Among the usual claims about a trillion Uyghurs being murdered in concentration camps and the women being sterilized, the “professor” also claimed that Uyghurs weren’t recognized as one of China’s 55 ethnic minorities (they are) and that Islam is banned in China (it’s not) They didn’t provide any sources too lmao
Yes, they’re a white liberal
No, there wasn’t a single mention of Palestine
How do you become a Professor when you can’t even be bothered to google what the fuck you’re talking about? Does saying “China bad” give you a PhD now? The level of academic dishonesty is staggering, aren’t universities supposed to take this stuff seriously? Surely there must be a way to report professors spreading racist conspiracy theories as fact. It’s not just a political thing, the intellectual laziness is so extreme they cannot even get the most basic background facts right. At this point I would be surprised if they know which continent China is in.
But hey, at least they got to trivialize actual genocides by putting them next to the Uyghur “genocide”
If I pulled any of this shit in a paper - no sources, lies debunked in two seconds - I would at a minimum instantly fail the class and probably face a serious risk of being suspended and/or expelled for academic fraud.
I had an agroecology professor who pushed individualised solutions hard. They’d highlight every way capitalism is existentially killing us and then say “you should recycle and volunteer at a food bank”. Zero radical content to the entire course. At one point they casually mentioned that they do a lot of consulting work for cattle ranchers and corporate farmers who are the ones actively destroying this region. They said that in our building that’s sponsored by a major agribusiness and posts its other industrial sponsors on the walls as you walk in.
The day after the revolution, all liberal academics will be forced to do a struggle session in their classroom. It will consist of writing “When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor” 500 times on the blackboard.
Nothing better than being told China is murdering millions of Muslims in the Lockheed Martin - Raytheon Martin - Northrop Grumman “Kill the Browns” Lecture Hall
But back to your example, this would be like the prof saying that recycling is banned in China. It’s not just an odious display of horrific politics, it’s an obvious lie that even NATOpedia debunks.
After the Revolution these people should be awarded an anti-PhD that bars them from ever coming within a 10 mile radius of any educational institution.
Red Guard trials which end in them being sentenced to a degree in sociology with free tuition and a generous student stipend so they can focus on their studies.
The answer is simple: the personal qualities of present-day professors are such that we may find among them even exceptionally stupid people like Tugan. But the social status of professors in bourgeois society is such that only those are allowed to hold such posts who sell science to serve the interests of capital, and agree to utter the most fatuous nonsense, the most unscrupulous drivel and twaddle against the socialists. The bourgeoisie will forgive the professors all this as long as they go on “abolishing” socialism.
V. I. Lenin, “A Liberal Professor on Equality,” 1914
Universities in America have been deeply unserious for a very long time, if not for their entire existence
If I pulled any of this shit in a paper - no sources, lies debunked in two seconds - I would at a minimum instantly fail the class and probably face a serious risk of being suspended and/or expelled for academic fraud.
That would only happen if the paper you wrote without sources and full of lies were against the liberal worldview. A lesson I learned early in university was that most professors - not all - are just looking for their own ideas and perspectives to be parroted back to them. If you wrote a paper for the DEI class about the uyghur genocide and sprinkled in a bunch of made-up ETIM claims I bet the worst you’d get is a passing grade and a note about improving your works cited or something.
are just looking for their own ideas and perspectives to be parroted back to them
Yeah I’ve played that game plenty of times. The thing is, it’s usually just about their dumbass pet theory about how the Qin emperor was an ancient Nietzschean and not fabricating basic facts.
Surely this warrants the chair telling them to maybe skim the google search results before lecturing others. Just kidding, I know they won’t do anything about it.
Even if they doubt the western narrative, saying something about it just paints a target on their own back. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of arguing against the existence of the uyghur genocide and being told by someone who likely “supports israel’s right to self defense” that you’re being islamophobic. Liberals wield these words without any connection to reality, so getting fired for “islamophobia” and/or “genocide denial” would be very damaging to an academic’s career. Look at what happened to Norman Finkelstein - and he’s not just an academic, he’s devoted his study to the history of Palestine. His family died in the Holocaust, but even that wasn’t enough to protect him from academic ruin.
I just don’t feel right not doing anything about someone laundering lies of literal terrorists. I want to leave at least some impact beyond whining about them on RMP - anonymously if possible. Zionist students have free reign to terrorize and assault Arab students and hold genocidal hate rallies with one Zionist fuck holding a “kill them all” sign with zero consequences while the admin sends out emails fearmongering about antisemitism. Oh and also some creepy old Zionist showed up to threaten to rape and murder Arab students. So publicly opposing the western narrative is inviting death threats and physical attacks.
Depending on how shitty the professor is, if you write what they want to hear but voice criticism in class you might be able to effect some pushback and make an impact on other students while also not tanking your grade. The whole “academia” thing encourages lively debate (
) so the professor might feel pressed to allow in-class discussion where they’d feel less compelled to humor pushback in an assignment they’re grading in private
Call the professor deeply unserious.
Death threats may be taking things a bit far.
Report them for academic fraud
The UN report (the one led by Bachelet) is the best tool I’ve found in arguing with libs who are this far down the hole. Because it’s authored by the UN and there’s some liberal “tut-tutting” against China in it (i.e. they say China uses some questionable re-radicalization tactics). It essentially debunks all the claims about slavery, genocide, forced sterilization, etc.
Can you tell them in class you got into an argument with your tankie friend about China and need for him to share these sources to convince your friend? And then when they may give you some obvious propaganda source question their trustworthiness because you know your friend is really skeptical?
That would be pretty funny.
They’ll probably just tell OP to do their own research or at best send an Zenz source laundered through the NYT.
The claims of Uygur genocide are Zenzational
If I were you I’d just show a gif compilation of Muslims on YouTube going to mosques in China
You know as well as OP does that it just gets into endless discourse about propaganda and supposed Potemkin mosques and so on.
Yeah, though at the very least correcting them on the obvious fact that the Uyghurs are a recognized minority could be something. That obviously doesn’t change their claims that they are being genocided, but just the blunt nature of asking, with no further argument: “professor why did you lie to us the other day?”
Yeah politics aside, this is not something backed by academic rigor or well sourced. Plus as far as they are concerned, it is still ongoing and they clearly don’t have much to examine as it stands. Even the Rohingya genocide has actual documentaries and a bunch of international bodies with detailed reports.
You’d be surprised how many academics are thin-skinned incompetents jealously guarding their positions against competent people.
I’ve worked with several in the past, but not that many, and two of them straight-up plagiarized and got away with it.
You leave bill ackmans wife alone!!
The level of academic dishonesty is staggering, aren’t universities supposed to take this stuff seriously?
A Universities primary purpose is churning out economically useable people and / or kickstarting some new technology that promises to be an entire field of business.
No. Its reproducing a class. The relationship to economic usefulness is at best incidental. The point is to signal to the rubes that they have more “merit” and to the initiated that they are in on it. Same with mandarinism in ancient china, of how much use was the poetry and other subjects in the imperial exam to the life of a beurocrat? Same with trivia about the life of the prophet in some islamic societies.
Contradicting the professor is absolutely a hill I’d die on if I were in that class.
one of the more demoralizing / disheartening features of my time in academic-adjacent outreach has been witnessing the ubiquitous
intellectual laziness
among so-called public intellectuals.
also, the public perception of tenure and its actual function within the organization are wildly at odds. tenure does not protect novel ideas or curiosity. tenure is a treat offered to careerist sophists that hit intellectually dubious metrics dreamed up by highly profitable, rent-seeking academic journals and the incurious peers in thrall to them.
there is something so repulsive about the high concentration of individuals with highly specialized training in conducting an investigation not applying any of those tools to their surroundings. it is such a waste.
