"In the war of racism, we don't want scouts, we want soldiers."

That's a comment, from Washington Blogger, that was emailed to me after I noted the absence of any Critical Race Theory analysis in the New York Times story about the West Point cheating scandal. 

The "scout"/"soldier" terminology harks back to a post 5 days ago about the "tech elite's favorite pop intellectual Julia Galef." As NY Magazine put it:

"Galef argues for what she calls 'scout mindset,' which she contrasts with 'soldier mindset.' The idea is that evolution has wired our minds to be soldiers (focused on winning) instead of scouts (focused on ensuring our mental maps accurately reflect the territory of reality). To adopt a scout mindset is to resist falling prey to 'motivated reasoning,' in which we distort our thoughts to achieve a desired outcome."

Here's the graphic comparing the 2 mindsets:

I read Washington Blogger's statement — "In the war of racism, we don't want scouts, we want soldiers" — as satirizing the present-day "woke" pose. And I want to add that I think that mentality is at odds with Critical Race Theory as it was originally understood and used by legal academics in the 1990s. Based on personal contact, I believe that these scholars were — to use Galef's model — scouts, not soldiers. 

The phrase "war of racism" is a bit confusing. I'm assuming the commenter means "war on racism." Obviously, there is room to say that there once was a war on racism but those fighting racism used racism too and, at this point in the evolution of the war, with racism on all sides, "of" is more accurate than "on."

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs."

"By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died. I object to the charge of systemic racism in this country, and at our school.... Furthermore, I call bullshit on Brearley's oft-stated assertion that the school welcomes and encourages the truly difficult and uncomfortable conversations regarding race and the roots of racial discrepancies....  I object to mandatory anti-racism training for parents, especially when presented by the rent-seeking charlatans of Pollyanna. These sessions, in both their content and delivery, are so sophomoric and simplistic, so unsophisticated and inane, that I would be embarrassed if they were taught to Brearley kindergarteners.... I object to the gutting of the history, civics, and classical literature curriculums.... Lastly, I object, with as strong a sentiment as possible, that Brearley has begun to teach what to think, instead of how to think. I object that the school is now fostering an environment where our daughters, and our daughters’ teachers, are afraid to speak their minds in class for fear of 'consequences.' I object that Brearley is trying to usurp the role of parents in teaching morality, and bullying parents to adopt that false morality at home.... It is abundantly clear that the majority of parents believe that Brearley’s antiracism policies are misguided, divisive, counterproductive and cancerous.... But as I am sure will come as no surprise to you, given the insidious cancel culture that has of late permeated our society, most parents are too fearful to speak up. But speak up you must. There is strength in numbers and I assure you, the numbers are there."

From a letter by Andrew Gutmann, the full text of which is published by Bari Weiss in her Substack column, "You Have to Read This Letter/A New York father pulls his daughter out of Brearley with a message to the whole school. Is the dam starting to break?" 

Brearly is a girls' school in Manhattan. The annual tuition is $55,000. Gutmann's daughter has attended the school for 7 years, since kindergarten. He's calling on the other parents — the other parents who, presumably, have done what they could to shower privilege on their children — to rise up and object to the "anti-racism" that, he says, has permeated the school. 

"But speak up you must" — and yet, I'd predict that other parents will not speak up, but will silently agree with Gutmann, then steel themselves and endure the treatment they have been designated to receive. The one thing that makes me think parents might get it together and object is the "mandatory anti-racism training for parents" — if it really is "so sophomoric and simplistic, so unsophisticated and inane."

There has to be a point where any decent parent will say, Oh, my God, this is the crap they are feeding young minds, including my beautiful child!

And yet each of them knows — they've heard it so sophomorically and simplistically — that they will be stepping directly into the official definition of racist. So Gutmann has a lot of nerve.

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

FROM THE EMAIL Sydney writes: 

This section from the father's letter resonated with me:

"We have today in our country, from both political parties, and at all levels of government, the most unwise and unvirtuous leaders in our nation’s history. Schools like Brearley are supposed to be the training grounds for those leaders. Our nation will not survive a generation of leadership even more poorly educated than we have now, nor will we survive a generation of students taught to hate its own country and despise its history."

I am seeing this in my field, medicine. The medical students and residents no longer seem able (or perhaps they are just unwilling) to think critically. They seem to be operating on algorithms more and more rather than critical assessment of a patient's presentation. I don't see much critiquing of research papers anymore. The journal clubs have become social justice book clubs. The pages of our prestigious medical journals devote articles to systemic racism. Recently, an editor of JAMA was fired for questioning the premise of critical race theory. We will be in a bad way when medicine is driven by ideology.

And Heartless Aztec writes: 

As a retired inner city, refugee and immigrant teacher I'm here to tell you that all this racial bs has been going on for years in our schools — public and private — easily for a decade now. It's only now in the last year or so bubbling up for all to see. In faculty meetings we would fight back semi-openly deriding the propagandists from the downtown school board Admin building putting on the dog and pony show. We laughed under our breath at them though we were powerless to fight back in any meaningful way - especially as white teachers in a thoroughly Af-American setting.

More than once I was called into chambers in the principal's office and point blank asked if I was a "racist." Me! A person who was a past member of the NAACP, co-chair for the United Negro College fund school drive, Black History contextual studies degree, etc. I sent my daughter to Catholic schools. To have sent her to a public school in the city where I taught would have been parental malpractice.

"As the only Asian American woman on the academic faculty, I can’t imagine any other faculty member would be treated with this kind of disrespect and utter lack of due process."

Writes Yale Law School professor Amy Chua.

Some of you may have seen the YDN hit job on me, full of false allegations. I did not violate any agreement, nor have I been hosting wild parties during COVID. On the contrary, what I HAVE done is comforted a small handful of students who reached out to me in moments of crisis... pic.twitter.com/9tOoOu9p6G

— Amy Chua (@amychua) April 8, 2021

Megyn Kelly reacts:

Now they’re trying to cancel @amychua for absolutely nothing. Make no mistake: this is retribution for her support of Bret Kavanaugh, & it is disgusting. If @YaleLawSch has any backbone, it will stand up for one of its most beloved teachers & tell the damn whiners to sit down. https://t.co/2vwLGWmI9w

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) April 8, 2021

At Lawyers, Guns, and Money, lawprof Paul Campos goes on the attack in a blog post that begins "Rules are for the little people, chapter infinity":

Meanwhile Chua and [her husband lawprof Jed] Rubenfeld continue to get paid collectively close to a million bucks a year to basically not do their jobs any more, but apparently being asked to at least avoid getting drunk around the kiddies is just too much to ask of our best and brightest.

I can't possibly know exactly what the facts are. I've read Chua's letter, and I don't think the law school has put out its version of the facts. As a law school professor, I was never someone who invited students to my home, so I tend to admire the lawprofs who do extend this kind of sociability to their students. I would find it very difficult to do, and I assume that, generally, students would love this kind of festivity. 

But I could imagine professors inviting students into their home for the wrong reasons. There could be the Harvey Weinstein of law professors. I visualize a continuum of motives for professorly parties, from unselfishly magnanimous to utterly monstrous. But where's the line on the continuum where the professor should know this isn't right and the law school should intervene and say no more parties for you? Why did Yale intervene? I think it intervened and entered into some sort of no-parties agreement with Chua and Rudenfeld, and now, it seems, the question is whether the agreement has been violated. That's the basic factual question here. I'm not looking at the agreement, but Chua does seem to say that she has continued to have students over to her house. 

In her letter (embedded in the tweet, above), Chua justifies what she did based on anti-Asian violence and racism. She's the Asian-American female law professor, and students in her diversity category need support, so... there's an implied exception to the agreement? Or... interpret the agreement properly, and there's no violation? I'd have to see the agreement and know what, exactly, she did. 

Does the agreement refer to "parties" and define parties? Is the law school dean following the students' interpretation of the agreement? Do the students even have the text of the agreement?

IN THE EMAIL: Tank writes:

Like you, I have no idea what actually happened or whether Chua is in the right. However, her use of the Asian Card immediately puts me off because it likely has no relation to the controversy, but is being used to shut people up.

I'd like to know more about all the "cards" that are getting played. What race(s) are the students who are complaining about her? Do the complaints have a racial element? Has the faculty relied on Chua to tend to the needs of Asian-American students? Does the school hold itself out as a paragon of diversity goodness because it has Chua, among others, on its faculty? There's a whole complicated context here, and Chua is fighting — frantically, or so it seems. 

ALSO IN THE EMAIL: Heartless Aztec writes:

As a retired teacher who pulled numerous semesters at the local community college 40+ years ago let me say what a grand idea it was then to have or go to the occasional parties where students and other faculty members were invited. We were all young and it was a very different time - a very different world. By 2015 when I retired that world had changed and there was no way that any students would ever be in my home for any reason or that I would ever attend a party where they were invited in any capacity other than officially school sanctioned. 20 year old students were for the most part immature children in 2015 and fledgling adults in 1980.

AND: Amadeus 48 emails: 

If we take Amy Chua’s letter at face value, she doesn’t know what she did “ wrong,” because no one has told her. Why would a law school take a bow towards due process by informing of the accusations? Her description of the zoom call is incomplete. Why did she enter into any agreement? Isn’t all this fallout from her friendship with Brett Kavanaugh? Didn’t some students make accusations against her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, based on wrongspeak? Wasn’t she accused of coaching female interview candidates to glam it up a bit for Judge Kavanaugh? Read the article in The Guardian about that one. Not a single source named. I suspect that there are factions at Yale Law School-- students, administrators, and faculty--who are out to get Ms. Chua and her husband. But I am sure there is more to the story.