On the alleged socialist dominance in academia
Various forms of Turning Point
Yesterday there came to my attention to a tweet from an organization called `Turning Point’. Disappointingly this is not as its name suggests, something to do with differential calculus, but a far-right propaganda organization which, among other things, is bemoaning the `socialist dominance in academia’.
Left-wing infiltration of university education would be a very serious matter if it existed, so to allay the fears of my readership that this is not really a problem, in the following I am going to list a few physics topics I will be teaching this week to make it clear that they can not possibly be accused of being influenced by political bias.
- Mathematical Physics. I will be explaining how Laplace Transformations can be used to solve ordinary differential equations by seizing the means of production.
- Quantum Mechanics. I will be demonstrating how the path integral formalism allows the result of a quantum mechanical calculation to be obtained by considering the sum over all historical class struggles.
- Electrostatics. I will be discussing why some substances are insulators rather than conductors using the theory of dielectrical materialism.
- Optics. The topic here is Snell’s Law, which relates the Engels of incidence and refraction for light of a given colour and for given pair of media.
It goes without saying that students will not pass the examination on these topics unless they get enough Marx.
I hope this clarifies the situation.
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February 11, 2019 at 1:30 pm
Don’t forget to tell the students that what is driving British politics at present is how fast the organised left within the Labour Party is growing.
You see, the rate of change of Momentum is a force.
February 11, 2019 at 1:57 pm
Shurely `farce’?
February 11, 2019 at 2:00 pm
Tell them about fluid resistance as an example of a nonconservative force.
February 13, 2019 at 8:22 am
Fluid mechanics? Definitely feminist, and hence left-wing.
Do a quick internet search on Luce Irigaray, fluid mechanics, and rigid bodies, which turns up gems such as this description of her “philosophy”:
“The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids… From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders.”
February 13, 2019 at 9:00 am
It’s difficult to find an adequate response to that. That is extraordinary.
But then we find, in another area, still far from scientific circles, lots of nonsense about the word quantum.
February 13, 2019 at 9:54 am
Yes, there are many people who spread woo and bullshit. What is more and more becoming a problem of the left is that some fail to distance themselves from postmodernist jerks.
February 13, 2019 at 10:15 am
She is also responsible for this gem: “Is E=Mc² a sexed equation? Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possible sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged that which goes faster.”
Someone once said that no matter how crazy satire is, one can always find something more extreme which someone actually believes.
The above quote is not satire, by the way.
February 13, 2019 at 10:16 am
She is also responsible for this gem:
“Is E=Mc² a sexed equation? Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possible sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged that which goes faster.”
February 13, 2019 at 10:17 am
Someone once said that no matter how outrageous satire is, one can actually find people who believe things even more outrageous.
February 13, 2019 at 12:05 pm
In 1990 I wrote a not-published essay called “Pathological industries of the quantum” which included some satirical asides about what might come next, and suggested that today’s satire would be taken seriously tomorrow. It happened quite quickly, with Danah Zohar’s books.
February 13, 2019 at 1:59 pm
The most bizarre I have come across so far is probably David Icke. Shape-shifting reptiloid extraterrestrials controlling the world disguised as Jews, anyone? Of course, the Illuminati figure as well, but all the Illuminati conspiracy theories are child’s play compared to Icke, who seems to have a large following.
February 13, 2019 at 2:58 pm
From the Wikipedia page on Icke, linked to above:
As of 2003, the reptilian bloodline is claimed to include 43 American presidents, three British and two Canadian prime ministers, several Sumerian kings and Egyptian pharaohs, and a smattering of celebrities. Key bloodlines include the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, various European aristocratic families, the establishment families of the Eastern United States, and the British House of Windsor. Icke confirmed to Andrew Neil in May 2016 that he believes the British Royal Family are shape-shifting lizards. He identified the Queen Mother in 2001 as “seriously reptilian”, and said he had seen Ted Heath’s eyes turn black while the two waited for a Sky News interview in 1989.
It is claimed that the Brotherhood either created or controls the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, Round Table, Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, Club of Rome, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group, as well as the media, military, CIA, MI6, Mossad, science, religion, and the Internet, with witting or unwitting support from the London School of Economics.
In a 2013 survey in the United States by Public Policy Polling, 4% believed that “‘lizard people’ control our societies.
February 13, 2019 at 6:23 pm
But does Icke invoke quantum theory?
I think the most bizarre scene I have seen on TV was the episode of Jon Ronson’s entertaining series “Secret rulers of the universe” about Icke, in which a bunch of angry Jews were shouting at him that “shape-shifting giant lizards” running the world was so ridiculous as to be unbelieveable and was an obvious code for Jews, in an antisemitic slur that they were secretly running the world; and Icke replying back with equal heat that he really did mean lizards. I think he did mean it!
February 11, 2019 at 2:55 pm
You could relate disaster capitalism to chaos theory, disorder, entropy and enthalpy! https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/09/mystic-mogg-jacob-rees-mogg-willam-predicts-brexit-plans
and how Jacob Rees-Mogg plans to make £700M from a no-deal Brexit!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0671885286/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2
The Great Reckoning: Protecting Yourself in the Coming Depression: Protect Yourself in the Coming Depression by Davidson & Rees-Mogg.
February 11, 2019 at 3:55 pm
Isn’t the author the father of the politician?
February 12, 2019 at 11:00 am
Yes, and he also edited The Times newspaper through the 1970s.
February 12, 2019 at 12:04 pm
So it’s not the Astronomer Royal’s cat?
February 12, 2019 at 1:15 pm
Is he an ailurophile too?
February 11, 2019 at 6:26 pm
Let me remind potential commenters of the comments policy on the home page of this blog. In particular, do not accept anonymous or pseudonymous comments or comments that I consider to be abusive.
If you’d like to comment please be prepared to identify yourself.
February 12, 2019 at 9:50 am
This is in response to an attempt by an anonymous person to post defamatory accusations on this thread. The person also implicated a student at Maynooth in these allegations. I cannot and will not publish such comments on this blog.
February 11, 2019 at 8:20 pm
All non directly productive education is left-wing.
February 12, 2019 at 2:40 am
The commentator you refer to may have been incoherent but he was touching on an important point. In a field such as English, sociology and psychology, there is a very left-leaning clear bias. There is a lot of scholarship into this topic.
February 12, 2019 at 9:46 am
The comment was not published. How do you know who the commentator was, and what they were saying? Was it you?
February 12, 2019 at 3:45 pm
I am responding to your comment at the start of your blog post. I have no idea who made whatever comment that you refer too.
BTW I have never heard people describe Turning Point USA as far right. Sounds like a bit of an unsober comment, kinda like claiming all of academia is socialist.
February 12, 2019 at 4:00 pm
Interesting.
February 12, 2019 at 6:08 pm
Oh, and any organisation fronted by a Trump-suppor Hitler apologist is far-right in my book.