The Academic Jihad on Western Civ

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but an endless sleep induced by silly, soporific lessons in self-loathing:

In 2011, the University of California at Los Angeles decimated its English major. Such a development may seem insignificant, compared with, say, the federal takeover of health care. It is not. What happened at UCLA is part of a momentous shift in our culture that bears on our relationship to the past—and to civilization itself.  

Until 2011, students majoring in English at UCLA had to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton—the cornerstones of English literature. Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the “Empire,” UCLA junked these individual author requirements and replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take a total of three courses in the following four areas: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability, and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing. In other words, the UCLA faculty was now officially indifferent as to whether an English major had ever read a word of Chaucer, Milton, or Shakespeare, but was determined to expose students, according to the course catalog, to “alternative rubrics of gender, sexuality, race, and class.”...

ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz. Oh, sorry. Anytime I hear the word "rubric," my eyes immediately glaze over. (Same thing happens when I hear "nexus," "praxis," "imperial," "transnational" and "postcolonial," among other buzz words beloved in/by academe.)

Since yesterday was MLK day in the U.S., here are some of the man's words that relate to the above:

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.