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The toxic ideas that have corrupted today’s universities all began as tiny, obscure musings before escaping from the laboratories. They may have started with an unpublished paper or two, a request for modest institutional funding, or an informal discussion group. Eventually, they earn a panel at a regional disciplinary convention and an experimental course. In a few years, the “little idea” has metastasized into a full-blown intellectual plague.
Particularly disturbing is that the intellectual soundness of this “little idea” has no relationship to its burgeoning appeal the opposite may be true: the wackier it is, the more alluring for career-minded academics chasing “the next big thing.” How else can one explain critical race theory, academic-style feminism, the deconstruction mania, and, alas, much more?
January 19, 2021
A political science professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign warns about a new “intellectual plague” that could take over universities.
“The toxic ideas that have corrupted today’s universities all began as tiny, obscure musings before escaping from the laboratories,” Robert Weissberg (
right) wrote in an essay for
Minding the Campus. He said the next disease to worry about is the proliferation of programs in “hate studies.”
“This incipient plague embraces the very essence of totalitarianism the criminalization of thinking,” Weissberg said. “Out with criminal behavior, in with thoughtcrime.”
The professor mentions Bard College as one supporter of hate studies. It has a fall 2020 “Hate Studies Initiative.”