A black professor leaves academia: 'Critical thinking became critical feeling'

Erec Smith, formerly a professor of rhetoric and composition, got tired of colleagues calling him "inauthentically Black" because he embraced "white ways of knowing" such as "argumentation, knowledge of standard English and reason."

"Critical thinking . . . became critical feeling," Smith writes. The only acceptable feeling was resentment toward Western Civilization.

Abraham Lincoln's statue was toppled in Portland on Oct. 11, 2020 during the "Indigenous People's Day of Rage." Photo: Sergio Olmos/OPB

"My dedication to the preparation of my students for a free, pluralistic and liberal society induced a rancorous and multiracial tantrum from those dedicated to destroying said society," he writes. "My desire to empower my students was taken as an apologia for settler colonialism, a manifestation of my internalized anti-Blackness, a preference for White supremacy and a promotion of modern-day fascism."  

There was no place for a Black man who doesn't identify as a victim, Smith complains. Nor was there any demand for a Black rhetorician who didn't want to focus on Black rhetoric.

So Smith has left his job at York College for the Cato Institute, where he'll be a research fellow. He hopes to devote himself to "the life of the mind" -- not fending off "middle-school mean girls" with PhDs.

William Deresiewicz writes about Academe's Divorce from Reality on the Chronicle of Higher Education. Americans, and not just Trump voters, reject "its ideas, its assumptions, its opinions and positions — as expressed in official statements, embodied in policies and practices, established in centers and offices, and espoused and taught by large and leading portions of the professoriate."

They're just not that into you.

He is the author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life.