The richly quotable William F. Buckley Jr once said, “History is the polemics of the victors.” Like much of what dear old WFB said it’s delightful but not really true. At least not anymore.
To rail against the inherent bias in our modern academia serves little purpose; the cat is out of the bag. The people who care already know and the guilty are overtly satisfied with the status quo. We all know how in the early and mid 1960’s university campuses were “taken over by the protesting youth of the New Left” to quote dissident Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfeld, who was there to see it. We understand that the halls of higher education were beset by radical political groups which then festooned lifetime, tenured positions of power on the campuses, creating entirely new academic disciplines engineered from the beginning to beget new left-wing academics, long after the political movements which spawned them died out. We understand that many our liberal arts programs are simply factories for contemporary American cultural liberalism, nearly devoid of academic rigor or practical education.
Now the new wave of delusional reconstruction of history is beginning, at your literal expense. According to the Associated Press a bevy of institutions, many funded by your tax dollars, are falling over each other to snap up Occupy memorabilia for new exhibits. To quote from one of our publically employed arbiters of cultural heritage:
“Occupy is sexy,” said Ben Alexander, who is head of special collections and archives at Queens College in New York, which has been collecting Occupy materials. “It sounds hip. A lot of people want to be associated with it.”
Indeed. I’m sure the members of the Sociology Department at CUNY are scrambling to be the most legit Occupier in the faculty lounge. Or at least of those on the email list as being on sabbatical.
Or how about this fine archivist, so intent on approaching our living history with a critical eye:
“We want to make sure we collect it from our perspective so that it can be represented as best as possible,” said Amy Roberts, a library and information studies graduate student at Queens College who helped create the archives working group.
If you’re not sure what’s wrong with that perspective I have a fabulous piece of property in the Sun Belt to show you.
Another publically underwritten pop culture activist from George Mason University had this to say about the screaming discrepancy in her department’s interest in enshrining Occupy:
“This kind of social movement is probably more interesting to me, to be honest about it. And also so much of it is happening digitally. On webpages. On Twitter,” said Sheila Brennan, the associate director of public projects. “I guess I didn’t see as much of that with the tea party.”
That’s right. The Tea Party constituted the most powerful and change affecting electoral force since the Republican Revolution 20 years earlier but, hey, they’re totally not on Twitter. Like, am I right or what? Besides, middle class people showing up to town halls and participating in the democratic process? Bor-ing!.