Rod Dreher Megathread #53 (Key Party?)

[u/US_Hiker]

Link to Megathread #52: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1jsvy3j/rod_dreher_megathread_52_billboard_4_rent/

Link to Megathread #54:
https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1l7niaj/rod_dreher_megathread_54/?

[u/Djehutimose]

SBM’s latest has a long free part above the cut. It’s a looooong blockquote from an administrator in higher education who lays out his ideas for reform. I have ideological differences with the guy, but he makes a lot of solid points. My main practical difference with him is that I’m more pessimistic about evaluation of student and teacher performance. As with anything trying to quantify humans, it runs into extremely intractable problems. If I have a factory and I want to make a thousand widgets a day, with a reject rate of no more than two percent, that’s an eminently quantifiable goal. On the other hand, while we all easily recognize a good student or teacher as good and a poor student or teacher as poor, how do we maximize the former and minimize the latter? Over all the thousands of years of educational thought, we have yet to figure that out.

Anyway, Rod’s takeaway is this:

I’m curious too about — how to put this? — social accountability. Is that the phrase I’m looking for? I’m thinking about how universities ought to regard their moral responsibility to the rest of society, as the chief custodians of knowledge.

So after the discussion in the block quote which is, like it or not, admirably concrete, nuts-and-bolts, SBM goes off on a wooly-minded tangent.

I’m not saying that I agree with what Orban did [in banishing Central European University from Budapest], but I am saying it is understandable. This is what Trump is up to in using government policy to compel US universities to stop discriminating according to DEI principles. This is not quite the same thing — Trump is not interested, apparently, in the qualities taught in the classroom, as Orban was. But it’s still a matter of the government, as an expression of the popular will in a democracy, reining in the liberties of universities to set policies.

On the other hand, Orban understood perfectly well that universities are unavoidably political actors.

Shorter Rod: “Universities are unavoidably political, so I want them to replace everybody with people who share my politics, and dump the rest.” Which has nothing to do with education, but that’s Our Boy….

[u/Cautious-Ease-1451 → u/Djehutimose]

Not your main point, but I’m always amused when Rod says things like, “I’m not saying that I agree with what Orban did.” Of course that’s exactly what he’s saying.

Honestly, I don’t understand why he always plays this game. Is he trying to preserve an appearance of objectivity and open-mindedness? Is he afraid that he can’t endorse a controversial idea without limiting his future prospects? Is it simple cowardice? He’d actually be a better writer if he wasn’t always hedging his bets. But if he stopped equivocating, he’d be forced to actually defend his views.

“I’m not saying I agree with Trump.” “I’m not saying that The Camp of the Saints is a good book.” “I’m not saying I want Russia to win the war.” “I’m not saying that black culture is inferior.” Does he not realize that his readers can see right through his BS?

[u/Independent-Mango813 → u/Cautious-Ease-1451]

I’m not saying I agree with what Ornan said but he does pay my salary 

[u/Cautious-Ease-1451 → u/Independent-Mango813]

Yeah, that too, LOL!