This is the week that eager schoolwork nerds will get their Early Decision answers from the nation’s elite universities.
Our mole at NYU (over $100,000 per year including a few required extras, such as airfare and going out in Manhattan) was required to choose from a short list of core courses, only one of which had availability… French in the Americas:
Here’s a slide from the 12th week of the course:
The teacher explained to our mole that the indigenous were natural followers of Rainbow Flagism and that this native religion was suppressed by European colonizers who were also passionate gender binarists. My email to the mole:
They’re making you learn about an economically irrelevant subgroup within an economically irrelevant subgroup within an economically irrelevant country. (Natives within Quebec, which is on track to lose its language, religion, and culture to recent immigrants, within Canada, whose manufacturing output is perhaps 1/50th that of China?) It feels to me as though they’re teaching this because they have some professor who is an expert on the subject, not because any American needs to know this information. How could this possibly be justified compare to learning about the history of China, for example? Or if you want to talk about ethnic minorities, why not talk about the ethnic minorities of China or the noble Muslims who’ve settled in Europe, Canada, and the U.S. despite rampant Islamophobia?
(I later checked with Grok and learned that China does not have 50X the manufacturing output of Canada, measured in dollars, but rather only 36X.)
Here’s another slide from the same PowerPoint and I would love to know how it could relate to European migrants conquering the noble natives 200 years prior to the invention of the tank.
On the other hand, it is tough to come up with a scenario in which understanding the above images and being able to answer the “What do they have in common?” question posed by the professor would have a $100,000 value. On the third hand, maybe the ability to answer the question is worth $trillions? Let’s see how our future AI overlords do with it.
Grok:
Gemini disagrees almost completely!
ChatGPT also disagrees with Grok:
It seems as though NYU could replace all of its students with these three LLMs and still have a lively in-class discussion!
Is NYU that expensive? My nephew goes there, I never knew my sister and her husband are being squeezed that much
NYU is one of most expensive universities.
Were noble native-American males pregnant and thus unable to drive away ignoble pilgrims? I never took the course, and never will, so I wouldn’t know without Philip shining light on this topic. I am sure that even though Philip have not yet taken the course, NYT already coveted this anti-colonialist topic.
It would be interesting to see if the instructor would give Phil and his readers a mock grade for the discussion here. You don’t pass these courses by telling the prof that Somalis are the new European pirate invaders, an opinion you have synthesized from taking his/her/xher course. I wonder if Professor Woke would have the stones to show up here and comment? Academics at UNC, as a public institution, are fighting aggregation of syllabuses into a database — in the name of safety, I think.
NYU seems to have adopted Columbia’s Core Curriculum (and in fact if you want to learn Bengali for your language requirement, you can take it at Columbia while at NYU). Columbia was resistant to changes from it being based on Western civilization, explaining that the United States was founded on western philosophy and culture, and we need to learn that first — other cultures are of course interesting and enriching to learn about. That changed when, Wikipedia laments, “the civil rights, feminist, and various other social movements saw the Core Curriculum as an inflexible way to promote the canon of ‘dead white males’ and as a failure to acknowledge the essential contributions of other global cultures.” Phil’s readers are often reminded of how little dead white males contributed to the design and construction of the buildings the students are learning in, etc., so I won’t go into that — let’s enter it into the record as fact.
The literal term “New World” is correct in the context of English, the language and country where it is from. As usual, I think the cultural depictions are distorted. If the American Indians were more tolerant of diversity in gender roles, they definitely did it in a more dignified way than the rainbow brigade — which seems to be culturally appropriating Indian symbology rather than vice-versa. How Colonialist French represent anti-colonialism is beyond my Ivy League trained mind’s ability to tolerate contradiction. I have a slightly higher than average degree of facial asymmetry, and our society seems to be increasingly obsessed with it (there’s a group on Reddit that will do a rating of it for free!) Do I want the rainbow brigade to adopt my cause and shout “Deformity Pride!” Hell to the no. I just want dignity in my misshapenness.
> not because any American needs to know this information. How could this possibly be justified compare to learning about the history of China, for example?
Like FAANG and technical interviews, Phil, they aren’t really wanting you to remember the specifics forever. They want you to understand how the world works. Once you pass this course you have a better insight into why Microsoft et al. have moved away from the DEI. Going against the stream or up against the tank needs to be an informed decision. Do you want to change the world? Do you want to eat out of dumpsters? That’s what they are training human minds on and AI is just not smart enough to get that. Nod to the bullshit, repeat, and your $100K will be a golden ticket to success as a finbro trainee. So, Dr. Woke, does my essay here get an F-?
All of which is a distraction from the real problem of our peaceful Western democracy seemingly on its last legs with nothing in sight to replace it except lunacy. Tearful condolences to the families and friends of the loved ones lost in the insane violence over this holy weekend, which is what we really need to be talking about fixing.
It can all get overwhelming, can’t it? While I was listening to the news this morning on the NPR, they were discussing Australia’s tough gun laws which violence still somehow escapes. I got to thinking about the images Phil showed us yesterday. (It’s sometimes hard to see the forest through the invasive GLBT trees.) There actually is something about this course at NYU that is relevant to the mass shootings. The pictures show us oppression directly and the need to stand up to it. Oppression (and the related repression) is the use of violence, or threats of violence, to achieve control. When one’s government is oppressive, it normalizes violence instead of democracy.
That is a significant input into the cycle of violence humans are prone to. Is it then so surprising that when an individual’s government uses violence to achieve its goals, an individual would decide to go that route too? I hope this course at NYU introduces them to Ghandi and Martin Luther King (other people of color to which they need to pay attention) to help lead them to ideas for solutions. Our government should set a good example as part of the solution. It also isn’t too surprising, with respect to the French Canadian colonials, that an oppressive colonialist system would have some inherent sub-oppression of its own citizens. Am I right here Prof. Woke?
We all know better. No professor or university would teach a course about the “Tank Man.” Doing so would hurt the feelings of the Chinese government and invite backlash.
Yet teaching today about the wrongdoing of dead white men from hundreds of years ago, and repeatedly reminding the current generation that both dead white men and living white men are bad and evil, is treated as a good and acceptable subject. After all, the a white man is always bad and evil.
The quick easy way to fix this is to make student loans dischargeable, like other consumer loans. That way, lenders will never finance like this in the first place.
Anon, a little secret to share with you (please keep it on the down low). 92% of student loans are made by the U.S. government. You are the lender. Still want them dischargeable? Comprende?
Hunter, did you really need to publicize the Great Grift we have had going in “higher” education and Harvard in particular. How do you expect us to continue raising our $52b endowment if the government isn’t funding our Black Studies “students”? I too need to have my $900,000 salary funded. Do think about your words going forward. Words have consequences for all of us.
It is so heartwarming to see a budding celeb biracial bromance on-line. And over such a beautiful topic as free money to study useless nonsense which won’t come in handy flipping burgers (a job which you will need celebrity connections to get when AI takes over). Have you two thought about a run for President/Vice President/Co-presidents in 2028? Claudine could be the first black woman openly Gay president! Mo free money, mo free money, mo free money! I’ll hang up and let you two comment. Bye!