So, Bari Weiss, Niall Ferguson, Steven Pinker, Lawrence Summers - the usual crowd of people united by being anti-left, have come together to form a university*. Many valid reasons people on twitter are having fun with their launch, including the fact that they have
no campus, no degree, and no accreditation, and are already asking for donations.
But there's another thing I want to point out - their first courses, starting next summer,
are called "forbidden courses". Given the figures involved, one can guess that it's going to be about how colonialism is good, or how neoliberal capitalism is solving all issues, mixed in with bromides about free speech and thought. But the fact that they compartmentalize knowledge into categories or forbidden or not...
What should be happening is them doing courses or a degree in history (including a course by Niall Ferguson), and in economics (including stuff by Summers), etc. As you learn the subject and its many open questions, you gain the tools and the background to come across, ask, and tackle these "dangerous" and "forbidden" questions. But they're not actually interested in the boring dull grind of learning a subject from the ground up.
No, instead, it's going to be a summer seminar on controversial issues.
I have no background in history or colonialism, and I will listen to Niall Ferguson talk about how it benefited the colonies, how he has been censored when he taught exactly that in his 30 years at Stanford and his dozen books, and nod along about how the lack of these vital and frank conversations has set the public back.
More than anything, anti-intellectual.
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