Someone Should Tell The Prof That Some @sshole is Making Stupid Arguments Under His Name

I am a tech nerd.

I love gadgets. I program for a living. I have two degrees that are at least somewhat tech related (I made up my own degree so that I could complete my undergrad while working full time. I have a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies with concentrations in political science and computer science. I am boring across multiple disciplines.). I believe that the world would be a better place if English and history majors would stop whining and learn how statistics and science actually work. Whenever these conversations come up, I am quick to remind people that the so-called tech bros are led by Peter Thiel and his philosophy degree and that the humanities have given us social Darwinism and the Dunning School of History, an apologia for the Confederacy.

And this is the dumbest thing I have read in ages.

A Yale professor (the last five years have taught me that our elite learning institutions are nothing more than power protecting cartels.) has written an article arguing that schools should abandon the humanities and become technical only colleges. That is right — a Yale professor wants to turn Yale into ITT. It is the argument of a moron or someone operating in bad faith. I am going to assume bad faith, but I will spend a moment or two on the possibility that the professor is, in fact, a moron.

The prof seems to think that humanities cost money. That schools are losing money because the Big Bad Wokies of the humanities have so angered his God Trump that the real backbone of colleges — scientists — are being punished. Clearly, for the good of humanity, colleges should drop the humanities to appease Trump and therefor save what is good and just and beneficial for mankind. He seems to be under the impression that sciences are somehow subsidizing the rest of the university. That is not true. Medical, technical, and scientific degrees are much more expensive, in general, to teach than humanities courses. Humanities students generally subsidize technical students, even taking into account government grants.

He somehow also missed the fact that the Trump administration is cutting cancer research and the NIH grants because they deem science as woke. RFK Jr. is not slicing vaccine research because of the presence of Woman’s Studies but because he is a murderous asshole high on his own lack of intelligence. The grants are going away because the far right does want to spend money on the public good. More, they do not want to spend money on universities since they do not value knowledge not controlled by them and they are incensed at institutions that minorities can use to get a foot in the door.

But the professor almost certainly knows all this. He knows how universities work. He knows that the right has been gutting universities for years. He knows that the grants aren’t coming back even if the universities agree to teach only what Trump wants. He is acting in concert with those forces in order to discredit the notion of a wide-ranging education. Why? Because the far right has always opposed an educated populace, at least when it cannot dictate the education. Our prof knows this. He wrote this because he thinks he holds a knife and is quite happy to plunge it into the backs of his colleagues.

I know that this is not an especially reasoned, measured take. I know that I didn’t break down each and every one of his sentences and back my argument with reams of links and data. I don’t care. His argument is so obviously terrible, so obviously based on misinformation and misdirection, so obviously disconnected from reality as to be obviously made in bad faith. And I feel no compulsion to pretend otherwise. It is not a strength to take bad faith arguments and treat them as if they were not, in fact, in bad faith. It serves no purpose to treat nonsense as if it deserves a measured rebuttal.

The professor wrote some bullshit because he doesn’t believe in universities as a place of education — he sees them as tools in a political project. Taking his bad faith arguments in good faith merely elevates his thoughts into the realm of reasonableness. He is not being reasonable. He is bullshitting, and in doing so hopes that people will spend time arguing against his bullshit, arguing the fine details of university funding and the relative merits of humanities versus technical education. It is a cowardly attack on the mission of a university — to produce well-rounded citizens. If he won’t defend his real position, I see no use in pretending he has.

It profits no one to pretend otherwise, so I won’t.