This Stanley fellow says: “I’m an intellectual. What I do is I describe reality as I see it.” I believe Eric Hoffer was more accurate when he observed that intellectuals were those who trade in received opinions.
I used to aspire to become recognised as an intellectual. But experience showed me such people are willing to sacrifice a few million people, just to test a theory. Which is pretty much what the self-proclaimed intellectuals have been doing in backing and even driving wokeism (I refuse to call it ‘progressive’, as it’s more akin to Maoism and Stalinism – which is about as regressive as one can be).
According to LinkedIn, people are not only intellectuals or entrepreneurs. They are keynote speakers, thought leaders and strategists. Sometimes they are even international keynote speakers and visionaries. It used to be enough to win a Nobel prize, or to publish a work of totally incomprehensible philosophy, or write a book that everyone has read but not understood (A Brief History of Time). Not any more. Grade inflation has seen to that.
My personal LinkedIn favourite is the ‘multi-hyphenate’. Yes, it really is a thing apparently. I’m actually looking forward to the day I get to meet someone who describes themselves as such.
Oddly we talk of how X and insta are rotting peoples brains I would argue that LinkedIn is the most mind numbing pointless piece of $€¥# known to humanity. I’m not for banning things, but LinkedIn really does make me reconsider that position.
To be fair, those using Linkedin only as something of the nature of a CV (oops, “resume” as we may have to start calling it) can be excused for blowing their own trumpet there, although some of those titles do sound rather pretentious.
It is the self-attribution that is absurd. It is a compliment to describe someone else as a “leader” or a “real visionary”. To describe oneself as a “leader” or “visionary” is just awfully crass.
Yeah but Gnostic Experts like Prof Stanley have already conclusively decoded the Matrix or Science of Reality. They themselves are TS “The Science.” They think on a higher plane of existence. There’s no need to debate them because The true Science of Reality will adapt and mold itself to their Expert minds.
Jack Robertson
20 days ago
The Mass Media Law of Epistemic Inversion applies: ‘I’m an intellectual.’: No. You’re not.‘I tell it like it is.’ No. You don’t.‘I don’t suffer fools gladly.’ Yes. You do.‘I’m a voice for the Voiceless.’ No. You’re not.‘I believe in free speech and plurality in debate.’ Nope.‘I despise all this ‘celebrity’ rubbish…’ Ha ha ha ha ha ha…
Self-cancelling irony descending fast on the Age of Narcissism like a great big blanket of epistemic white noise, inexorable and, for the rest of us, profoundly liberating. Tick tock, I for one can’t wait ’til everyone with a massive ego and an equally outsized public platform finally gets it. And STFU, to let their actions alone do whatever personal advertising they feel inclined to need.
After a currency scandal, he set up shop in the Athens marketplace, where he lived in a bucket and shouted abuse at passersby. I’ve always admired the simplicity of that arrangement.
He ‘saw off’ the homicidal Macedonian pygmy in short order.
Christopher Chantrill
20 days ago
It brings a tear to the eye to see our academic friends mourn the end of the glorious Age of Research they enjoyed over the last 80 years, But where is their sympathy for Bristol in the decline of the slave trade, for the Clyde in the decline of shipbuilding, for Manchester in the decline of cotton, for South Wales in the decline of coal mining?
And where is Dickens to make fun of it all?
Champagne Socialist
20 days ago
Highly amusing when the clowns who consider Donald Trump to be a genius gather to discuss who and what can be considered “intellectual”!
I was always taught to not ‘mock the afflicted’, but in this case you are absolutely correct.
UnHerd Reader
20 days ago
It’s a bit like all those people who left Twitter/X for BlueSky after Elon went a bit OTT on the red cordial. I just rolled my eyes at the number of dinner parties where people said quite proudly they had left. There’s a lot of people who have stayed, they just shrug and ignore all the irksome crypto wackos and keep toiling away. I really value those people and hold them and their grit, in high esteem.
Andrew Roman
20 days ago
Coming to Canada is not the solution. We have problems of our own.
As Jordan Peterson has experienced! It’s not just one-way traffic, though his move to the US was arguably less on ideological grounds and more on the Canadian authorities removing his professional status.
… on ideological grounds. Let’s be clear about that!
Claire Grey
20 days ago
Well, I don’t know, I’m just grateful I don’t live in Birmingham (UK) right now. Poor people. If something is’nt done soon very real diseases will erupt, never mind overexcited American academics.
Leejon 0
20 days ago
Taps! The one thing I really wish we would embrace derivatively, a far more pleasing heatmap.
Wait till they get a black eye from the little weight at the end of the bathroom light cord in the middle of the night – in any list of British oddities drawn up by foreigners, that is always fairly near the top.
Along with:
“Why do you go to the bar in the pub to order?”
“Why do you say ‘do X at your earliest convenience’ when you mean ‘do it immediately if not sooner’?”
“Why do you eat food that actually hurts you?” (this one was in response to some pretty aggressive salt & vinegar crisps)
etc., etc.
American exchange students complain about the utterance “Can I help you, sir?” when the utterers are Proctors’ officers (so the utterance actually means “what the f. do you think you’re up to, you nasty little oik”.)
Ah yes, classic British passive aggression dressed up as politeness. Honestly, you don’t realise just how much you manage to get done in the UK with pass-agg until you move abroad and people don’t get it and you actually have to say what’s wrong with you like a normal person.
Ah, salt & vinegar crisps, what nostalgia! Also for Salad Cream, Branston pickle, HP sauce, English sausages and decent bacon, chocolate eclairs. And Germalene!
A Robot
20 days ago
Prof. Stanley says “I’m an intellectual”. Adrian Mole, when aged thirteen and three quarters said just that, but then he grew up. Prof. Stanley also said “I describe reality as I see it.” Only American humanities academics are so naïve that they think they are objective. This self-delusion means that their “research” is infested with confirmation bias.
The Irish are the only intellectual cohort who don’t need to shout their gift from the rooftops. As evinced by Professor Stock’s quote, directly from Fr. Ted on our home grown so-called anti-fascists “ we don’t need any more of that sort of thing.“
Andrew R
20 days ago
The Jason Stanley – Hi video on YouTube is comedy gold.
Alex Carnegie
20 days ago
Spot on about the widespread and depressing deference to American ideas and perspectives as an alternative to trying to understand the different realities of Britain and having the self assurance to come to different conclusions. There was an irony in those who often were the most upset by American hegemony and White supremacy being so enslaved by the ideas of some Harvard and Yale ideologues.
Much the same was true in the 1840s. For example, my old school had degenerated to such a dreadful state, with only a handful of feral boys remaining, that everyone advised the then headmaster to expel the lot and start again. But an inspiring new headmaster, Dr Vaughan, turned up and completely restored the place in only a few years. (Unfortunately he later blotted his copy book by writing love letters to some of the boys, and was forced to retire.)
Dear Mr. Carnegie, please do not think that the legacy media and Washington offer more than a funhouse mirror view of “American” ideas. This is the 3rd largest nation in the world, with 340 million people living out their lives without state coercion. We are mankind, which includes the best and worst of our nature. After decades here, I comprehend it no better than an Englishman could know Europe.
Chris Whybrow
20 days ago
I despise the slavish imitation of the States in the this country. I blame the media for most of it. Both the Guardian and the Telegraph are guilty of reporting on the goings on in America like it’s local news.
A friend of mine in Australia says it’s dreadful over there aswell. Her kids are entirely Americanised, as are many other young Australians. It’s not surprising, given how powerful the US has been as a cultural hegemon.
I think the effect started with millennials. As a young person, the US seemed like the most exciting place on earth to me – everything cool and exciting came from there. I didn’t consciously emulate their speech or behaviour – but I know I’ve picked up some Americanisms on the way. I am definitely guilty every now and again of attaching that “super-” prefix to an adjective.
Yes, it’s cringey in Australia when the smart set assert their independence and progressiveness, then proceed to demonstrate it by parroting American lefty opinions on irrelevant issues.
I emigrated from Australia about a year before A.Q.I. kicked in. It feels a very weird place to visit now. Never quite sure if someone’s asking me something or not.
Yes, that upwards inflection, like everything is a suggestion gets on my nerves too. Unfortunately, my vocabulary got infected with the filler “like” (“and it was, like, SO bad”) when I was a teenager (“My So-Called Life” has a LOT to answer for) and surgically removing it from my adult speech patterns has like been removing bits of shrapnel with tweezers.
Wokeism is so alien to the basic Aussie nature that they don’t seem to know what to do with it, but feel obliged to adopt what their American ‘friends’ have been trying to impose on them, without understanding the nature of the American dynamic.
Now the fallacy is being exposed and they are being shaken (or reaffirmed, if they’d resisted), but there is still a vestige of English respect for authority and the institutions have all been taken over by ‘regressives’ in a creeping far left capture. They also support a king who appreciates that he has an entire Commonwealth to consider, not just the local interests, and this can be confusing in the current climate.
I think the Americans are a very good influence at the moment. We are losing freedom of speech and are being herded into woke behaviour. It is mostly the Americans who speak up for us when we cannot, especially Trump and Elon Musk who call out that our freedom of speech and democracy is in decline under the present government.
It is far more difficult to shut down opinions that do not conform to the official narrative in the USA than it is in most other countries. The censorship being imposed by the Starmer government in the UK is frankly shocking, as is the judicial dictatorship here in Brazil.
I grew up on American TV progs and films, a strong diet of Wild West and found Rohan & Martin (as well as Monty Python) hilarious. I wish the country well, but hate its hypocrisy and have never had the slightest desire to even visit the place. Several hours in Miami airport, waiting for a connection, was more than enough to confirm my previous impressions.
Unfortunately, living in Brazil has shown me how easily a country can adopt all the worst US cultural traits. Now we are battling to restore the most precious one, in the face of a judicial dictatorship, and it is inspiring to see how the USA is turning things around.
And all the rubbishy programmes and films in cinemas and televisions. My niece who visited me in UK was fast developing an American accent in the nineties. Australian speech never had this upward, questioning inflection with all its tentative uncertainty back where I was born and bred in Western Australia in the 40’s 50’s and 60’s.
Dear Ms. Eyre, the US still is a very exciting place to live. It is also very large. Too large, in fact, to comprehend. Imagine if Europe let its ambitious young adults compete freely in the marketplace and then keep what they earned. Like that. I get up every morning here prepared to be astonished. Don’t think that you can know the US from its legacy media and capital city.
I’m a bit of a late comer here but as a Yank, want to offer my undiluted praise for the erudition found in these comments. The average American, who the MSM panders to, has the vocabulary of a chimp. I love reading UnHerd as much for the comments as the articles. I’m no Hemingway but know good writing when it’s presented. Your sarcasm and wit delight me to no end. I do wish I could offer some marginally clever comments but you all are doing the job just fine. Bravo.
Judging by the stated nationality of commenters, the Mail Online is quite popular with US readers, presumably because most articles are free. I don’t read the Guardian Online much, but I imagine the same applies to that, for the same reason.
So the imitation may simply be intended to appeal to US readers, just as a lot of Mail Online articles are obviously directed at female readers. Basically, all these outlets need all the readers they can get!
The Mail has always been commercial, while The Guardian was aimed at left-of-centre (I used to read it and The Daily Telegraph to get a balanced opinion; the latter also had a good crossword and the broadest sports coverage) and has become increasingly wokeish in recent years. But all the MSM are struggling for survival, less because of the move online but because of the way they have betrayed us with their omissive and biased reporting! The Covid narrative dictatorship was unforgivable.
At least when we speak, we don’t keep repeating ourselves…
Katharine Eyre
20 days ago
Oh I know a few neurotic left liberal academic sorts. When the far right did well in the Austrian elections, the British ones were immediately all over my FB feed (one of the reasons I finally logged out last year and never went back) openly wondering “when they’ll be deported”.
To me, this does not just betray neuroticism and a complete lack of perspective. It also shows a staggering level of vanity and arrogance.
Why on earth do they think that the Austrian authorities would waste their scarce resources by coming to them (quiet, law abiding citizens holding valid post-Brexit residence documents) first rather than tracking down the ones who have no right to be here or are causing trouble?
It’s so silly. And these are the people poncing around with prosecco at parties pretending to be the intellectual crème de la crème, who know better than anyone else.
I heard the same histrionic vibe from Canadians when I was on holiday in Florida earlier this year. Tearfully bidding goodbye to their American friends, saying I guess I won’t be able to see you next year because foreigners aren’t welcome here any more.
And this is the “resistance”! Personally, I’m not terribly convinced of the efficacy of this new brand of “resistance by hysteria”. I would have hoped that intellectual resistance would have involved coherent alternative visions of the future, joined-up thinking…or just thinking, full stop. But so far, all we’re getting is the application of the “N” and “F” words at every opportunity, unlimited profanity masquerading as serious politics, hyperventilation and – drum roll – flouncing out of the country.
If you mean Trump I agree most heartedly with you. Part of cleaning up the swamp in my view.
Andrew R
20 days ago
There are quite a few social posts where it is said that Stanley was “fleeing” the U.S. Was he being chased by rednecks with pitchforks and torches, did he have to disguise himself as an old women while crossing the border?
This absurd hyperbolic language doesn’t do so called reputable media any favours
Professor Stanley – ” I describe reality as I see it.” That sounds suspiciously like the person who says ‘I call a spade a spade’ or ‘I tell it like it is’. In fact it is essentially the same phrase, just uttered by a racist rather than a Liberal University professor.
The “spade” is a device for cutting turf, peat or clay. The contrast is with a “shovel”; which is a somewhat similar thing but with a different purpose. The phrase is not racist.
Daniel Lee
20 days ago
“Weary as many of us are of self-aggrandising cosplay, still, the response to Trump’s bizarre university policies is truly something to behold.”
Much as I admire Ms. Stock’s work, she’s going to have to pick a side here. One is predominantly more correct and less harmful than the other.
Because by way of its near total grip on popular, academic, political and media culture, the Left has control of ninety percent of the “possibilities.” It’s how they have used the once positive principle of compromise to nearly wreck the West by way of its own positive impulses.
Has Kathleen been gripped by nostalgia for her time in the dark stanic university and her ex-colleagues back in the day?
JR Stoker
20 days ago
The USA may not be totally satisfactory but it is one of the freest countries in the world, still. It may even becoming more so. Certainly it ranks higher than Canada.
If ex-Governor Carney (Bank of England, failed) becomes Premier Canada will in reality become less free. (Not of course in the view of these scarpering intellectuals.) And what will they do if Mr Poilievre becomes Premier? Run to Greenland?
It has been a massive improvement from Biden to Trump. Freedom of speech is coming back and entrepreneurs will have more freedom to build up the country. Unfortunately we are slipping the other way towards the Biden leftie type of policies.
Jeff Dudgeon
20 days ago
Did not the the flood of Americans fleeing the McCarthy purges of communists in the 1950s not enrich our culture?
Indeed very well done, and for those seeking some Portlandia-style humor, open the link Kahleen embedded here re: Jason Stanley, “mostly known on the internet for saying his former job title out loud”
David Megginson
20 days ago
Just to say: irrespective of the content of the article (which is great), isn’t the quality of the writing fantastic. Talk about putting her finger right on the spot with precisely the right words and tone. This is the sort of writing you used to get long ago in the pages of The Listener…
Resulting in high quality comments and stimulating discussion.
UnHerd Reader
20 days ago
This: “They also tended to bring the puritanical tendencies of their forebears, displaced from the sexual realm into the political one.” The Marxist part of the Left in the US has largely been supplanted by New England Puritanism, woke progressivism being its last, most desiccated form.
Their preoccupations may differ, but they share the same over-zealous regard for virtue and the urge to stifle and compel others into conforming with it.
You don’t? Wokeness is a sort of lazy secular Calvinism, with those predestined to be damned easily identifiable (white hetrosexual men). If they had the power, I’m sure they’d sew red letters on the clothing of those who transgressed the dictates of DEI.
Evan Heneghan
20 days ago
“I’m an intellectual. What I do is I describe reality as I see it.”
That was brilliant! I nearly choked on my coffee I was laughing so hard.
Arabella
20 days ago
American academics fleeing ‘fascism’ will not find freedom in Canada. The covid lockdowns here were brutal and unrelenting. The current Canadian prime minister has described what was a minor and peaceful protest against lockdown on the streets of Ottawa as ‘sedition’ – a strong word indeed. Two of the organisers of that protest have just been convicted of ‘mischief’ and are each facing a prison sentence of up to 10 years merely for saying the words ‘hold the line’. Freedom-loving Canadians are still fleeing their own country in search of somewhere they can breathe.
Perhaps not freedom, but find a place where the version of fascism (I remind you what Mussolini meant by that: the union of corporate and state power) persecutes people they disapprove of (like truckers opposed to COVID vaccine mandates) — debanking political dissidents via private banks, just like censoring non-state-approved views via social media companies, is definitely the union of state and corporate power in action.
Chipoko
20 days ago
This article describes the class of people that has so destroyed our world! And what creeps they are too!
So presumably you decry all the things that have come out of universities -penicillin, mobile phones, GPS systems, computers -most of the things that you take for granted (er, hang on, you wrote your comment on a computer!).
Those came out of universities, but not out of the now-thoroughly corrupted departments of humanities and social sciences in which these “refugees” were employed.
Vanessa Dylyn
20 days ago
Writing as a life-long resident of Toronto, I believe the weenie intellectual refugees will feel right at home at the University of Toronto, in the wokest city in the wokest country of the world. DEI reigns with all the other hierarchies of victimhood.
Floras Post
20 days ago
Describing these academics as left wing seems pretty inaccurate. The left is fundamentally an economic attitude, all the current left do is moralise, they are uninterested in economics and remind me more of Edwardian ladies admonishing the lower classes than anything else.
Wokery is all just a big speech code, U and non U for those who remember that, insiders and outsiders and barely political. Trump rose by noticing the decreasing living standards of Americans, if the left failed to notice that then they have no right to call themselves left wing.
The left wing economic attitude is all about wealth distribution. There is very little understanding of wealth creation. So really, all the moralising woke stuff is very much part of it because somebody gets to decide who are the deserving recipients.
Wealth creation is done by wealth creators, self-appointed or not.
Jae
20 days ago
It occurs to me that these “Intellectuals” are the same ones who gave us DEI, CRT, BLM, the “Patriarchy”, “Our Democracy” which means only their democracy, bad science on Covid, toddlers can trans, TERF verbiage, men can birth babies, raging antisemitism coupled with terrorist worship, and the idea that certain speech should be oppressed, namely any speech that disagrees with them. This is a shortlist.
So good luck Canada and the UK. I hope none of them let the door hit their intellectualism on the way out.
Brendan O'Leary
20 days ago
Never mind these useless academics. “Defunding” isn’t exactly being jailed for a hate crime. If you want to avoid the risk of being defunded by government, don’t rely on funds from government. Simple.
Maybe someone could also do a comparative UK-USA heatmap of engineers and entrepreneurs and see what direction they’re moving.
I fear that you don’t understand how science is funded in the USA. Mostly it’s funded by grants from outfits like the National Institutes of Health and the grant pays not only for the costs of research, but also for the salaries of the people doing it, including, almost always, the salary of the principal investigator, When grants are terminated, as very many have been, it means in many cases, destitution, loss of your house for both the PI and all the employees on the grant. That is very serious indeed.
And you comment “If you want to avoid the risk of being defunded by government, don’t rely on funds from government” shows even more clearly your lack of understanding about how science works, Almost all of the principles of science come from universities, and is done largely on government grants. People like you would probably have defunded Einstein whose work was not immediately profitable. But without his work, GPS systems would not work.
I think you’re missing the larger point that scientists had, before the last decade or so, usually worked hard to avoid being seen as politically partisan. There’s a good reason for that since the idea that “truth” is what it is and the political persuasion of the person seeking it shouldn’t enter into the equation was vital to the continuance of funding for scientific research with public money. Since the woke/progressive takeover of the academy and the pressure placed upon scientists to validate progressive shibboleths that most sane people know to be false, that has destroyed the presumption of neutrality that scientists used to enjoy and that, in turn, has opened up many fields to being defunded in the ongoing culture wars. I don’t blame scientists, per se. The progressive Left put them in this position because the Left knows that science is seen as the final arbiter of truth in our society. Science is our religion and the scientists, the priests. If you can make the priests say that your political opinions are the objective truth, you win by default. Your opponents are irrational and not to be taken seriously. That cynical attempt to manipulate science for political ends is what this backlash is all about.
Well said = “I don’t blame scientists, per se. The progressive Left put them in this position because the Left knows that science is seen as the final arbiter of truth in our society. Science is our religion and the scientists, the priests. If you can make the priests say that your political opinions are the objective truth, you win by default. Your opponents are irrational and not to be taken seriously. That cynical attempt to manipulate science for political ends is what this backlash is all about.”
Do you really think the majority of “cringe academics” threatening to leave are Einsteins, or even scientists?
My comment was about academics in general. The risk of relying on government funding should be understood by them, just as those of us outside the patronage system have to deal with in our daily lives where industries can be destroyed by government policies. None of us have jobs for life anymore.
Jae
20 days ago
It’s astonishing reading down how many of you are blaming America for your Australian or UK kids being “Americanized”. You’re their parents, get a grip if you don’t like it.
Also, I just visited the UK and Australia, you’re all under the heavy boot of your governments, free speech isn’t even a thing any more. So you’re not exactly Americanized are you.
Alex Lekas
20 days ago
Someone moving to Canada, which seized the bank accounts of certain people during Covid and is tolerating a rash of Islamist disruption, to escape the threat of authoritarian govt should be a punch line, not a topic of serious discussion.
Where was Stanley when the president he voted for embedded govt agents within social media to stifle dissent and control information? Where was he when the president he voted for mandated a jab on penalty of losing one’s job for non-compliance? He’s not opposed to “fascism,” per se; he just wants his side being in charge of it and lobs mindless accusations against a guy who already served one term without any of the predicted horribles coming to pass.
Meanwhile, you nice people in the UK have a PM actively stating that white suspects will get harsher sentences than anyone else just for being white. If only there was a word for that.
Richard Simpson
20 days ago
Prof. Stanley was already in job talks with UoT before he saw what was happening around him in Ivy League schools. Prof. Snyder was already a Trump basher since Trump 1.0 Prof. Shore is like all 3 Jewish and ProPalestine. Ms. Stock is one of my favorite writers here as is T. Eagleton but this piece is clearly drowned in transatlantic murk. Fascism is real just ask academics like L. Korda, A Doroudi,R Srinivasan, B. Khan Sufi, R.Ozturk, M.Khalil. All have been rendered up by ICE agents and taken to detention centers. Reports are over 300 hundred visas of these foreign students have been removed without due process so sorry it’s no cosplay and luckily the Yalies are connected. How many academics have been picked up by HO IE agents and off to Club Guitmo sites from your streets. In Yank dialect “Just sayin”!
Rob N
20 days ago
Nature polled their, presumably tens of thousands, readers and subscribers and about 1600 replied of whom about 75% replied they were considering emigrating so that is not 75% of scientists thinking of leaving. Similar poor statistics to the “97% of climate scientists fear human climate change” – rubbish.
Having said that I can only agree that, by definition, the UK would be much better off without any of those loons leaving the US because it is ‘going fascist’!
UnHerd Reader
20 days ago
I agree with most of this, not least the disadvantage UK Social Science and Humanities Ph.D.s have been placed in the job market against North Americans (excludiing Mexicans) who can spend seven or more years on a Ph.D. and publish, against get it done in four for UK students and try to publish after. And why are people now Assistant and Associate Professors instead of just Lecturers and Senior Lecturers / Readers (I did like my title when I was a Reader)? US class politics is reviving but those committed to that are staying and fighting. As for the Identity Politics mob, we have enough home grown idiots on that and Butler’s commentary on the Trans issues should be delivered as a lecture to working class Scots women – she would get an interesting and vigorous response.
Alan and Teresa MacColl
19 days ago
The X compilation of Prof Stanley from Yale was very funny. He reminded me of the actor character in The Simpsons: ‘Hi, I’m Troy McClure, you may remember me from such public information films as “Lead Paint, Delicious but Deadly” and “Firecrackers, the Silent Killer”.’
Martin Smith
19 days ago
I was previously unaware of the term ‘cosplay’ as an alternative to masquerade. Glad to see it is of Japanese rather than American origin.
Mark epperson
19 days ago
Righteous “Academics”! Fools, charlatans, and moral cowards, all of them. They remind me of my old hippy buddies still fighting the revolution that passed them by a long, long time ago. But most of all, these folks are losers and zealots. I can’t stand zealots, whether they are trying to save me or kill me. Losers like these folks ultimately become very boring and find comfort in their cell of the boring losers. I love it that their solution is to “move”! Good riddance, go bore some other countries’ citizens with your BS angst. Love it!
Andrew Holmes
19 days ago
The entire essay made me smile.
UnHerd Reader
19 days ago
Building walls doesnt help, but seems to be Ms Stock’s main occupation these days of post DEI celebrity, and not many distinguished US academics of the calibre she mentions would come to UK, they couldn’t live on the salaries.
UnHerd Reader
19 days ago
As an Orthodox Jew living in the US, and old enough to know a little about what caused the Holocaust, I have nothing but contempt for historians who can say that the US is now a Nazi state because it stopped the transformation of US universities into Judenrein institutions. The cognitive dissonance that Orwell described wherein England’s intelligentsia went from completely pacifist to telling him he was a coward for not getting out of his hospital bed to take his rifle back into battle against Franco has now been matched by the people who call Israel a Nazi state.
Mister Smith
19 days ago
Hyperbolic American “intellectuals” who proclaim they give up lucrative low energy, low stress jobs for political reasons would be more believable if they truly did it, silently, without fanfare.
Thomas Boudreau
19 days ago
If the Trump Administration’s threat to defund the big universities has the collateral effect of causing Stanley, Snyder, Shore and their ilk to leave the country it will be a welcome side effect. Let them take their woke nonsense to Canada or any other country that will have them.
Peter Mott
19 days ago
The liberal/conservative heat map graphic is in fact not documented clearly so its no wonder that people are interested by it
Matt Sylvestre
19 days ago
I am an American classical liberal… If these Lefties want to decamp to Canada where they are free to occupy academic buildings in support of Hamas, support neo-discrimination, and be de banked for political beliefs then I say don’t let the screen door hit you in the ass….
C C
19 days ago
Maybe we can set up a re-education camp in Yorkshire for American academics. A few months of being told that they are daft buggers and that no one is looking at them anyway might make them less annoying. There will be tears and threats of litigation but the brain is very plastic and they will adapt, eventually.
UnHerd Reader
19 days ago
This is a totally out to lunch article. I am Canadian and I approve of what Trump is doing to the US universities. Time to shut down DEI and return to meritocracy. To those academics who are going to Canada, we don’t want you and your warped thinking. Now that the tables are turned on you, you don’t like it. People need to separate the revolting aspects of Trump from the good things he is doing.
Cathy Carron
18 days ago
Self-deportation is a good thing : )
UnHerd Reader
18 days ago
The important points about this article are the subtle bowing down &’star struck’ eyes of our Brit universities to anything American, incoming. Amusing & astute writing, again
UnHerd Reader
18 days ago
The trouble with articles by Kathleen Stock and similar writers is that though they have been forced to quit the cosy leftist group-think compliance club for daring to hold divergent views on an issue, they can’t shake off the old prejudices and genuflections. So it’s obligatory for articles like this to include nonsensical snipes at the right just to prove that the writer is still at heart on the old team. Here, we see an inane little aside about how the right never criticises immigration from the US. Well, no, it doesn’t. For the same reason that it doesn’t concern itself with immigration from Peru or Bolivia or Laos or Nepal. There is comparatively little of it and it causes zero societal problems. No one is getting into a small boat and crossing the Atlantic from the US. By contrast, the point in the last paragraph lands. If only she would confine herself to well-grounded comment.
Sisyphus Jones
18 days ago
Let’s start a movement where we ostracize anyone over the age of 17 who uses “cringe” as an adjective.
Jerry Carroll
17 days ago
There is a saying in America that is based on long observation. “Everything the left touches turns to shit.” Keep this in mind as ex-pat academics flutter to the UK like alarmed poultry.
This Stanley fellow says: “I’m an intellectual. What I do is I describe reality as I see it.” I believe Eric Hoffer was more accurate when he observed that intellectuals were those who trade in received opinions.
As i see it, that makes Stanley a failed intellectual.
Is there anything more cringe inducing than someone describing themselves as an intellectual?
Oh wait a minute there is. It’s the person that describes themselves as an entrepreneur!
Says you typing on a device because an entrepreneur brought it to market. Try buying your computer from an intellectual.
Honestly, the myopia and is at Mr Magoo levels.
Being an entrepreneur is one thing. Being described as an entrepreneur by others is fine. To refer to yourself as one is cringe.
“Hi, I’m Elon and I’m an entrepreneur.”
It’s on par with the person who refers to themselves in the third person.
But hey, maybe you drop it into conversation in a perfectly natural and uncringey way!
There are some people in the world who can do this. Though not very many. Musk is one whether you like it or not.
Entrepreneurship can be measured by results. Intellectuals …
I used to aspire to become recognised as an intellectual. But experience showed me such people are willing to sacrifice a few million people, just to test a theory. Which is pretty much what the self-proclaimed intellectuals have been doing in backing and even driving wokeism (I refuse to call it ‘progressive’, as it’s more akin to Maoism and Stalinism – which is about as regressive as one can be).
According to LinkedIn, people are not only intellectuals or entrepreneurs. They are keynote speakers, thought leaders and strategists. Sometimes they are even international keynote speakers and visionaries. It used to be enough to win a Nobel prize, or to publish a work of totally incomprehensible philosophy, or write a book that everyone has read but not understood (A Brief History of Time). Not any more. Grade inflation has seen to that.
The pinnacle is surely ‘Influencer’. We can only dream…
My personal LinkedIn favourite is the ‘multi-hyphenate’. Yes, it really is a thing apparently. I’m actually looking forward to the day I get to meet someone who describes themselves as such.
Oddly we talk of how X and insta are rotting peoples brains I would argue that LinkedIn is the most mind numbing pointless piece of $€¥# known to humanity. I’m not for banning things, but LinkedIn really does make me reconsider that position.
I note that “multi-hyphenate” only has one hyphen. Must try harder.
Try to avoid bringing you ban bat out. You’ll be swinging it at everything soon.
To be fair, those using Linkedin only as something of the nature of a CV (oops, “resume” as we may have to start calling it) can be excused for blowing their own trumpet there, although some of those titles do sound rather pretentious.
It is the self-attribution that is absurd. It is a compliment to describe someone else as a “leader” or a “real visionary”. To describe oneself as a “leader” or “visionary” is just awfully crass.
Usually people with a job title of “leader” are in organizations who want to make them into mushrooms and pay them with titles.
Unless of course they have brought to market advanced technologies and made a dime on it.
Self-deportation is a good thing : )
As long as they are going across the pond and not north.
Saying “”I’m an intellectual” is not tremendously intellectual.
Bingo.
Yeah but Gnostic Experts like Prof Stanley have already conclusively decoded the Matrix or Science of Reality. They themselves are TS “The Science.” They think on a higher plane of existence. There’s no need to debate them because The true Science of Reality will adapt and mold itself to their Expert minds.
The Mass Media Law of Epistemic Inversion applies:
‘I’m an intellectual.’: No. You’re not.‘I tell it like it is.’ No. You don’t.‘I don’t suffer fools gladly.’ Yes. You do.‘I’m a voice for the Voiceless.’ No. You’re not.‘I believe in free speech and plurality in debate.’ Nope.‘I despise all this ‘celebrity’ rubbish…’ Ha ha ha ha ha ha…
Self-cancelling irony descending fast on the Age of Narcissism like a great big blanket of epistemic white noise, inexorable and, for the rest of us, profoundly liberating. Tick tock, I for one can’t wait ’til everyone with a massive ego and an equally outsized public platform finally gets it. And STFU, to let their actions alone do whatever personal advertising they feel inclined to need.
I am not an intellectual; I am a cynic.
Diogenes of Sinope, the greatest man who ever lived.
After a currency scandal, he set up shop in the Athens marketplace, where he lived in a bucket and shouted abuse at passersby. I’ve always admired the simplicity of that arrangement.
He ‘saw off’ the homicidal Macedonian pygmy in short order.
It brings a tear to the eye to see our academic friends mourn the end of the glorious Age of Research they enjoyed over the last 80 years, But where is their sympathy for Bristol in the decline of the slave trade, for the Clyde in the decline of shipbuilding, for Manchester in the decline of cotton, for South Wales in the decline of coal mining?
And where is Dickens to make fun of it all?
Highly amusing when the clowns who consider Donald Trump to be a genius gather to discuss who and what can be considered “intellectual”!
Not half as amusing as the po-faced lefties who think he’s an Adolf impersonator, as per the header photo.
Their time is up, and so is yours.
I was always taught to not ‘mock the afflicted’, but in this case you are absolutely correct.
It’s a bit like all those people who left Twitter/X for BlueSky after Elon went a bit OTT on the red cordial. I just rolled my eyes at the number of dinner parties where people said quite proudly they had left. There’s a lot of people who have stayed, they just shrug and ignore all the irksome crypto wackos and keep toiling away. I really value those people and hold them and their grit, in high esteem.
Coming to Canada is not the solution. We have problems of our own.
As Jordan Peterson has experienced! It’s not just one-way traffic, though his move to the US was arguably less on ideological grounds and more on the Canadian authorities removing his professional status.
… on ideological grounds. Let’s be clear about that!
Well, I don’t know, I’m just grateful I don’t live in Birmingham (UK) right now. Poor people. If something is’nt done soon very real diseases will erupt, never mind overexcited American academics.
Taps! The one thing I really wish we would embrace derivatively, a far more pleasing heatmap.
We Brits must learn to call them “faucets” in order to make our land less alien to this new wave of refugees.
Yeah. You should make sure to install a “trunk” in your car too.
Yes, and deploy some kind of gizmo that integrates the waters from the hot and cold taps.
Ah… taps?
I read it as tapas.
Wait till they get a black eye from the little weight at the end of the bathroom light cord in the middle of the night – in any list of British oddities drawn up by foreigners, that is always fairly near the top.
Along with:
“Why do you go to the bar in the pub to order?”
“Why do you say ‘do X at your earliest convenience’ when you mean ‘do it immediately if not sooner’?”
“Why do you eat food that actually hurts you?” (this one was in response to some pretty aggressive salt & vinegar crisps)
etc., etc.
American exchange students complain about the utterance “Can I help you, sir?” when the utterers are Proctors’ officers (so the utterance actually means “what the f. do you think you’re up to, you nasty little oik”.)
Ah yes, classic British passive aggression dressed up as politeness. Honestly, you don’t realise just how much you manage to get done in the UK with pass-agg until you move abroad and people don’t get it and you actually have to say what’s wrong with you like a normal person.
Ah, salt & vinegar crisps, what nostalgia! Also for Salad Cream, Branston pickle, HP sauce, English sausages and decent bacon, chocolate eclairs. And Germalene!
Prof. Stanley says “I’m an intellectual”. Adrian Mole, when aged thirteen and three quarters said just that, but then he grew up. Prof. Stanley also said “I describe reality as I see it.” Only American humanities academics are so naïve that they think they are objective. This self-delusion means that their “research” is infested with confirmation bias.
The Irish are the only intellectual cohort who don’t need to shout their gift from the rooftops. As evinced by Professor Stock’s quote, directly from Fr. Ted on our home grown so-called anti-fascists “ we don’t need any more of that sort of thing.“
The Jason Stanley – Hi video on YouTube is comedy gold.
Spot on about the widespread and depressing deference to American ideas and perspectives as an alternative to trying to understand the different realities of Britain and having the self assurance to come to different conclusions. There was an irony in those who often were the most upset by American hegemony and White supremacy being so enslaved by the ideas of some Harvard and Yale ideologues.
A perfect demonstration on how far State Education in the United Kingdom has degenerated over the past forty years.
I suspect it is far too late to reverse this odious trend and we must now ‘reap the whirlwind’.
Maybe we are already reaping it? But at least it might make those in authority look for real answers.
I live in hope if not expectation.
Much the same was true in the 1840s. For example, my old school had degenerated to such a dreadful state, with only a handful of feral boys remaining, that everyone advised the then headmaster to expel the lot and start again. But an inspiring new headmaster, Dr Vaughan, turned up and completely restored the place in only a few years. (Unfortunately he later blotted his copy book by writing love letters to some of the boys, and was forced to retire.)
Dear Mr. Carnegie, please do not think that the legacy media and Washington offer more than a funhouse mirror view of “American” ideas. This is the 3rd largest nation in the world, with 340 million people living out their lives without state coercion. We are mankind, which includes the best and worst of our nature. After decades here, I comprehend it no better than an Englishman could know Europe.
I despise the slavish imitation of the States in the this country. I blame the media for most of it. Both the Guardian and the Telegraph are guilty of reporting on the goings on in America like it’s local news.
A friend of mine in Australia says it’s dreadful over there aswell. Her kids are entirely Americanised, as are many other young Australians. It’s not surprising, given how powerful the US has been as a cultural hegemon.
I think the effect started with millennials. As a young person, the US seemed like the most exciting place on earth to me – everything cool and exciting came from there. I didn’t consciously emulate their speech or behaviour – but I know I’ve picked up some Americanisms on the way. I am definitely guilty every now and again of attaching that “super-” prefix to an adjective.
Yes, it’s cringey in Australia when the smart set assert their independence and progressiveness, then proceed to demonstrate it by parroting American lefty opinions on irrelevant issues.
I emigrated from Australia about a year before A.Q.I. kicked in. It feels a very weird place to visit now. Never quite sure if someone’s asking me something or not.
As if everyone’s terminally uncertain?
Like they don’t know what’s going on ?
All the time?
Dammnnn!! Infected.
Similar to Britain although I think Britain has it worse personally.
Yes, that upwards inflection, like everything is a suggestion gets on my nerves too. Unfortunately, my vocabulary got infected with the filler “like” (“and it was, like, SO bad”) when I was a teenager (“My So-Called Life” has a LOT to answer for) and surgically removing it from my adult speech patterns has like been removing bits of shrapnel with tweezers.
Wokeism is so alien to the basic Aussie nature that they don’t seem to know what to do with it, but feel obliged to adopt what their American ‘friends’ have been trying to impose on them, without understanding the nature of the American dynamic.
Now the fallacy is being exposed and they are being shaken (or reaffirmed, if they’d resisted), but there is still a vestige of English respect for authority and the institutions have all been taken over by ‘regressives’ in a creeping far left capture. They also support a king who appreciates that he has an entire Commonwealth to consider, not just the local interests, and this can be confusing in the current climate.
I think the Americans are a very good influence at the moment. We are losing freedom of speech and are being herded into woke behaviour. It is mostly the Americans who speak up for us when we cannot, especially Trump and Elon Musk who call out that our freedom of speech and democracy is in decline under the present government.
As I said before, it’s a pity you’re not more in tune to the American idea of free speech. You lot don’t have any effectively.
It is far more difficult to shut down opinions that do not conform to the official narrative in the USA than it is in most other countries. The censorship being imposed by the Starmer government in the UK is frankly shocking, as is the judicial dictatorship here in Brazil.
I grew up on American TV progs and films, a strong diet of Wild West and found Rohan & Martin (as well as Monty Python) hilarious. I wish the country well, but hate its hypocrisy and have never had the slightest desire to even visit the place. Several hours in Miami airport, waiting for a connection, was more than enough to confirm my previous impressions.
Unfortunately, living in Brazil has shown me how easily a country can adopt all the worst US cultural traits. Now we are battling to restore the most precious one, in the face of a judicial dictatorship, and it is inspiring to see how the USA is turning things around.
You think it “started with the Milkennials”?
Crikey. My father thought it started with me, with my love of rock’n’roll & American comics but I was only imitating older boys at school.
I’m 70.
And all the rubbishy programmes and films in cinemas and televisions. My niece who visited me in UK was fast developing an American accent in the nineties. Australian speech never had this upward, questioning inflection with all its tentative uncertainty back where I was born and bred in Western Australia in the 40’s 50’s and 60’s.
Dear Ms. Eyre, the US still is a very exciting place to live. It is also very large. Too large, in fact, to comprehend. Imagine if Europe let its ambitious young adults compete freely in the marketplace and then keep what they earned. Like that. I get up every morning here prepared to be astonished. Don’t think that you can know the US from its legacy media and capital city.
I’m a bit of a late comer here but as a Yank, want to offer my undiluted praise for the erudition found in these comments. The average American, who the MSM panders to, has the vocabulary of a chimp. I love reading UnHerd as much for the comments as the articles. I’m no Hemingway but know good writing when it’s presented. Your sarcasm and wit delight me to no end. I do wish I could offer some marginally clever comments but you all are doing the job just fine. Bravo.
Judging by the stated nationality of commenters, the Mail Online is quite popular with US readers, presumably because most articles are free. I don’t read the Guardian Online much, but I imagine the same applies to that, for the same reason.
So the imitation may simply be intended to appeal to US readers, just as a lot of Mail Online articles are obviously directed at female readers. Basically, all these outlets need all the readers they can get!
The Mail has always been commercial, while The Guardian was aimed at left-of-centre (I used to read it and The Daily Telegraph to get a balanced opinion; the latter also had a good crossword and the broadest sports coverage) and has become increasingly wokeish in recent years. But all the MSM are struggling for survival, less because of the move online but because of the way they have betrayed us with their omissive and biased reporting! The Covid narrative dictatorship was unforgivable.
It’s a pity you’re not more “slavish” to the American idea of free speech. You lot don’t have any effectively.
At least when we speak, we don’t keep repeating ourselves…
Oh I know a few neurotic left liberal academic sorts. When the far right did well in the Austrian elections, the British ones were immediately all over my FB feed (one of the reasons I finally logged out last year and never went back) openly wondering “when they’ll be deported”.
To me, this does not just betray neuroticism and a complete lack of perspective. It also shows a staggering level of vanity and arrogance.
Why on earth do they think that the Austrian authorities would waste their scarce resources by coming to them (quiet, law abiding citizens holding valid post-Brexit residence documents) first rather than tracking down the ones who have no right to be here or are causing trouble?
It’s so silly. And these are the people poncing around with prosecco at parties pretending to be the intellectual crème de la crème, who know better than anyone else.
I heard the same histrionic vibe from Canadians when I was on holiday in Florida earlier this year. Tearfully bidding goodbye to their American friends, saying I guess I won’t be able to see you next year because foreigners aren’t welcome here any more.
And this is the “resistance”! Personally, I’m not terribly convinced of the efficacy of this new brand of “resistance by hysteria”. I would have hoped that intellectual resistance would have involved coherent alternative visions of the future, joined-up thinking…or just thinking, full stop. But so far, all we’re getting is the application of the “N” and “F” words at every opportunity, unlimited profanity masquerading as serious politics, hyperventilation and – drum roll – flouncing out of the country.
I love the term “flouncing” although i think “throwing their toys out of the pram” beats it.
Oh I love that phrase too, although I go for “dollies” instead of “toys”. I also like the classic British “throwing a wobbly”.
Chimpanzees throwing poo also comes to mind.
After first “spitting the dummy” !
Got to return to Canada for their free stuff.
Refreshingly bracing like a blast of cool sea air, ahhh. Thanks Doc
Has this odious toad Mr Stanley never been taught that “self praise is NO recommendation”?
I trust the Home Office will ban him from entering the U.K. should he have the temerity to attempt to do so.
Frankly we have more than enough home grown cretins of our own to get on with.
The most scathing piece I’ve read on the subject for a long, long time. Brilliant!
Over priced, over long college degree courses, most worthless socialist propaganda.
That is what has given him the politicalpower to gut them.
Or, as we might paraphrase the WW2 saying:
“Overpaid, over-vexed and over here”
If you mean Trump I agree most heartedly with you. Part of cleaning up the swamp in my view.
There are quite a few social posts where it is said that Stanley was “fleeing” the U.S. Was he being chased by rednecks with pitchforks and torches, did he have to disguise himself as an old women while crossing the border?
This absurd hyperbolic language doesn’t do so called reputable media any favours
He didn’t have to disguise himself..
Ha, ha, very good!
Professor Stanley – ” I describe reality as I see it.” That sounds suspiciously like the person who says ‘I call a spade a spade’ or ‘I tell it like it is’. In fact it is essentially the same phrase, just uttered by a racist rather than a Liberal University professor.
The “spade” is a device for cutting turf, peat or clay. The contrast is with a “shovel”; which is a somewhat similar thing but with a different purpose. The phrase is not racist.
“Weary as many of us are of self-aggrandising cosplay, still, the response to Trump’s bizarre university policies is truly something to behold.”
Much as I admire Ms. Stock’s work, she’s going to have to pick a side here. One is predominantly more correct and less harmful than the other.
I see that as well. She is probably stuck in the middle.
Why, what exactly would force her to pick a side? There are more than two possibilities here.
Because by way of its near total grip on popular, academic, political and media culture, the Left has control of ninety percent of the “possibilities.” It’s how they have used the once positive principle of compromise to nearly wreck the West by way of its own positive impulses.
The political map is not one-dimensional, and certainly not binary.
What would force her to pick a side, as if there were only two choices?
See “Because…” above.
Has Kathleen been gripped by nostalgia for her time in the dark stanic university and her ex-colleagues back in the day?
The USA may not be totally satisfactory but it is one of the freest countries in the world, still. It may even becoming more so. Certainly it ranks higher than Canada.
If ex-Governor Carney (Bank of England, failed) becomes Premier Canada will in reality become less free. (Not of course in the view of these scarpering intellectuals.) And what will they do if Mr Poilievre becomes Premier? Run to Greenland?
It has been a massive improvement from Biden to Trump. Freedom of speech is coming back and entrepreneurs will have more freedom to build up the country. Unfortunately we are slipping the other way towards the Biden leftie type of policies.
Did not the the flood of Americans fleeing the McCarthy purges of communists in the 1950s not enrich our culture?
I cannot imagine so unless they were innocent of being communists.
Quite possibly, but we will be getting the wokest Americans – a bit like when Castro sent his undesirables to Florida.
A jolly good essay
Indeed very well done, and for those seeking some Portlandia-style humor, open the link Kahleen embedded here re: Jason Stanley, “mostly known on the internet for saying his former job title out loud”
Just to say: irrespective of the content of the article (which is great), isn’t the quality of the writing fantastic. Talk about putting her finger right on the spot with precisely the right words and tone. This is the sort of writing you used to get long ago in the pages of The Listener…
Resulting in high quality comments and stimulating discussion.
This: “They also tended to bring the puritanical tendencies of their forebears, displaced from the sexual realm into the political one.” The Marxist part of the Left in the US has largely been supplanted by New England Puritanism, woke progressivism being its last, most desiccated form.
I cannot see a connection between New England puritanism and woke progressivism. They are poles apart. Woke is not vaguely progressive in my view.
Their preoccupations may differ, but they share the same over-zealous regard for virtue and the urge to stifle and compel others into conforming with it.
You don’t? Wokeness is a sort of lazy secular Calvinism, with those predestined to be damned easily identifiable (white hetrosexual men). If they had the power, I’m sure they’d sew red letters on the clothing of those who transgressed the dictates of DEI.
“I’m an intellectual. What I do is I describe reality as I see it.”
Should have gone to Specsavers.
That was brilliant! I nearly choked on my coffee I was laughing so hard.
American academics fleeing ‘fascism’ will not find freedom in Canada. The covid lockdowns here were brutal and unrelenting. The current Canadian prime minister has described what was a minor and peaceful protest against lockdown on the streets of Ottawa as ‘sedition’ – a strong word indeed. Two of the organisers of that protest have just been convicted of ‘mischief’ and are each facing a prison sentence of up to 10 years merely for saying the words ‘hold the line’. Freedom-loving Canadians are still fleeing their own country in search of somewhere they can breathe.
Perhaps not freedom, but find a place where the version of fascism (I remind you what Mussolini meant by that: the union of corporate and state power) persecutes people they disapprove of (like truckers opposed to COVID vaccine mandates) — debanking political dissidents via private banks, just like censoring non-state-approved views via social media companies, is definitely the union of state and corporate power in action.
This article describes the class of people that has so destroyed our world! And what creeps they are too!
So presumably you decry all the things that have come out of universities -penicillin, mobile phones, GPS systems, computers -most of the things that you take for granted (er, hang on, you wrote your comment on a computer!).
Those came out of universities, but not out of the now-thoroughly corrupted departments of humanities and social sciences in which these “refugees” were employed.
Writing as a life-long resident of Toronto, I believe the weenie intellectual refugees will feel right at home at the University of Toronto, in the wokest city in the wokest country of the world. DEI reigns with all the other hierarchies of victimhood.
Describing these academics as left wing seems pretty inaccurate. The left is fundamentally an economic attitude, all the current left do is moralise, they are uninterested in economics and remind me more of Edwardian ladies admonishing the lower classes than anything else.
Wokery is all just a big speech code, U and non U for those who remember that, insiders and outsiders and barely political. Trump rose by noticing the decreasing living standards of Americans, if the left failed to notice that then they have no right to call themselves left wing.
The left wing economic attitude is all about wealth distribution. There is very little understanding of wealth creation. So really, all the moralising woke stuff is very much part of it because somebody gets to decide who are the deserving recipients.
That describes both left and right wing economics, actually. Wealth creation isn’t something solely done by self-appointed “wealth creators”, either.
Wealth creation is done by wealth creators, self-appointed or not.
It occurs to me that these “Intellectuals” are the same ones who gave us DEI, CRT, BLM, the “Patriarchy”, “Our Democracy” which means only their democracy, bad science on Covid, toddlers can trans, TERF verbiage, men can birth babies, raging antisemitism coupled with terrorist worship, and the idea that certain speech should be oppressed, namely any speech that disagrees with them. This is a shortlist.
So good luck Canada and the UK. I hope none of them let the door hit their intellectualism on the way out.
Never mind these useless academics. “Defunding” isn’t exactly being jailed for a hate crime. If you want to avoid the risk of being defunded by government, don’t rely on funds from government. Simple.
Maybe someone could also do a comparative UK-USA heatmap of engineers and entrepreneurs and see what direction they’re moving.
I think you’re missing the larger point that scientists had, before the last decade or so, usually worked hard to avoid being seen as politically partisan. There’s a good reason for that since the idea that “truth” is what it is and the political persuasion of the person seeking it shouldn’t enter into the equation was vital to the continuance of funding for scientific research with public money. Since the woke/progressive takeover of the academy and the pressure placed upon scientists to validate progressive shibboleths that most sane people know to be false, that has destroyed the presumption of neutrality that scientists used to enjoy and that, in turn, has opened up many fields to being defunded in the ongoing culture wars. I don’t blame scientists, per se. The progressive Left put them in this position because the Left knows that science is seen as the final arbiter of truth in our society. Science is our religion and the scientists, the priests. If you can make the priests say that your political opinions are the objective truth, you win by default. Your opponents are irrational and not to be taken seriously. That cynical attempt to manipulate science for political ends is what this backlash is all about.
Well said = “I don’t blame scientists, per se. The progressive Left put them in this position because the Left knows that science is seen as the final arbiter of truth in our society. Science is our religion and the scientists, the priests. If you can make the priests say that your political opinions are the objective truth, you win by default. Your opponents are irrational and not to be taken seriously. That cynical attempt to manipulate science for political ends is what this backlash is all about.”
Do you really think the majority of “cringe academics” threatening to leave are Einsteins, or even scientists?
My comment was about academics in general. The risk of relying on government funding should be understood by them, just as those of us outside the patronage system have to deal with in our daily lives where industries can be destroyed by government policies. None of us have jobs for life anymore.
It’s astonishing reading down how many of you are blaming America for your Australian or UK kids being “Americanized”. You’re their parents, get a grip if you don’t like it.
Also, I just visited the UK and Australia, you’re all under the heavy boot of your governments, free speech isn’t even a thing any more. So you’re not exactly Americanized are you.
Someone moving to Canada, which seized the bank accounts of certain people during Covid and is tolerating a rash of Islamist disruption, to escape the threat of authoritarian govt should be a punch line, not a topic of serious discussion.
Where was Stanley when the president he voted for embedded govt agents within social media to stifle dissent and control information? Where was he when the president he voted for mandated a jab on penalty of losing one’s job for non-compliance? He’s not opposed to “fascism,” per se; he just wants his side being in charge of it and lobs mindless accusations against a guy who already served one term without any of the predicted horribles coming to pass.
Meanwhile, you nice people in the UK have a PM actively stating that white suspects will get harsher sentences than anyone else just for being white. If only there was a word for that.
Prof. Stanley was already in job talks with UoT before he saw what was happening around him in Ivy League schools. Prof. Snyder was already a Trump basher since Trump 1.0 Prof. Shore is like all 3 Jewish and ProPalestine. Ms. Stock is one of my favorite writers here as is T. Eagleton but this piece is clearly drowned in transatlantic murk. Fascism is real just ask academics like L. Korda, A Doroudi,R Srinivasan, B. Khan Sufi, R.Ozturk, M.Khalil. All have been rendered up by ICE agents and taken to detention centers. Reports are over 300 hundred visas of these foreign students have been removed without due process so sorry it’s no cosplay and luckily the Yalies are connected. How many academics have been picked up by HO IE agents and off to Club Guitmo sites from your streets. In Yank dialect “Just sayin”!
Nature polled their, presumably tens of thousands, readers and subscribers and about 1600 replied of whom about 75% replied they were considering emigrating so that is not 75% of scientists thinking of leaving. Similar poor statistics to the “97% of climate scientists fear human climate change” – rubbish.
Having said that I can only agree that, by definition, the UK would be much better off without any of those loons leaving the US because it is ‘going fascist’!
I agree with most of this, not least the disadvantage UK Social Science and Humanities Ph.D.s have been placed in the job market against North Americans (excludiing Mexicans) who can spend seven or more years on a Ph.D. and publish, against get it done in four for UK students and try to publish after. And why are people now Assistant and Associate Professors instead of just Lecturers and Senior Lecturers / Readers (I did like my title when I was a Reader)? US class politics is reviving but those committed to that are staying and fighting. As for the Identity Politics mob, we have enough home grown idiots on that and Butler’s commentary on the Trans issues should be delivered as a lecture to working class Scots women – she would get an interesting and vigorous response.
The X compilation of Prof Stanley from Yale was very funny. He reminded me of the actor character in The Simpsons: ‘Hi, I’m Troy McClure, you may remember me from such public information films as “Lead Paint, Delicious but Deadly” and “Firecrackers, the Silent Killer”.’
I was previously unaware of the term ‘cosplay’ as an alternative to masquerade. Glad to see it is of Japanese rather than American origin.
Righteous “Academics”! Fools, charlatans, and moral cowards, all of them. They remind me of my old hippy buddies still fighting the revolution that passed them by a long, long time ago. But most of all, these folks are losers and zealots. I can’t stand zealots, whether they are trying to save me or kill me. Losers like these folks ultimately become very boring and find comfort in their cell of the boring losers. I love it that their solution is to “move”! Good riddance, go bore some other countries’ citizens with your BS angst. Love it!
The entire essay made me smile.
Building walls doesnt help, but seems to be Ms Stock’s main occupation these days of post DEI celebrity, and not many distinguished US academics of the calibre she mentions would come to UK, they couldn’t live on the salaries.
As an Orthodox Jew living in the US, and old enough to know a little about what caused the Holocaust, I have nothing but contempt for historians who can say that the US is now a Nazi state because it stopped the transformation of US universities into Judenrein institutions. The cognitive dissonance that Orwell described wherein England’s intelligentsia went from completely pacifist to telling him he was a coward for not getting out of his hospital bed to take his rifle back into battle against Franco has now been matched by the people who call Israel a Nazi state.
Hyperbolic American “intellectuals” who proclaim they give up lucrative low energy, low stress jobs for political reasons would be more believable if they truly did it, silently, without fanfare.
If the Trump Administration’s threat to defund the big universities has the collateral effect of causing Stanley, Snyder, Shore and their ilk to leave the country it will be a welcome side effect. Let them take their woke nonsense to Canada or any other country that will have them.
The liberal/conservative heat map graphic is in fact not documented clearly so its no wonder that people are interested by it
I am an American classical liberal… If these Lefties want to decamp to Canada where they are free to occupy academic buildings in support of Hamas, support neo-discrimination, and be de banked for political beliefs then I say don’t let the screen door hit you in the ass….
Maybe we can set up a re-education camp in Yorkshire for American academics. A few months of being told that they are daft buggers and that no one is looking at them anyway might make them less annoying. There will be tears and threats of litigation but the brain is very plastic and they will adapt, eventually.
This is a totally out to lunch article. I am Canadian and I approve of what Trump is doing to the US universities. Time to shut down DEI and return to meritocracy. To those academics who are going to Canada, we don’t want you and your warped thinking. Now that the tables are turned on you, you don’t like it. People need to separate the revolting aspects of Trump from the good things he is doing.
Self-deportation is a good thing : )
The important points about this article are the subtle bowing down &’star struck’ eyes of our Brit universities to anything American, incoming. Amusing & astute writing, again
The trouble with articles by Kathleen Stock and similar writers is that though they have been forced to quit the cosy leftist group-think compliance club for daring to hold divergent views on an issue, they can’t shake off the old prejudices and genuflections. So it’s obligatory for articles like this to include nonsensical snipes at the right just to prove that the writer is still at heart on the old team. Here, we see an inane little aside about how the right never criticises immigration from the US. Well, no, it doesn’t. For the same reason that it doesn’t concern itself with immigration from Peru or Bolivia or Laos or Nepal. There is comparatively little of it and it causes zero societal problems. No one is getting into a small boat and crossing the Atlantic from the US. By contrast, the point in the last paragraph lands. If only she would confine herself to well-grounded comment.
Let’s start a movement where we ostracize anyone over the age of 17 who uses “cringe” as an adjective.
There is a saying in America that is based on long observation. “Everything the left touches turns to shit.” Keep this in mind as ex-pat academics flutter to the UK like alarmed poultry.