My explanation for Wokeness taking over our world:

Out institutions select specifically for hierarchical game playing and intrigue and against anyone who thinks from first principles and is willing to stand up for something she/he believes in to the point of self-sacrifice.

In essence the story of "Woke", "Critical Theory", etc... is really the story of the 50 years it took to clear out every last soul that understood the pivotal importance of "Academic Freedom" over "Quality Control", "Radical Inlusion", "Safety Culture", "Cancel Culture" etc.

What we have now is an institutional culture that is uniformly, to a leader, hostile to letting subject matter choose our experts and leaders for us and reward them with deep academic freedom and protection from targeted harrasment by administrators and the bureaucratic class.

At all turns we have muderous zealots eager to remove threats from within by pushing the 5 following ideas:

A) All research is collaborative.
B) Transparency trumps achievement.
C) Diversity trumps achievement.
D) EQ>IQ
E) All academic fields are equally scholarly.

All false.