Leftist Fragility, Part 1

What we can learn from a freakout at The Guardian

Now that Robin DiAngelo, the infamous author of White Fragility, has been exposed as a plagiarist as well as a fraud, maybe it is time to turn the tables and have sustained inquiry into leftist fragility. I’ve slowly grown to accept and apply the psychological condition known as projection, and it increasingly seems to be one of the better explanations for why leftist students and faculty—not to mention monochromatic mainstream media newsrooms—go absolutely bananas whenever a conservative visiting speaker comes to a campus, a conservative guest on a liberal cable news show blows up the panel, or an op-ed article from a U.S. Senator causes news people to feel “threatened.”

The fragility of leftists comes from at least two reinforcing factors. First, in universities many leftist faculty are intellectually and professionally insecure people, which leads directly to the second factor, which is creating bubbles against challenge from heterodox points of view. This then spills out into newsrooms, corporate HR departments, cultural institutions, etc. The mediocrity of leftist faculty, especially in the highly ideological and politicized disciplines that have “studies” or “theory” in their title, is palpable, and to paraphrase the Solzhenitsyn line, they know that we know they are full of crap. But as they aren’t fit for gainful employment outside of a college campus they need the protection and rigid enforcement of their bubbles to carry on.

One sign of the psychological “projection” theory how is the left likes to complain that conservatives supposedly suffer from “epistemic closure.” But while conservative students attend liberal universities and sit through liberal courses (sometimes because they are required), leftists are the ones who are closed-minded to hearing any ideas or people who dissent from the party line.

I have a number of examples to roll out in this series, and let’s begin with a freakout in The Guardian over the news that New College in Florida is going to host Steve Sailer for an event. Sailer is indeed controversial, but he always backs up his work with data. (I had him on for a two-part podcast along with Charles Murray a few years back.) The Guardian thought this was so alarming they published a several thousand word articlesmearing Sailer and New College. Let’s take in a few excerpts, starting with the lede:

New College of Florida (NCF) will host the extremist writer Steve Sailer, who has been described as a “white supremacist” and a “proponent of scientific racism”, at a college-branded public event next month.

Note the tell-tale passive voice here: “has been described as a ‘white supremacist’. . .”  By whom has he been called this? Only much later in the story are we told: by the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose credibility is worth less than a Zimbabwean dollar.

Second paragraph:

New College has made headlines since January 2023, when the rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, vowed to transform it from a university known for liberal values into a conservative institution, and installed a new board of trustees including the rightwing culture warrior Christopher Rufo. That board in turn appointed DeSantis’s “close ally” Richard Corcoran as the new college president, in which role he makes a $699,000 salary.

DeSantis’s lieutenants’ actions at New College – like abolishing disciplines, removing bathroom signage and denying professors tenure – have seen the departure of more than a third of the faculty, and given rise to myriad legal actions.

In fact New College was facing rapidly declining enrollment and was on its way to being shut down. A college founded to be a “great books” liberal arts college had descended into mediocre leftism, even though some left-leaning colleges that still do great books like Reed College continue to flourish. New College couldn’t even emulate Reed. The faculty howled when DeSantis decided to reform New College, predicting a disastrous downward spiral. But since the wholesale reforms started (and many of the leftist faculty dismissed), applications and enrollment at New College are way up. Seems New College can get along just fine without a DEI office and stupid “genders studies” departments.

Interesting, by the way, that The Guardian highlights the president’s salary of $699,000. That’s actually low for college presidents these days, and in any case I doubt The Guardian has ever taken note of college administrator salaries before.

In any case, the article proceeds from here to cherry-pick and recycle every left-wing smear of Sailer, along with other “race realists” who refuse to bend the knee to the woke racial orthodoxy of our time. We know for the contemporary left statistics are racist, so it matters not when Sailer copiously documents his argument with data that most scholars ignore. The story mentions that Sailer’s interlocutor for his New College appearance is Wilfred Reilly, assistant professor of political science at Kentucky State University, and author of several books that debunk woke cliches, especially The Hate Crime Hoax. The Guardian neglects to mention that Reilly is black, because it would confound their narrative.

Sailer’s real sin, like Charles Murray and Heather Mac Donald, is that he is unafraid to raise issues and challenges to woke orthodoxy that the left establishment suppresses. The left will never understand how counter-productive this is for their own causes, and how it causes dissidents (especially young men today) to embrace radical views—both responsible and unfounded versions—as an act of transgression.

One problem with this kind of self-induced fragility is that it becomes a self-fulfilling malady, making liberalism brittle and prone to cracking up. More to come on this whole scene. . .