We are in the midst of an ideological war, fought by covert operatives with hidden agendas and a surprising amount of aggression. In a law school dominated by postmodern, feminist, culturally oppressed, marginalised, victimised, patronised, relativist, (only 1% of whom are able to argue their position with any semblance of coherence), it's .
Out with the conservative liberal ideologies - "fascism!", they cry - and in with the green pedagogy of rights, equality, and social justice. Any opinion that strays from the is subjected to vicious and unrelenting attack. Some may voice their disapproval purely as a sigh of disbelief - "how can anyone hold such a view?! the horror, the horror of it all!" - while others are more vocal in their expressions of puritanical hatred for all things Old and Hierarchical.
A wave of muttering surges around a lecture theatre, signalling yet another soon-to-be victim of the Collective Critique, and a string of hands is raised. Deliberately, almost mechanically, the dissenter is picked apart clause by clause. Trifles of semantics are argued incessantly, the 'inherent' immorality of certain premises is objected to, and an all-enveloping sense of condemnation hangs heavy in the air. The 'discussion' ends with an exasperated sigh from all concerned -- both parties shaking their heads at one another's seemingly indefensible arguments. Interestingly -- and (perhaps as a sign of my ) I mean this in the most neutral, descriptive way possible -- the most vocal critics are often female students.
A favourite pastime of mine is to sit in the back row of a seminar, and respond enthusiastically to all the lecturer's ethical questions in the most , Right-leaning manner possible. Ordinarily, one would expect such provocations to be ignored or cheerfully dismissed in the satirical tone with which they were delivered - evidently not in this faculty. Shocks of horror abound at how one could "so obviously perpetuate" existing power hierarchies or (and I quote) "oppress the Aborigines ... neglect the refugees [and] deny rights to religious minorities" (mentioned yet?). When anything related to rights, justice, or minorities is mentioned (... or even remotely relevant... or merely able to be mentioned), suddenly every difference in opinion becomes personal. Humour has no place, dissent is quelled, and objections to relativist or pluralist modes of reasoning are for the most part ignored.
It's not just students that participate in this , though. This attitude seems to have pervaded every aspect of the faculty: torts and contracts lecturers are strangely quiet; disarmed, unable to fend off attacks on their subject's validity and theoretical underpinnings, the mean green meme ends all meaningful discussion wherever it ventures. And the ideologically hell-bent are becoming more adventurous - it seems most humanities and language faculties are under a similar tyranny of what is, ironically, contemporary moral conservatism.
I find it most paradoxical that a movement which claims to accord all worldviews equal worth itself rejects and painstakingly vilifies contrary moral or social paradigms. Ultimately, this undermines its important message: pluralism is an important recognition, and the tools of post-modernism are useful insofar as they grant us insight into the . Active development of all individuals' jurisprudential (and epistemological) conception of law should be encouraged without fear of being branded a supremacist, subversive renegade.
Are there other academic institutions like the University of Melbourne that suffer from a similar philosophical infection? How have other students (and professors) encouraged meta-cognitive development without subjecting themselves to attack (and social/philosophical isolation)?