Kathianne
10-29-2023, 11:04 PM
Pretty long article, but interesting in how the universities got to where we are today, with Hamas somehow being a shining example of Decolonization theory becoming a success.
I actually remember some readings early in sociology and political science class having to do with the Iran and the anger with the Shah. Heck, we had daily marches in Chicago when I was at school there. Honestly we thought most of these students were tools, biting the hand that fed them-paying tuition and living expenses in Chicago.
I remember one professor issuing warnings very much like what is in the article, something like, 'The demands that things that were done can be undone, without a great deal of loss of life, wealth, and civilization, are foolish and blind to reality. I thought the overthrow of the shah would have been an object lesson, as the country was plunged immediately into the dark ages, especially women. What had been one of the most educated of the Middle East, became one of the lowest in literacy.
Yet, Hamas is being cheered?
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/10/28/the-dangers-of-decolonisation/
LONG-READThe dangers of ‘decolonisation’
Why the academic left has sided with Hamas's anti-Semitic barbarism.
DOUG STOKES
28th October 2023
Share
Topics
LONG-READS
POLITICS
UK
WORLD
As the Sun rose on Israel on 7 October and a terrible darkness descended, Western commentators, activists and academics quickly took to social media. Not to condemn Hamas’s massacring of Jewish people, but to justify the violence as part of a ‘progressive’ karmic payback on the part of the world’s oppressed. This, they argued, is what ‘decolonisation’ looks like.
Hamas, the ‘elected leadership in Gaza’, has finally broken out of its ‘open-air prison and cross[ed] Israel’s southern border, striking at military targets and settler populations’, wrote veteran leftist Tariq Ali on the New Left Review on 7 October. Hamas fighters, Ali continued, ‘are rising up against the colonisers’.
As the extent of the slaughter across southern Israel was still emerging, journalist Najma Sharif said it represented ‘decolonisation’ in action – the most spectacular attempt yet to ‘free’ the Palestinian people from the effects of ‘colonisation’. ‘What did y’all think decolonisation meant?’, Sharif tweeted. ‘Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers.’
Academics soon joined in. Mahvish Ahmad, assistant professor in human rights and politics at the London School of Economics, said of the Hamas massacre that decolonisation ‘is not a metaphor’. And an associate professor at McMaster University in Canada, Ameil J Joseph, also seemed to think Hamas’s massacre was decolonisation in action. ‘Post-colonial, anti-colonial and decolonial are not just words you heard in your EDI [equity, diversity and inclusion] workshop’, he tweeted.
Indeed, it has been striking just how many working in and orbiting higher education have been willing to justify the sadistic actions of an ultra-bigoted, anti-Semitic group of Islamists in terms of ‘decolonisation’. This illustrates the grip the narrative of decolonisation has over the leftist, academic imagination. To understand how this has happened it is worth looking at the ways in which the academic ‘decolonisation’ movement – as a simple-minded narrative setting up evil Western colonisers against virtuous non-Western victims – has been inculcated in universities over several decades.
...
I actually remember some readings early in sociology and political science class having to do with the Iran and the anger with the Shah. Heck, we had daily marches in Chicago when I was at school there. Honestly we thought most of these students were tools, biting the hand that fed them-paying tuition and living expenses in Chicago.
I remember one professor issuing warnings very much like what is in the article, something like, 'The demands that things that were done can be undone, without a great deal of loss of life, wealth, and civilization, are foolish and blind to reality. I thought the overthrow of the shah would have been an object lesson, as the country was plunged immediately into the dark ages, especially women. What had been one of the most educated of the Middle East, became one of the lowest in literacy.
Yet, Hamas is being cheered?
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/10/28/the-dangers-of-decolonisation/
LONG-READThe dangers of ‘decolonisation’
Why the academic left has sided with Hamas's anti-Semitic barbarism.
DOUG STOKES
28th October 2023
Share
Topics
LONG-READS
POLITICS
UK
WORLD
As the Sun rose on Israel on 7 October and a terrible darkness descended, Western commentators, activists and academics quickly took to social media. Not to condemn Hamas’s massacring of Jewish people, but to justify the violence as part of a ‘progressive’ karmic payback on the part of the world’s oppressed. This, they argued, is what ‘decolonisation’ looks like.
Hamas, the ‘elected leadership in Gaza’, has finally broken out of its ‘open-air prison and cross[ed] Israel’s southern border, striking at military targets and settler populations’, wrote veteran leftist Tariq Ali on the New Left Review on 7 October. Hamas fighters, Ali continued, ‘are rising up against the colonisers’.
As the extent of the slaughter across southern Israel was still emerging, journalist Najma Sharif said it represented ‘decolonisation’ in action – the most spectacular attempt yet to ‘free’ the Palestinian people from the effects of ‘colonisation’. ‘What did y’all think decolonisation meant?’, Sharif tweeted. ‘Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers.’
Academics soon joined in. Mahvish Ahmad, assistant professor in human rights and politics at the London School of Economics, said of the Hamas massacre that decolonisation ‘is not a metaphor’. And an associate professor at McMaster University in Canada, Ameil J Joseph, also seemed to think Hamas’s massacre was decolonisation in action. ‘Post-colonial, anti-colonial and decolonial are not just words you heard in your EDI [equity, diversity and inclusion] workshop’, he tweeted.
Indeed, it has been striking just how many working in and orbiting higher education have been willing to justify the sadistic actions of an ultra-bigoted, anti-Semitic group of Islamists in terms of ‘decolonisation’. This illustrates the grip the narrative of decolonisation has over the leftist, academic imagination. To understand how this has happened it is worth looking at the ways in which the academic ‘decolonisation’ movement – as a simple-minded narrative setting up evil Western colonisers against virtuous non-Western victims – has been inculcated in universities over several decades.
...