A college professor said woke culture has “ruined academic life,” causing him to leave higher education.
UCLA tenured professor Joseph Manson, 62, described himself as a “refugee from mainstream higher education .”
“I strongly suspect that mainstream U.S. higher education is morally and intellectually corrupt, beyond the possibility of self-repair, and therefore no longer a worthwhile setting in which to spend my time and effort,” Manson wrote on his blog .
Manson explained that he decided to retire and leave his professor of anthropology position, one he had held since 2000.
“Gradually, one hire at a time, practitioners of ‘critical’ (i.e. far-left postmodernist) anthropology, some of them lying about their beliefs during job interviews, came to comprise the department’s most influential clique,” Manson said, adding that while the “militant faculty” increased, so did the number of “even more extremely militant graduate students.”
Manson described instances of how “all the signs of Woke capture” have been on display at UCLA and across higher education, noting that faculty were fired or ostracized “all for dissenting (in different ways) from Woke orthodoxy.”
Manson predicted that “leftist ideology” will continue to grow across the academy, stripping it of academic freedom .
“As Doris Day sang, the future’s not ours to see, but it’s a good bet that the grip of Woke orthodoxy on the University of California, and most other U.S. universities, will tighten in the years to come,” Manson wrote. “The younger faculty tend to be more Woke than their elders.”
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley affirmed Manson’s concerns, noting that those who dare to dissent are often forced into resignation.
“Today, a palpable level of fear and intimidation exists among many faculty members that they could be the next target of one of these campaigns,” Turley said in his own blog post. “Most professors are not protected by tenure, and universities can cite other reasons for not renewing their contracts.
In response to Manson’s retirement and blog post, UCLA spokesman Bill Kisliuk told Fox News: “UCLA is deeply committed to the free and open exchange of ideas and we strongly support the academic freedom of our scholars.”
“We actively encourage respectful debate, but we also expect equity and fairness, even when people strongly disagree,” he added. “We do not tolerate discrimination or harassment and, to that end, UCLA strongly condemns anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred.”
* Article from: The Washington Examiner