Sponsored Content
« Saturday Morning Open Thread | Main | Karnak the Great - ask anything thread [Purp] »
April 06, 2013

Bowdoin College: Come For The "Diversity"; Stay For The Liberal Cocooning

Bowdoin College in Maine apparently takes the "liberal" in Liberal Arts to the extreme.

It sounds like the setup for a bad joke: What did the Wall Street type say to the college president on the golf course? Well, we don't know exactly—but it has launched a saga with weighty implications for American intellectual and civic life.

Here's what we do know: One day in the summer of 2010, Barry Mills, the president of Bowdoin College, a respected liberal-arts school in Brunswick, Maine, met investor and philanthropist Thomas Klingenstein for a round of golf about an hour north of campus. College presidents spend many of their waking hours talking to potential donors. In this case, the two men spoke about college life—especially "diversity"—and the conversation made such an impression on President Mills that he cited it weeks later in his convocation address to Bowdoin's freshman class. That's where the dispute begins.

So the college president apparently went on to tell the frosh that while Bowdoin leaned to the left they should respect diversity of ideas of evil, racist, reichwingers like "the donor". The problem is that word leaked back to "the donor" that he was being used as a strawman for Bowdoin to pat itself on the back for its supposed tolerance and open-mindedness with respect to opposing views while simultaneously castigating them.

... A few months later, Mr. Klingenstein decided to do something surprising: He commissioned researchers to examine Bowdoin's commitment to intellectual diversity, rigorous academics and civic identity. This week, some 18 months and hundreds of pages of documentation later, the project is complete. Its picture of Bowdoin isn't pretty.

Funded by Mr. Klingenstein, researchers from the National Association of Scholars studied speeches by Bowdoin presidents and deans, formal statements of the college's principles, official faculty reports and notes of faculty meetings, academic course lists and syllabi, books and articles by professors, the archive of the Bowdoin Orient newspaper and more. They analyzed the school's history back to its founding in 1794, focusing on the past 45 years—during which, they argue, Bowdoin's character changed dramatically for the worse.

Published Wednesday, the report demonstrates how Bowdoin has become an intellectual monoculture dedicated above all to identity politics.

Read the whole thing. But you won't be surprised to see some of the details, including the curious freshman curriculum, which is short on anything you'd think of as education and long on ... bullshit.


And this isn't accidental.

The full report on Bowdoin is available here.

digg this
posted by Andy at 10:55 AM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
Winnie Mandela: "[i]Well...there's just two things I can't abide. I ..."

Zek: ""Asian-Americans in California are overwhelmingly ..."

Cat Ass Trophy: "Graham: yes he was grossly unqualified, but we hav ..."

sniffybigtoe: "The oil companies refused to allow it, just like w ..."

Anonosaurus Wrecks, Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? [/s] [/b] [/i]: "When this old world starts getting me down And pe ..."

Ebonics: "Senator: Let's start off easy. Call you spell cons ..."

micky: "If'n he gonna be impotent he gonna look impotent! ..."

Quilter's Irish Death: "Fun Fact. As a young boy, my great uncle saw a man ..."

Village Idiot's Apprentice: ""How about using chain gangs?" Many residents w ..."

I mean they do for everything else: "California's AG Has a Theory About Who's to Blame ..."

Stuntman Mike from Death Proof: "Well...there's just two things I can't abide. It's ..."

Duncanthrax: "[i]Well...there's just two things I can't abide. I ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64