The Commissars In STEM, by Rod Dreher.
Not long ago I heard from a friend who works in a STEM field. … It has to do with being present for a job interview at his firm in which a particular candidate — a white guy — did extremely well.
My friend said this man was easily the best candidate they interviewed, in a field where it is difficult to hire for that particular specialty. But later, a super-woke colleague on the interview team crossed him out, because the wokester had a feeling that the guy might be a bigot — this, because of the way he cast his eyes across the room when he sat down for the interview.
Completely absurd, but of course no one will challenge this woke person, who belongs to an official Victim demographic. So this applicant, a man who, in the professional judgment of my friend, proved that he deserved the job, will not receive an offer, based on an entirely subjective whim by a progressive.
That man will never know why he didn’t receive an offer. Meanwhile, the division of the firm for which my friend works will have to make do with someone of lesser quality in this high-tech field, who passes this woke nitwit’s diversity test.
Or this:
Life science jobs at Berkeley give precedence to candidates’ diversity and inclusion statements. Only 1/4 applicants moves on to the stage of having their research and teaching ability evaluated. …
Another:
The universities have become mirrors of the NKVD under Stalin, paralyzed by mutual hatred & distrust, where no one knows what word might be deemed a fatal lapse of etiquette. Grad students (especially Teaching Assistants) tell me they live in terror of some student’s taking offense at some verbal slip and ending, not their job, but their career. …
Another:
For most of my career life of decades now, I was on the faculty of one of the premier medical schools in this country. One by one over time, the old grey haired professors were dispatched. The teachers these kids need the most were taken out – because they refused to use correct pronouns, refused to acknowledge things related to transgender issues that are just patently absurd (things like disputing that “males” have periods), etc, etc, These faculty members were NOT endocrinologists – OB GYN or anything that had to do with trans issues – but out on their academic ass they went – banished from the clinics never to see a student again. …
Could this happen to you?
A patient who was a distraught mother of a teenage boy came to me to discuss the fact that her son at age 14 was being pressured by his school counselors to have gender transition surgery … I have known this child all his life. I have known of his struggles with being on the autism spectrum and I have known all his myriad struggles throughout his life. I replied that I thought this would be a horrible tragedy to proceed with this until he was much older and make the decisions for himself as an adult. …
The mother went to the child psychiatrist pushing this treatment — and stopped it. The psychiatrist found out what had happened and immediately sent my name to the “diversity committee”. I was called before them — and things like bigotry, transphobia and poor judgement on my part were talked about openly — I was convicted before I could say a word. I could instantly tell that my career as I had known it was over. …
I and my wife made the gut-wrenching decision to leave the big city and take our young children to the far away flyover country – we are 150 miles from the nearest interstate highway. I was absolutely horrified at first – but IT HAS BEEN THE BEST THING EVER FOR US – it has been a gift from God. He truly does work in mysterious ways. The kids are thriving – and free of drag queen story hour, video games, and the like. We live in a place that reminds me of the America that I grew up in.
Why?
Make no mistake about it: the Berkeley Diversity Mavens have won. By hiring large numbers of deans and administrators whose job is to promote initiatives like the above, colleges like Berkeley have guaranteed that this kind of process will only get more onerous and more invidious. After all, those people have to keep ratcheting up the process to keep their jobs going. In reality, their goal should be to ultimately make their own jobs obsolete. …
These people are commissars — political officers assigned to politicize institutions and groups that should operate independent of politics. This is how they use identity politics to divide, demoralize, and ultimately destroy. Spending this past year reading about how Stalinism corrupted Soviet science makes it crystal clear what is happening here among us, today.
My STEM source, who was trained under a communist regime, and who escaped it, writes, “The darkness is setting. I do not mean to be poetic. I feel it with every pore of my body.” …
It’s not remote. It’s spreading fast throughout the West:
One more thing: almost every day I hear a new account from a reader about the oppressive progressive political atmosphere in their workplace. It’s not just in colleges. It’s in corporations, it’s in hospitals, it’s in law offices, it’s in churches — it’s everywhere, and spreading. It’s certainly in the newsrooms, which is why so few journalists actually notice what’s happening, much less see a problem with it. …
Had a friendly argument today with someone who said all this stuff I bang on about on this blog sounds overblown. The only meaningful thing I could say is, “You should see my e-mail.” You can’t imagine how bad it is until it happens to you, or you see it with your own eyes, in your workplace, or to people you know.
People are afraid, and they are right to be afraid. We are talking about folks genuinely and legitimately afraid of losing their jobs, and their careers, because they might have crossed a left-wing political line.
And people wonder why young men cannot be bothered.
The lies are not sustainable. It won’t last forever. But it might last quite a while.
