Do you think that the saturation of critical-theory, intersectionality studies, etc, within higher education is a bad trend that facilitates bad outcomes in public policy and civil society? I think it’s bad. If you think it’s a good thing, that’s your business, but it likely means we’re at an impasse.

If you believe that the trend is negative, then I think you have to consider the possibility that criticism of the trend will be pointed towards participants in the trend at all level of the hierarchy. I agree that being a new PhD doesn’t covey a lot of status upon the recipient. Part of the reason we’re in this mess is because of the jarring overproduction of postgrads.

There is no Pope of postmodern nonsense, one single person or machine at which to aim criticism – that’s part of the reason it remains to resilient. Maybe 2% of the people in that ecosystem are the Claudine Gays. The other 98% want to be one of the Claudine Gays.

Re: your question about the country club tweet, of course I would think that attacking a person for such a tweet would be absurd because I think the rationale is absurd. People *do* attack people on Twitter for such things, though – luckily, they’re less successful now than they used to be in the time of Justine Sacco.

My ideal is that it will someday be as unappealing to publicly announce a critical-theory postgrad as it is to enthusiastically announce that you got a job at a company that manufactures nitrous oxide canisters to sell to adolescents. You may disagree, but that’s where I have my sights set.