In-Lockstep DEI Adherence Is Not Boldness

 

 

It seems that most careerists do not/cannot understand the intrinsic incompatibility of hardcore truth and career. If one wishes to have a “successful” professional career, one must abide by the prime requisites of “success”: turning a blind eye and not voicing truths apt to upset the leaders making the decisions regarding promotions, tenure, sabbaticals, salary raises, invitations, prize anointments, etc. That is commonsense.

Inside Higher Ed, a corporate “newspaper,” published an article by University of Arizona, College of Education, “he, him, his” Professor Nolan L. Cabrera: “Dear Colleagues: The Time for Boldness Is Now.” So, who is Cabrera? Why does he get to have his opinions published in that “newspaper,” whereas I am on its blacklist? Well, apparently, he’s an anti-white racist identity-politics fanatic. His college website explains it all in the tradition of unquestioned/unchallenged academic backslapping braggadocio. Below is the beginning of his webpage:

 

Dr. Nolan Cabrera is a nationally recognized expert in the areas of racism/anti-racism on college campuses, Whiteness, and ethnic studies. He is currently a Full Professor in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona, and was the only academic featured in the MTV documentary White People. His book, White Guys on Campus, is a deep exploration of White male racism, and occasional anti-racism, on college campuses…

 

Not mentioned on Cabrera’s website is another book he authored, published in 2024, Whiteness in the Ivory Tower. In any case, as a former professor at six different institutions of so-called higher education, I got quite used to the egregious absence of “boldness” on the part of my tenured colleagues. How can I possibly forget the professors who insisted the office doors be closed so they could comfortably small talk about administrators and/or other colleagues? And how can I forget the pathetic apathy of my colleagues, regarding my own diverse free-speech confrontations highlighting intellectual corruption at the institutions employing me, including blatant colleague nepotism and conflicts of interest (see theamericandissident.org for examples)?

“Boldness” implies, or at least should imply, a strong degree of individuality, which is the opposite of the team-playing M.O. pushed by higher-ed leadership professionals. Also, in the realm of academe, it should imply risk regarding ones career. However, if one’s goal is to climb the academic ladder to tenure, emeritus status, etc., then manifesting “boldness” is out of the question. Cabrera himself climbed that ladder, no doubt echoing in-lockstep, leftwing academic bias and carefully turning a blind eye to the ineluctable intellectual corruption in his immediate academic realm. If he hadn’t done that—hadn’t willfully become a bona fide team player, as opposed to a bold individual—he would not have been anointed with tenure and full professorship. In his article, he quotes a few known writers, which I’ll mention further down, to back his viewpoints.  And so, I quote the following to back mine:

 

Tenure corrupts, enervates, and dulls higher education. It is, moreover, the academic culture’s ultimate control mechanism to weed out the idiosyncratic, the creative, the nonconformist. —Charles J. Sykes, Profscam

A tenure system does not select for boldness. —Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Terre Haute Division. No. TH97-188-C M/F–Larry J. McKinney, Judge

Unfortunately, tenure has led to the ossification of American education. The hiring, promotion, and tenure system has institutionalized sycophancy toward those in power. —Camille Paglia

 

Cabrera’s focus is on DEI-Marxist ideology, which inevitably conflicts with individuality, reason and facts. Unsurprisingly, his prime concern is maintaining that ideology in higher education and thus fighting against those who might decrease or eliminate government taxpayer funding to support it. He is not at all concerned with or perhaps even aware of the near absence of individual “boldness” in academe … no doubt due to its rarity. And so he notes, regarding the Trump administration’s efforts to defund DEI ideology and ideologues:

 

I have heard a number of higher education faculty, in particular those who are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion work, who are wondering what this means in terms of their research and teaching.

 

Cabrera could manifest real individual “boldness” by, for example, openly criticizing Inside Higher Ed’s blacklisting of those like me who dare openly criticize its editors (examine, for example, ‘Inside Higher Ed—Free Speech in Peril‘ and “To Censor or Not to Censor‘). Would he pressure those editors to publish this counter essay … in the name, not of DEI, but rather of free speech and vigorous debate, democracy’s very cornerstones? Would he also openly criticize the student newspaper editors of The Daily Wildcat for ignoring criticism I’d sent regarding one of his university administrators (see here).  While those matters are freedom of expression concerns, they are certainly not those of DEI ideologues. Would Cabrera criticize Nancy Gonzales, Executive Vice President and University Provost at Arizona State University, who chose not to my email regarding her free-speech forum? Yes, ASU is not UA, but it is perhaps likely that Cabrera might be attending that forum. Below is the email in question:

 

Please consider inviting me to speak at your Center for Free Speech spring forum. Without a doubt, I would have something quite different to bring to the table, including the many free-speech experiences personally encountered by testing the waters of democracy in higher education et al.

Non-response, for example, has been the overwhelming response of college professors, poets, artists, and cultural curators, whom I’ve criticized over the years. Yet non-response is a clear indication of disdain for vigorous debate, an essential component of free speech. At the moment, I am writing an essay on that subject. As an example, a handful of ASU professors, who I’ve criticized over the years, chose not to respond. And from that dross, I created cartoons, poems, etc. Hopefully, you will prove not to be an adherent of that very common higher ed m.o. of non-response.

My Curriculum Mortae is on my blog site for your perusal Over the years, I have published many essays, poems, plays, nonfiction novels, cartoons, aquarelles, and journal issues.

Finally, until professors, in general, not only brook hardcore criticism with their regard, but also encourage and address it, how can they expect their students to do that? How can real vigorous debate exist? As a long-time editor of a literary journal devoted to literature, democracy, and dissidence, I encourage such criticism with my regard, publish the harshest received in each and every issue, and never close the doors on those daring to send their criticisms. Free speech must also include the voices of rare dissidents.

 

The call for ideological cohesion is not one of “boldness,” but rather one of adherence to groupthink. “Boldness” would/should imply standing as an individual against the latter. Cabrera argues, regarding the Trump administration:

 

I do not deny that we are living in perilous times, but what good are academic freedom and tenure if we do not use them? Some think, I believe mistakenly, that speaking out will only embolden the attacks on higher education institutions and faculty.

 

Cabrera then cites Frederick Douglass:

 

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted…

 

Yet cannot Douglass’s argument also be applied to the mass of professors, who have submitted to DEI-ideological restraints, including cancel culture? Is that not an example of “It also seems fairly clear that the attacks on higher education are not going to stop any time soon”? Cabrera then evokes Noam Chomsky, former MIT professor who, as far as I’m aware, never spoke out about the ineluctable intellectual corruption festering in the MIT ivory tower: “The responsibility of intellectuals is to ‘speak the truth and expose lies.’ There can be no greater calling for academics in a ‘post-truth’ society than to do both publicly and boldly.”

And yet what precisely constitutes “post truth”? Cabrera does not clearly stipulate. Obviously, there is an intrinsic subjectivity in the term! Cabrera begs his colleagues to speak out, not for freedom of expression, but rather for DEI ideology. Should higher ed be a bastion of the latter, or rather one of the former? Cabrera fails to evoke that fundamental thought… perhaps because he and his ideological colleagues are likely enemies of the former, which is a fundament of what America is supposed to be. He notes:

 

Make no mistake—this is an all-out attack on higher education. When the current president refers to the “enemies from within,” this in part means us.

 

Cabrera then concludes:

 

Acquiescing to censorship will not stop the threats. Only engaging in collective, bold, public, strategic struggle and disruption has the potential to do so.

 

Defunding Marxist DEI-ideologue professors is not censorship. The Trump administration is not censoring them, nor threatening to do so. It does not have the power to censor freedom of expression. However, it and Congress do have the power to control tax-payer funding … just like the Biden administration, which spent huge sums of taxpayer money to support and spread DEI-Marxist ideology all over the country, which is partly why the majority of Americans voted for Trump, not DEI-proponent Kamala Harris.

Finally, one must wonder what precisely Cabrera himself has done indicative of an iota of “boldness”? Writing a general article with no precise examples of personal “boldness” experiences is not somehow bold. Inside Higher Ed itself seems to have become a platform for pro-DEI opinions. At the end of the article, appears the author’s bio: “Nolan L. Cabrera is a professor at the University of Arizona, but he writes this as a private citizen.” Is that not an odd, if not aberrant, statement for someone calling for boldness? Again, why doesn’t Cabrera send critical articles to the Inside Higher Ed corporate-media organization with regards to its undemocratic disdain for alt-opinions like the following I’d written and sent to its editors: “To Censor or Not to Censor,” “Censoring Conversation in the Name of Conversation—Only in Higher Education,” and “Sara Custer Inside Higher Ed”?  Well, the reason, of course, is quite simple: upsetting a pro-DEI publication would not be beneficial to DEI.

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N.B.: This essay and cartoon above were sent to Cabrera, Inside Higher Ed, and The Daily Wildcat (student newspaper). No response was received.