"We are not the elites the billionaires claim we are. Most professors don’t have tenure. The humanities professoriate don’t even have full time jobs, have been known to sleep in their cars. How did these inconsequential people become enemies of the state?" www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outl... - ThreadSky

annakornbluh.bsky.social • 3 days ago

"We are not the elites the billionaires claim we are. Most professors don’t have tenure. The humanities professoriate don’t even have full time jobs, have been known to sleep in their cars. How did these inconsequential people become enemies of the state?"
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/professor-elite-vance-trump-20327523.php?fbclid=IwY2xjawKUkUJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFRa2dkTjQyZENHb3o0WGRxAR5C-XIDanRr-N5dJ4fOoEg16u4XAJtQsLBnJelt32j3WswSh1bbIZ24Ci3bAQ_aem_Ewhatiw-c0xSuLw-w16fNg

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nonyabidniss.bsky.social•3 days ago

The issue, of course, is they're smart. They know things. Right wingers and billionaire techbros can't deal with people who are smart and know things, because they can spread knowledge, resulting in fewer rubes.

abbie4science.bsky.social•2 days ago

because Putin wants to destroy US supremacy. That's why...

fightingfascism.bsky.social•2 days ago

The religious elite can literally be pedophiles and no one on the Right will care.

fightingfascism.bsky.social•2 days ago

Right-wing propaganda created an educational system that is consumer based, pandering to wealthy and lazy idiots rather than the meritorious and intelligent. That and Turning Points USA Professor watch which terrorizes professors.

rebeccaore.bsky.social•2 days ago

The problem with a lot of elementary and secondary education is it's about qualifying for jobs, not being curious and diving into the whole treasure house of amazing facts that a good university is.

fightingfascism.bsky.social•2 days ago

It doesn't do that in any meaningful way.

rebeccaore.bsky.social•2 days ago

Most of my education in South Carolina after learning how to read was propaganda. One teacher went through our class on Monday asking if we'd been to Sunday school and the church service. (the only Jewish family got out of that place and went north).

erinsopran.bsky.social•2 days ago

And that life is, regardless of what somebody does after high school. Curiosity and critical thinking are so much more important than qualifications, as long as there's a way to survive long enough to use them.

fightingfascism.bsky.social•1 day ago

No. They're not. You can't think critically if you're ignorant.

rebeccaore.bsky.social•1 day ago

I've met people who thought their way out of a good number of their cultures beliefs. Generally, they don't think their way out of all of them, but what they do think their way out of tends to be very sound. And they tend to be very bright. It takes experience and books.

stryder22204.bsky.social•3 days ago

Because the state is stupid and they hate anyone smarter than them. Which is pretty much everyone.

alxmr.bsky.social•2 days ago

It was never about academics being elite, this is just narrative for the public. This has always been about controlling speech, eliminating dissent and opposition.

rawxy.bsky.social•2 days ago

Capitalism has destroyed the country

jenniferpete.bsky.social•3 days ago

https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-professors-make-ends-meet

leftliberates.bsky.social•2 days ago

Every time these liars open their mouth is pure projection and im tired of saying this. Right wingers constantly doing this is ridiculous. How normalised it has become. Even president openly projects onto others what he does. It’s unbelievably stupid that maga still falls for it while they do it.

stevealbert66.bsky.social•1 day ago

Even the tenured positions don't seem to be so very secure these days...

diotimaellen.bsky.social•2 days ago

We are NOT inconsequential: I taught so much critical thinking and so much Plato to students, telling them that it was their human responsibility to DO THEIR OWN THINKING. I know that had effects. The only way I'm elite is my Ph.D., which took years of work. Don't have piles of $, drive an old car.

jhgray.bsky.social•3 days ago

Knowing the answer to that question will put you on a watchlist

madukes.bsky.social•3 days ago

You’re “elite” because of the power of being educated

zmus.bsky.social•2 days ago

Amazing. Thank you.

bjorn76.bsky.social•3 days ago

Look at the Khmer Rouge, difference is that Trumpism is a techno-industrial vision, not an agricultural.

docum3nt.bsky.social•3 days ago

That's easy. You're smarter than they are. You know more, but crucially, you can analyse and evaluate and reason, something they are incapable of doing. And you can express yourselves cogently, using words to show up their lies and bullshit. Being exposed terrifies them more than anything else.

thediscoveryofzero.com•3 days ago

Yes, and they cannot because their ideology requires it: traditional cultural hierarchies are their ultimate authority, trumping even reason, logic, lived experience, etc. Whether because of biblical literalism or white male identity politics, they must be able to always say "just because".

stillfischer.bsky.social•3 days ago

It's Stalin going after the Kulaks, or Hitler the Jews. It's a purge of intellectuals and certain and vulnerable ethnicities. In other words, they are wanna-be genocidaires... so far.

rebeccaore.bsky.social•2 days ago

The Kulaks were the successful farmers. By the late 30s, the Russians realized they'd destroyed their best farmers. Anarchists in Spain went from killing landowners who weren't in the fields with their workers to killing anyone who was a successful farmer (jealousy can be ugly).

rebeccaore.bsky.social•2 days ago

Soviet reaction to anarchists was based on this, but shooting one's way out of problems can be problematic right back. See THE SPANISH COCKPIT by Franz Borkenau for details (and somewhat of a correction to Orwell's horror over how the Russians in Spain destroyed the anarchists forces).

stillfischer.bsky.social•2 days ago

Idealism twisted into zealotry is never good unless more cannon fodder is required.

jdcrawford.bsky.social•2 days ago

These days, anyone who contradicts political lies with real evidence is an 'enemy of the state'.

mikethemadbiol.bsky.social•3 days ago

📌

greggwith3gs.bsky.social•2 days ago

Because you’re smart. Intelligence and knowledge are the antithesis of Trumperism.

thesandwichman.bsky.social•3 days ago

True, we are not the elite. We also don't produce surplus value for capital, although many of us facilitate that process. We are a "disposable population" to the billionaires, alternating in their view between being seen as "their" servants and as a drain on "their" revenues because we are both.

olivececile.bsky.social•3 days ago

Honestly, even with tenure and a full time job - my dad was the first person in his family to go to college. Early in his career he experienced job loss and crushing debt. When he finally got a steady job at a public university, he built a nice, simple life.

olivececile.bsky.social•3 days ago

He could retire and do his hobbies. No big trips, no extravagance, and his radical political views boil down to calling the orange guy names on Facebook and occasionally getting on a soapbox about how Italians weren’t always white. He’s elite?

potato-doritos.bsky.social•2 days ago

In the current university system, that's elite

jenebbeler.bsky.social•3 days ago

The answer to this question is in Chris Rufo’s April podcast with NYT. The end goal of these laws and defunding to seize control of higher education and restore the professoriate to white men. Rufo figured out that withholding federal funding accomplished this faster than legislation.

rowyourbot.bsky.social•3 days ago

Withholding funding is also illegal. It would all require legislation. It’s a faster way to break the law though. For no good reason—-except maybe someone Black gave Chris Rufo a B- or told him something he didn’t know. The whole project is harmful to everyone but especially the next generation.

jenebbeler.bsky.social•3 days ago

I read the transcript of his podcast conversation. It’s revealing, at least. And makes clear why efforts to explain what really happens on university campuses and in our classrooms are valuable to the broader public but not to anyone committed to the Rufo project.

rowyourbot.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes. But have to actually care about people, other human beings, the future—and the people who will be alive then. It used to be easy to explain that health, knowledge, welfare of people and the environment matters, that making the USA the center of knowledge production was a good thing.

jenebbeler.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes. And this is the piece that Rufo refuses to acknowledge and just repeatedly insists that universities have misused taxpayer dollars. It’s completely false and easily proven false. The media seems not to know how to do this.

dreadlift.bsky.social•2 days ago

I've known professors that live paycheck to paycheck, in part because they have so much student loan debt

judeasamaria.bsky.social•2 days ago

Yall need to get out of the planes & start driving around outside the cities.
It isnt about your money. It's about your education, which they ain't got.
You profs ever TALK to the kids who are "first in family" to get a degree?
They don't fit in their communities after, bcuz their THINKING changes

rebeccaore.bsky.social•2 days ago

I taught these. An anti-poverty program that worked with "first in family" tried to get a local textile plant to contribute. "No, you're stealing our best workers." Given that the textile plants closed a while back, changing one's way of thinking might not be a bad thing.

judeasamaria.bsky.social•1 day ago

There's a lot to a transfer into education: labor issues, civil rights, feminism, tolerance of the exercise of thinking. When you "know" stuff, it's time consuming to reassess.
But university folks can be intolerant as well. We have to hear them like we would tribal leaders or Appalachia elders

rebeccaore.bsky.social•1 day ago

University folks can to be tribal and the recreational leftists among them prefer to teach in the most expensive universities.

rebeccaore.bsky.social•1 day ago

Some tribal leaders have been brilliant. I've met more preachers who expected automagical deference or people from away who are sure they've got lessons for Appalachia or Nicaragua (both get plagued by the same type of outsiders). Appalachian elders? Many more problems with do-gooders from away.

judeasamaria.bsky.social•1 day ago

The wider point being:
We don't achieve unity by being right.
Some therapists ask clients, "Do you prefer to be right, or to have healthy relationships?"
There's going to be some on all sides that're entrenched, but the process of open dialogue & HEARING the roadblocks builds unity 🤝 in the majority

rebeccaore.bsky.social•1 day ago

We don't have any chance of changing anyone's mind unless we have emotional traction with them. I changed one woman's mind on gay marriage, not by berating her, but saying why I supported it, calmly.

loveliberty.bsky.social•2 days ago

By ascribing to and promoting pernicious ideology

rebeccaore.bsky.social•2 days ago

No way to read this without giving up your email address (I turned off my adblocker but that didn't work.

bettybarcode.bsky.social•2 days ago

As they often remind us, they can't even get students to read the syllabus, much less adopt whole new ideologies

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