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What a beautifully written scathing piece on the NYT and the insidious "conservative" media by Prof. Peter Coviello.

"I taught at a place called Bowdoin College for 16 years, and during the last of those there was a student in attendance you’ve perhaps heard of. His name is Zohran Mamdani. And so, shortly after his startling, spirit-lifting victory in the primary last spring, the gentle flood of inquiries commenced."

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Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani

It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…
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This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)
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More from the article by Prof. Peter Coviello -

"Beneath its humdrum requests, every email said more or less the same thing: Can you explain how reading certain things can turn a person into a socialist—and, possibly, a terrorist-sympathizing antisemite? It’s a storied gambit of the right at its most grimly predictable. "

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Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani

It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…
Literary Hub
#uspol
in reply to AkaSci 🛰️

AkaSci 🛰️
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More from the wonderful and insightful essay by Prof. Peter Coviello -

"And he managed to write that story, which appeared in the Times less than a week before the mayoral election, under the anodyne title “How a Small Elite College Influenced Mamdani’s World View.” It’s a wreck, but of a form so pure, so purely Timesian, you almost have to admire it. It certainly is instructive."

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Screen shot of one of the pages of the essay - ... Here’s the pitch: Mr. Mamdani graduated in 2014 from Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine, with a bachelor’s degree in Africana studies. And his experience there—readings of critical race theorists in the classroom and activism for left-wing causes on campus—is emblematic of the highly charged debate over what is taught in American universities. Critics say the growth of these programs, which aim to teach about historical events from the perspective of marginalized and oppressed groups, has turned colleges into feckless workshops for leftist political orthodoxy. “Critics say” is the tell, and does it ever go on telling. First, note that this criticism (“Majors like Africana studies, or any of its siblings such as women’s studies, these critics charge, promote a worldview that sees little to admire in American history. Some disparagingly call the entire field ‘grievance studies’”) gives to the article the whole of its contrapuntal structure of argument: these scholars and teachers say Mr. Mamdani’s education is substantial, yet critics say something else. But then note as well that this counter-position is substantiated, in its length and breadth, by: J. D. Vance and the National Association of Scholars (NAS), the former a man whose fervid anti-intellectualism needs no introduction, the latter a conservative 501(c)3 flush with money from the Olin, Bradly, and Castle Rock Foundations, and more lately affiliated with ...

Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani

It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…
Literary Hub
#uspol
This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)
in reply to AkaSci 🛰️

AkaSci 🛰️
mastodon - Link to source
AkaSci 🛰️
• •

Prof. Peter Coviello ends with -

"It’s not that those things don’t matter: they absolutely goddamn do, and will keep on mattering, and I wouldn’t go on with the whole tedious business of teaching if I thought otherwise. It’s just that they never mattered much to the Times and they are, to appearances, mattering less and less by the day. I should remember that, and so should you."

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Screen shot of last page of the essay - But that comfort wears thin pretty quickly, and I imagine you can see why. In contexts not concerning the elite private colleges of New England and their decades-old conflicts and syllabi and on-campus squabbles, this mode of prestige media procedure matters absolutely and enormously, at scales difficult to tabulate. It’s not hard to call them all to mind: “Climate change is increasingly lethal, though critics say… it is not.” Or, “Israel is murdering journalists in Gaza at historically unprecedented rates, though critics say… it is not.” Or, “Trans people claim to be real, though critics say…” Every bit of this is disheartening on its face. But it’s actually worse than any first-blush irritation, that familiar annoyance that comes from encountering still another textbook exercise in witless triangulation. Because what this sort of reporting ultimately means is that if you have enough money to get somebody, anybody, to produce a white paper for you, which you can then put on some think-tank stationery? Then, my friend, you are ready to enter into the rushing current of elite reportage. For no matter how unhinged the position you’ve taken, or paid someone marginally credentialed to sketch out on your behalf—“Can Woman Think?: We Investigate,” “Is the Negro a Man: A Reconsideration”—that opinion will, by virtue of such provenance, possess all needed evidentiary gravity for the Times. And then some. ...

Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani

It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…
Literary Hub
#uspol
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