Academia has been pushing the “social justice” nonsense on unwitting students for years, turning out a bunch of adult-age children who prefer whining instead of working. That continues with Howard University’s announcement last week that liberal MSNBC host Joy Reid will teach a master’s level course on journalism next year.
The school said that the course, titled “Covering Race, Gender & Politics in the Digital Age,” will cover “concepts of political media coverage, focused on issues of race and gender.”
In a sense, Reid is perfectly suited for the role. Her time at MSNBC has been one long career of calling people racist and sexist. She is literally being sued for defamation right now by a California woman, a private citizen, whom Reid falsely characterized as racist on social media. (Reid apologized for the social media posts, admitting that it was inaccurate, but she is fighting the lawsuit.)
To be sure, race and gender are fine subjects to cover in journalism programs. Students can and should learn to be conscious of both. For instance, a reporter gathering quotes from voters on a given election would be smart to make sure he surveys a diverse group of people rather than, say, only Asian women in their 20s.
But anyone familiar with Reid’s work knows that’s not the kind of education she’s going to provide. No, the syllabus will be something like “Lessons in checking white privilege,” “Identifying white supremacy in politics,” and “Dismantling language rooted in toxic masculinity.”
As described in my book Privileged Victims: How America’s Culture Fascists Hijacked the Country and Elevated Its Worst People, this is why large newsrooms around the country are erupting with accusations of racism and demands that senior-level editors and managers more or less cease practicing journalism and instead embark on a moral crusade.
Young journalists, having been taught precisely the kind of garbage that Reid will preach to her students, feel now that their jobs as news reporters and writers are not to learn, grow, and explain current events as they are to their audience. No, they feel now that their job is to determine what’s good (“diversity” and “inclusion”), what’s bad (straight, white men having influence anywhere), and then push readers and viewers to see it the same way, including not just persuading but also haranguing and leveling false accusations.
The Los Angeles Times and the New York Times were perfect case studies this year. At the Los Angeles Times, staff demanded pay raises and race quotas for minority employees. At the New York Times, staff accused the paper’s opinion page editor of putting the lives of minority employees in danger after he commissioned a particular piece by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton. That editor responded by resigning.
At Howard University, Reid won’t be teaching journalism. She’ll be advocating for “social justice.”
