Current Events > More cancel culture on campus!

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/09/30/beverly-gage-resigns-as-grand-strategy-program-director-after-donor-pressure-on-curriculum/

Prominent 20th-century historian and professor Beverly Gage said that she will step down as director of Yales Brady-Johnson program in Grand Strategy in December. She cited the Yale administrations failure to stave off inappropriate influence over the curriculum from the programs donors. The Grand Strategy program, a year-long statecraft and politics course that accepts about 20 undergraduate and graduate students, is backed by two donors Nicholas F. Brady 52, a former United States treasury secretary under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and conservative donor Charles B. Johnson 54, who gave the largest donation in Yales history. Gage, a tenured professor in the history department, began steering the program in 2017 and has since added studies in U.S. civil rights and other grassroots movements to its curriculum.

For years, Gage told the New York Times, Brady and Johnson did not exercise influence over the programs curriculum or slate of lecturers. But after the 2020 presidential election, a Times op-ed by Professor of Political Science and Humanities and Grand Strategy guest practitioner Bryan Garsten prompted Brady to begin pushing for changes to the program, telling Gage that she had not been teaching it the way Henry Kissinger would.

In the months following the publication of Garstens op-ed, the University moved to institute a new advisory board to oversee the course. To do so, Yale seized on a previously-unused measure in the bylaws of the 2006 gift agreement allowing for an external five-member board of visitors to advise on practitioner appointments. Brady and Johnson suggested several members who were ultimately chosen to join the advisory board. These people included Kissinger, the former secretary of state under President Richard Nixon, as well as Stephen J. Hadley, former national security adviser to George W. Bush and Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey.
Its very difficult to teach effectively or creatively in a situation where you are being second-guessed and undermined and not protected, Gage told the Times.

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Interesting how "so and so said the n-word and people called him a racist. Cancel culture!!111" gets tons of posts on this board but examples of actual, insidious cancel culture directed by the side that most perpetrates it get 1 or 2 posts, if any.

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There is a philosophy course at my old school that goes by the title Social and Cultural Philosophy

When I took it in 2013 it was a critical theory course on the Frankfurt School. Now it features stuff like black liberation politics apparently.

Some people just can't handle things being put side by side.

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MedeaLysistrata posted...

There is a philosophy course at my old school that goes by the title Social and Cultural Philosophy

When I took it in 2013 it was a critical theory course on the Frankfurt School. Now it features stuff like black liberation politics apparently.

Some people just can't handle things being put side by side.

I mean it sounds like a seminar class that probably changes topics depending on who's teaching it and when, and neither of those topics contradict each other (though both sound awesome).

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Lorkhan posted...

I mean it sounds like a seminar class that probably changes topics depending on who's teaching it and when, and neither of those topics contradict each other (though both sound awesome).

It's a 3rd year course and one of the few that has 100+ seats... But yes I suppose it does depend on the prof.

Re:the article, that is quite a shame. I never did any of the special stream offerings like this one so I don't know what they are like. It's Yale so some traditionalism isn't entirely out there. But no one should have been pushed out of their job

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MedeaLysistrata posted...

It's Yale so some traditionalism isn't entirely out there.

Yeah I caught wind of it because I follow some Yale profs on Twitter who were using this to point out that people who call elitist, fundamentally traditional institutions like Yale "woke" are way off the mark.

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cuh posted...

In my head canon, you are Professor Stanley himself hehe (this is high praise)

Bwahaha, I can only aspire to such a combination of wisdom and shitposting greatness.

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And damn, that's cool you went to Yale. Think there's at least one other poster here who did as well IIRC

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Yale's academic senate (of which Dr. Stanley is part) is conducting an independent investigation into this, and various departments have condemned this gross display of stepping on academic freedom.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Damn that's cool as hell. And yeah he's definitely grown into that role as of late.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I'm 100% okay with it lmao

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