‘Our Struggle Is My Struggle’: The Dangers of Grievance Studies
The world of academia has been riveted by the full account of an elaborate hoax that resulted in several high-profile academic journals publishing articles based on ludicrous notions and fake field research, but couched in the language of social justice and identity politics.Revealed: Group whose leaders have been disciplined for racism and don't agree with the international definition of anti-Semitism gives anti-Semitism training to the Labour party
The hoax was the brainchild of three academics — editor and writer Helen Pluckrose, mathematician James Lindsay, and philosopher Peter Boghossian — none of whom are likely to receive “A” list university posts now that they have performed this valuable service. Over a period of about a year, the three of them concocted 20 hoax papers relating to themes like identity, sexuality, body shape, and the significance of “intersectional” struggles. By the time they called a halt to the project, seven of these hoaxes had been published in various academic journals, essentially confirming their initial suspicion that, as long as it is in the proper political packaging, there are plenty of journal editors out there receptive to any old garbage.
One paper about “rape culture” in dog parks in Portland, Oregon received a special citation from the journal that published it. Another paper, on how “masculinist and Western bias” in the science of astronomy “can best be corrected by including feminist, queer, and indigenous astrology,” was enthusiastically received by academic reviewers with a request for only minor revisions. Most spectacularly, the feminist social-work journal Affilia published a hoax paper titled “Our Struggle Is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism” that was composed of passages lifted from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf with, in the words of the three hoaxers, “fashionable buzzwords switched in.”
Many academics have protested that the hoax project was unethical because its methodology hinged upon dishonest dealings with the editors and peer reviewers of the journals where these papers were published. There is some merit to that argument, but more importantly, we can learn a great deal about human behavior from these types of underhand experiments. When the controversial American social psychologists Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo carried out their respective studies of obedience more than 50 years ago — in Milgram’s case by setting up unknowing subjects to believe that they were inflicting electric shocks on others at the behest of an “authority figure,” in Zimbardo’s by placing student volunteers in “guard” and “inmate” roles in a laboratory “prison” — these were similarly denounced as unethical. But they also demonstrated that willfully engaging in state-sanctioned brutality is something that all human beings are vulnerable to, even when doing so violates the values and standards taught to them all their lives.
A group whose leaders have been disciplined for anti-Semitism is providing 'anti-Semitism training' to the Labour party, MailOnline can reveal.
Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), which doesn't sign up to the internationally-recognised definition of anti-Semitism, has trained up to three constituencies so far, with plans for 70 more.
JVL is promoting its own definition that says it is not anti-Semitic to compare Israel to Nazi Germany.
At a meeting with 50 Labour officials and trade union leaders last month, JVL co-chairwoman Jenny Manson said that her group is running workshops for 'political gain'.
Ms Manson, who has received a warning from Labour for anti-Semitic comments, added: 'We were asked by Corbyn's office whether we have any ideas for a training course ourselves.'
'I don't think there is a real problem with anti-Semitism in the Labour Party… but [Mr Corbyn's office] asked us if we could provide training.
'This is quite a political point. We don't want to say, 'no, we don't think any training is needed'… It is a political gain for us.'
UKMW prompts Guardian to acknowledge there’s no ‘settler-only’ roads in the West Bank
The myth that there are ‘Jews-only’ or ‘settler-only’ roads in the West Bank has been debunked numerous times over the years by CAMERA and its affiliates – prompting corrections at media outlets such as CNN, Associated Press, Washington Post, The Economist, Financial Times and The Telegraph.
As we’ve explained on numerous occasions, the overwhelming majority or West Bank roads are open to all traffic, Israeli and Palestinian. However, there are, for security reasons, a very small percentage of roads in the West Bank restricted to Palestinians. But, all roads are open to Israeli citizens of all religious backgrounds and foreign nationals of all religious backgrounds.
There is not, nor have there ever been, religiously based restrictions on roads in Israel or the West Bank – nor roads only for settlers.
The latest publication to publish a version of this lie is the Guardian, in an Oct. 11th op-ed by Nkosi Zwelivelile (the grandson of Nelson Mandela) attempting to use this ‘fact’ to support the larger lie that Israel is an apartheid state.
Here’s our tweet pointing out the erroneous claim – one of several in the paragraph, but, we concluded, the one most egregiously inconsistent with the accuracy clause of the Editors’ Code.
Hey @guardian, there's so much that's untrue or misleading in this op-ed accusing #Israel of practicing apartheid, but, under the terms of the editors' code, we're asking you to correct the categorically false claim that there are "settler-only roads" in the West Bank. pic.twitter.com/qPfAz2gDWA
— UK Media Watch (@UKMediaWatch) October 11, 2018
We followed up our tweet with an email editors, who upheld our complaint and amended the text in the sentence to the still misleading but improved “roads built for settlers which are not accessible to Palestinians”, and, more importantly, included the following addendum at the bottom of the op-ed: