're all totally liberal elites that are triggered or whatever. that's the only explanation for why a lot of people think the post sucks.
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 2:23 PM on October 9
posted by Why Is The World In Love Again? at 2:23 PM on October 9
Yeah, that's the point where the "only bigger and better" part was supposed to come in.
Which is part of the eliding over the white supremacy which was my point. The New Deal coalition was built on it - using the New Deal to reinforce white supremacy was how it was sold, and the attempts to change that were the genesis of both the Great Realignment as well as the movement on the right to vilify the government. Arguing to "remake the New Deal coalition but bigger and better" at best fails to grapple with the actual history of said coalition - and when combined with warmed over "class not race/gender/creed/orientation/etc." arguments brings to mind the idea of pushing back to the point of subordinating the needs of minorities to sell the coalition to whites.
Great illustrations of my point, which is that people seem to be looking for reasons to dismiss this guy rather than admit he might have something to say that's worth hearing.
People look askance at people who would willingly align themselves with individuals like Jonathan Haidt for a reason, and as many people pointed out, what he seems to be pushing is the same sort of warmed over libertarian contrarian bullshit that is Haidt's stock in trade, mixed with some sociopolitical observations that aren't nearly as novel as they might seem.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:33 PM on October 9 [1 favorite]
Which is part of the eliding over the white supremacy which was my point. The New Deal coalition was built on it - using the New Deal to reinforce white supremacy was how it was sold, and the attempts to change that were the genesis of both the Great Realignment as well as the movement on the right to vilify the government. Arguing to "remake the New Deal coalition but bigger and better" at best fails to grapple with the actual history of said coalition - and when combined with warmed over "class not race/gender/creed/orientation/etc." arguments brings to mind the idea of pushing back to the point of subordinating the needs of minorities to sell the coalition to whites.
Great illustrations of my point, which is that people seem to be looking for reasons to dismiss this guy rather than admit he might have something to say that's worth hearing.
People look askance at people who would willingly align themselves with individuals like Jonathan Haidt for a reason, and as many people pointed out, what he seems to be pushing is the same sort of warmed over libertarian contrarian bullshit that is Haidt's stock in trade, mixed with some sociopolitical observations that aren't nearly as novel as they might seem.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:33 PM on October 9 [1 favorite]
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I don't know what "the academic pseudo-left" thinks, but to me this doesn't seem like a particularly radical or unusual thought, and I don't know why the author describes anti-imperialism as a "routine." It seems like he takes al-Gharbi at his word, but assumes everyone on the left is simply playing a part.
posted by chaiminda at 11:17 AM on October 8 [25 favorites]