"Black Studies: 'Swaggering Into the Future,'"

[Metspitzer]

By NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY

Recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a cover story
called "Black Studies: 'Swaggering Into the Future,'" in which the
reporter described how "young black-studies scholars . . . are less
consumed than their predecessors with the need to validate the field
or explain why they are pursuing doctorates in their discipline." The
"5 Up-and-Coming Ph.D. Candidates" described in the piece's sidebar
"are rewriting the history of race." While the article suggested some
are skeptical of black studies as a discipline, the reporter neglected
to quote anyone who is.

Like me. So last week, on the Chronicle's "Brainstorm" blog (where I
was paid to be a regular contributor), I suggested that the
dissertation topics of the graduate students mentioned were obscure at
best and "a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap," at worst.

For instance, the author of a dissertation on the history of black
midwifery began her research, she told the Chronicle, because she
"noticed that nonwhite women's experiences were largely absent from
natural-birth literature." Another graduate student blamed the housing
crisis in America on institutional racism. And a third argued that
conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and John McWhorter
have "played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the
civil-rights legacy that benefited them."

The reaction to my blog post ranged from puerile to vitriolic. The
graduate students I mentioned and the senior faculty who advise them
at Northwestern University accused me (in guest blogs posted by the
Chronicle editors) of bigotry and cowardice. The former wrote that "in
a bid to not be 'out-niggered' [their word] by her right-wing cohort,
Riley found some black women graduate students to beat up on." (I
confess I don't actually know what that means.) One fellow blogger
(and hundreds of commenters) called my post "racist."

Gina Barreca, a teacher of English and feminist theory at the
University of Connecticut, composed a poem mocking me. (It begins "A
certain white chick祐chaefer Riley/ decided to do something wily.")
MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry spewed a four-minute rant about my
post, invoking the memory of Trayvon Martin and accusing me of
"small-mindedness."

Scores of critics on the site complained that I had not read the
dissertations in full before daring to write about them預n absurd
standard for a 500-word blog post. A number of the dissertations
aren't even available. Which didn't seem to stop the Chronicle
reporter, though. And 6,500 academics signed a petition online
demanding that I be fired.

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