Academia Embarrasses Itself... Again

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

Over at Twitchy, a publication that curates the news in funny yet insightful ways, a headline reads, “Head of Medical School Tells Congresswoman the Vast Majority of Pregnancies Occur in Women.”  Sure enough, Twitchy is telling the truth.

During witness testimony before a congressional committee examining the impact of forced “diversity,” preferential (non-merit-based) admissions, and “woke” ideology upon the quality of medical schools, the chancellor of UC San Francisco testified under oath that not all pregnancies come from women.  That chancellor, Samuel Hawgood, is not some administrative bureaucrat with a made-up bachelor’s degree in the discriminatory effects of man-made “climate change” upon “transgender” Pakistanis (and an obligatory master’s in why American taxpayers must foot the bill for all “sex change” surgeries around the world).  No, Hawgood is an actual pediatrician who previously served as UCSF’s dean of the School of Medicine.  A man who did his residency at the Royal Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Brisbane cannot tell us how babies are made.

It is astounding to watch just how far down the propaganda rabbit hole so-called “institutions of higher learning” have dragged society.  Until very recently, this kind of public display of sophistry would have embarrassed an intellectual of the lowest order.  For a medical doctor and university chancellor to pretend that men can get pregnant is a flashing neon sign warning just how corrupt and dishonest all of academia has become.  These days, university leaders sound indistinguishable from North Korean spokespeople assuring starving citizens that they are better off than anyone else in the world.

How did we get to this point in time when professors tell rank lies to the American people, while hiding behind their titles as false evidence that those lies are somehow “truths”?  Well, social media favorite “Oilfield Rando” points to part of the problem.  In an X post responding to the doctor’s pseudoscientific testimony, Rando includes an itemization of Chancellor Hawgood’s university pay and accompanying benefits.  The man in charge of one of the country’s top educational institutions takes home well over a million dollars each year.  Unless Chancellor Hawgood is a moron who genuinely believes men can get pregnant, it is likely that he is willing to sell his intellectual reputation and personal honor for a seven-figure salary.

What does that say about the current state of our society?  The modern university arose from Christian monasteries dedicated to God’s truth.  This is why divinity degrees are generally accorded highest honor during processions accompanying graduation ceremonies.  As monasteries developed into secular institutions of higher learning, they remained places dedicated to the pursuit of truth.  Harvard’s motto, veritas, simply means “truth.”

For hundreds of years, faculty members did not take positions on college campuses because they sought fame or fortune.  They became scholars and professors because they were dedicated to the rigors of their calling.  Just as a Christian monk lived in poverty because the pursuit of truth provided spiritual nourishment and personal fulfillment, a scholar embraced a penurious life within academia in exchange for the privilege of seeking authentic truth.  The reward — unvarnished enlightenment — was understood to be more valuable than money.

I have spent enough time on university campuses to understand that they are no longer sanctuaries for truth.  There was a time not so many decades ago when campuses were “safe spaces” for all ideas.  Unlike the real world, where an employee might be fired for taking unorthodox positions in the workplace, colleges once encouraged professors and students to advance eccentric, heretical, and dissenting points of view on any subject.  Intellectual debate was more important than “hurt feelings” or “political correctness.”

Now, the opposite is true.  Universities are so concerned about “hurt feelings” and “political correctness” that they proudly designate most of their campus a “safe space” free from the “dangers” of debate, disagreement, or dissent.  Of course, the kicker is that in the process of creating “safe spaces,” colleges must first decide what points of view to defend as part of their unquestionable curricula.  They stake out positions just as a cleric might do with tenets of a religious faith.  In this way, the university has come full circle.  It has once again become a medieval monastery filled with members of a religious order.  It’s just that these twenty-first-century “monks” despise God, truth, and Christianity.

In 2026, a pediatrician and chancellor of a major university is incapable of stating the truths that biological sex is real and that only women can become pregnant.  As much as we might be inclined to laugh, this should make us feel sad.  There has never been a time in human history when people struggled with the distinctions between men and women.

We are presently in an era when the people with the most prestigious titles and credentials are either dumber or more dishonest than the least educated members of any human society that ever existed.  In exchange for their dumbness and dishonesty, they are paid extremely high salaries.  The corporate news media command us to treat these people with respect because they have been recognized as official “experts.”  And these highly paid, credentialed, respected experts from prestigious institutions of higher learning are too cowardly to tell the truth.  The noble pursuit and defense of veritas have been replaced with ignominy and indoctrination.

University cowardice, of course, does not stop with the idiotic fad of “transgenderism.”  There are all kinds of bizarre, fanciful, and unscientific commandments within the “woke” faith.  Believing in hard work, skill, intellect, and merit is now cast as unacceptable “white supremacy.”  Instead, we are told, people should be admitted to universities and receive degrees based on the color of their skin, their recognized victimhood, and/or their sexual proclivities.  Entire generations of intellectual lightweights are now certified “experts” because they claimed to have Native American blood or wrote college admissions essays about having sexual relations with broccoli.  They can’t do math.  They can’t write without the help of AI.  But since they call themselves “doctors” or were handed Ivy League degrees, they expect the rest of society to respect them and believe what they say.

It is such an odd time to be alive.  In the halls of government and academia, nonsensical beliefs masquerading as “truth” run rampant.  Within these wonderlands of delirium, two ideas are so sacrosanct that they cannot be questioned:

(1) using any kind of energy other than those available during the Middle Ages causes catastrophic “climate change”; and

(2) mass immigration and “multiculturalism” strengthen a society. 

Consequently, university professors and government ministers expect us to believe two preposterous things. 

 First, unless we pay carbon taxes and allow bureaucrats to centrally manage the economy, we will all die.  

Second, unless we replace Western civilization with other civilizations, we are all bigots.

In other words, our “educated elites” treat as indisputable “truths” the canards that bad weather and insufficient “diversity” are the two biggest problems of our time.  Their solutions?  Central bankers, multinational corporations, and government bureaucrats should strictly regulate how productive people build things and prosper.  Ideally, incompetent people rewarded for their perceived “victimhood” and “diversity” should be put in charge of future production.  This is not a plan for success.  This is an idiotic operation that guarantees civilizational self-destruction.

Should we survive this age of stupidity, our descendants will look back and wonder why clear-thinking scholars from our august institutions of higher learning didn’t do more to halt the suicidal impulses now gripping Western civilization.  

How could the very universities that trace their lineages back to Western monasteries’ pursuit of God’s truth become cesspools of falsehood, paganism, and superstition?

Western civilization’s survivors will not have to look hard for their answer: University chancellors were given millions of dollars to “educate” the public about men having babies. 

College campuses are catnip for crazies.