Here’s my OpEd for the Wall Street Journal
“Idea Laundering” in Academia:
How nonsensical jargon like "intersectionality" and "cisgender" is imbued with an air of false authority
@WSJ
"Grievance scholars use articles like those published in [Fat, Queer, Whiteness Studies] to credential themselves & receive promotion & tenure. They proceed—from the safety of professorships they’ll hold for life—to design courses around this literature."
The term "idea laundering" is brilliant. How radical ideas get processed through an ostensibly legitimate system that then legitimizes the idea, which then makes its way back into the world--now cleansed of radicalism and carrying academic solemnity.
“Idea Laundering” in Academia:
How nonsensical jargon like "intersectionality" and "cisgender" is imbued with an air of false authority
A good read courtesy of @peterboghossian
This guy focuses on “fat studies” but just wait until he learns about “economics” 😜⤵️
“over time, laundered ideas and the terminology that accompanies them become normative—giving them even more unearned legitimacy”
As a grad student in the 90s, I thought the nonsense I heard around me was in the end a harmless closed loop aimed mostly at keeping bad humanities professors employed. I didn’t appreciate how far-reaching this “idea laundering” would be in the future