With few conservatives, academia won't develop a theory of progressivism

https://www.thepathnottaken.net/p/with-few-conservatives-academia-will

3 3 3 years ago

ftxbro• 3 years ago

Readers of this Substack will know I am not exactly a conservative.

His substack:

    Why is the leader of the UK Labour party so untrustworthy?
    Proportional representation just isn’t worth the hassle.
    Universities should disaffiliate from LGBTQ+ rights charity Stonewall.
    The Conservatives may be becoming a party of the middle.
    Decolonization of the curriculum is the revenge of administrators.
    Why liberals cannot escape intolerance.
    How conservatism became more reasonable.
    Does liberal bias affect academia?
    The conservative case against Marine Le Pen.
    How bad has the left got?
    Why don’t liberals support free speech anymore?
    Why don't the left support the family?
    Why liberals cannot acknowledge Twitter discrimination against conservatives.

dragonwriter• 3 years ago

Despite profound changes on the left, liberalism yielding to progressivism, there are few studies of this phenomenon.

This is a weird claim. There is no substantive change on the left associated with the change of label there; its a change in (mostly American) vocabulary because “liberalism” in the late 20th century was being simultaneously used for the center-right faction that believed that the progress made by 18th-19th century liberalism ought to be the endpoint of socio-politico-economic progress (AFAIK, this was already how it was predominantly used in Europe and elsewhere outside of the US) and for the center-left group that believed in continued progress in the direction set by preceding generations of liberalism (outside of the US, there were already several labels for different points in this space–e.g., both social democracy and democratic socialism are within it), so the latter faction adopted “progressivism” (which had been used in the past by very different movements) to distinguish itself from the former.

With the absence of a phenomenon to study, there’s not really much point to studying it. There is, of course, plenty of academic study of real phenomena within leftism (including the center-left) more generally, including the social justice movement (what the author here calls “social justice ideology” and claims, incorrectly, “progressivism” is a new name for.) So, insofar as the phenomenon of interest is the social justice movement, rather than some kind of “transition” heralded by the adoption of “progressivism” as a label by the center-left in America from about the 1990s, he’s wrong that there is no significant academic study of it as a phenomenon.

imbnwa• 3 years ago

This assessment seems largely accurate. I'd add that much of the 'controversial' epistemology and ethics groundwork for that modern center-left was laid in 80s/90s Queer theory, Critical Legal Studies, and Critical Race Theory; it just so happens that following 2008 these fields finally begun making their way into popular consciousness (I'd add that in American high school and college policy debate competitions, this literature was already fairly well-known and under intense discussion and, er, debate).

There really is not much new here.

With few conservatives, academia won't develop a theory of progressivism

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