A word about intellectual diversity and dissent. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/substack-and-medias-groupthink-problem/617102/

When I was in graduate school at Harvard, I failed the oral exams on the grounds that I was too “digressive.” And “your style makes you difficult to test.”

The exam is usually considered pro forma & it’s rare that anyone fails it. This was a demoralizing moment.

This failure me feel like I wasn’t wanted at Harvard, that my ideas—or maybe “style”—didn’t belong.

Naturally I concluded the this Ivy League department that claimed to want a diversity of views & styles was actually a bubble of hideous groupthink.

I was ashamed, and furious. I was being canceled before the word existed. You can’t be an academic if you can’t even clear this basic hurdle for the MA. I was finished.

But because like Yglesias & Sullivan I’m arrogant self-important dick,
I decided that I hadn’t just failed a test.

No no no — I’d been too daring & original a thinker for these calcified Ivy Leaguers who all thought in lockstep! They couldn’t take a joke or appreciate irony!

But I also thought all this because I was TWENTY-THREE.

Phonies! PC closed American minds with their pre-woke wokeness!

I went to speak to the director of graduate studies. I had written a script. It was VERY grand & self-serious. (It sounded a bit like a certain Harpers letter.)

I actually remember saying, “Professor D—-, you say I don’t need to review Victorian novels for the retest. Or Shakespeare. Or Sir Walter Scott. Or even Spenser! You claim it’s my STYLE that is so infelicitous as to require retesting. I assume I shd read Emily Post then!”

I believe I left Professor D dumbfounded, put in his place. They were fatuous hypocrites and probably woke and I was off to start my Substack.

Now I think he probably saw me as a young student who had...just failed...a test.

In sum, Yglesias & Sullivan strike me as people who’ve mistaken their own (minor) failures for proof they’re too original for mortals.

I get the pain of failure. But if you miss one professional brass ring & conclude the media is direly woke, PC & uniform? That’s sophistry.

PS I also remember charging Prof D w/intolerance & illiberalism. He said, “There is a huge range of approaches & ideologies in the department.”

I said, “If you’re not allowed in that group it doesn’t look diverse; it looks like a monolith. Because everyone in it is Not You.”

While at Harvard, Sullivan fit right in. He experienced it as a smorgasbord of diverse delights because he was allowed IN. To me Harvard was an intolerant monolith because it was a closed door.

Well, look who is calling the thing he feels rejected by an intolerant monolith now.

P.P.S. Went back two weeks later, took the test in a snarky monotone & never went on tangents. Passed.

Sometimes you have to take the bit—admit you don’t know how to do an oral exam or understand trans issues. Then, sadder but wiser, you go on to write what you want.