Joseph H. Manson, a formerly tenured professor of anthropology at UCLA, has decided to retire early because “of Woke capture” at universities all across the land.
In a blog he posted on July 4, Manson described in great detail his frustrations with the intolerance of woke faculty members and graduate students, as well as the precipitous increase in “critical” studies, which view nearly all academic research — including STEM — through the lens of race, gender, sexual orientation, and other human “identities.”
“[T]he Woke takeover of higher education has ruined academic life,” Manson wrote.
To illustrate his point, Manson recounted the ostracization of his former colleague, P. Jeffrey Brantingham, a fellow anthropologist who had studied urban crime and developed a “predictive” algorithm which he then pitched to law enforcement. As a result of this research, the Graduate Students Association at UCLA publicly accused Brantingham of “entrench[ing] and naturaliz[ing] the criminalization of Blackness in the United States.” Brantingham was also referred to the vice chancellor for research, ostensibly in hopes that the vice chancellor would censure or otherwise sanction him.
Though Brantingham continues to teach and research in the department, he no longer participates in faculty meetings or events and has even had to reorient the course catalog so that his popular course called “The Ecology of Crime” is not listed too closely to the courses taught by colleagues who condemn his line of research.
In short, Brantingham has been “unpersoned.” And Manson believes that other professors from across the country and in every academic discipline are at risk of meeting a similar fate because, Manson predicted, the woke tyranny on campus will only get worse.
“The younger faculty tend to be more Woke than their elders,” Manson noted. “Administrators and student ‘protesters’ perform elaborately choreographed routines that end with the former enacting policies that they wanted to enact anyway, for which the latter’s public temper tantrums serve as a pretext.”
Between the demonization of respectable scholars, the sheer number of woke faculty and grad students, and the frightening surge of “anti-Zionism, a.k.a. thinly disguised Jew-hatred,” Manson said he’s had enough.
“[M]ainstream U.S. higher education is morally and intellectually corrupt, beyond the possibility of self-repair, and therefore no longer a worthwhile setting in which to spend my time and effort,” he stated.
In response to the blog post, UCLA spokesman Bill Kisliuk issued a statement, which reads in part, “UCLA is deeply committed to the free and open exchange of ideas and we strongly support the academic freedom of our scholars.
“We actively encourage respectful debate, but we also expect equity and fairness, even when people strongly disagree. We do not tolerate discrimination or harassment and, to that end, UCLA strongly condemns anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred.”