Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody

Two important books, both published in 2018, address the causes, manifestations, and potential dangers of these social changes. They are The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure 68 by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt and The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Space

For cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, it is vital that we appreciate how much progress we have made in liberal democracies—and that we owe that progress to Enlightenment humanism—if we wish it to continue: A liberal democracy is a precious achievement. Until the messiah comes, it will always have problems, but it’s better to solve those problem

Put more simply, one central belief in postmodern political thought is that powerful forces in society essentially order society into categories and hierarchies that are organized to serve their own interests. They effect this by dictating how society and its features can be spoken about and what can be accepted as true. For example, a demand that

Ultimately, “research justice” amounts to judging scholarly productions not by their rigor or quality but by the identity of their producer and privileging those understood by postcolonial theory as marginalized as long as they are advocating knowledge production methods and conclusions that conform to those of postcolonial theory.

5 CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND INTERSECTIONALITY

Writes Gopnik, “What liberalism has in its favor are the facts. Liberals get nothing accomplished—except everything, eventually.”11 Liberals, he tells us, believe in reform rather than revolution because the results are in: it works better. More permanent positive social change is made incrementally rather than by revolutionary transformation. This

While no one should be made to feel ashamed of their sexuality, race, religion, gender, or ability status, many disabled people probably disagree with the view that having a disability should be celebrated—and this is unlikely to help them find an effective treatment or remedy, if that’s what they want. And, despite what disability studies claims,

9 SOCIAL JUSTICE IN ACTION Theory Always Looks Good on Paper

The critical-thinking tradition is concerned primarily with epistemic adequacy. To be critical is to show good judgment in recognizing when arguments are faulty, assertions lack evidence, truth claims appeal to unreliable sources, or concepts are sloppily crafted and applied…. Critical pedagogy regards the claims that students make in response to s

For Fawcett, the four themes of liberalism are “acceptance of conflict, resistance to power, faith in progress, and respect for persons.”