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I thought that I would respond with a few thoughts about this deeply cynical nonsense. First thought: this'll just continue the trend of disintegrating lines of authority and confidence in unis. Lots of people just won't co-operate: who's going to make them? /THREAD
As the pool of good will gradually dries up, it's already unclear (post-strike, post-pensions debacle and post-Covid) that managerial authority, control and even knowledge at the front line is intact. Will any of this stick? Doubt it, tho it will do damage while the govt tries.
I dealt with some of these questions earlier in the year. Entire Schools and Faculties are now just doing whatever they please: individual academics certainly are. This will give that process of disengagement a further little push: http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2020/09/end-of-line-for-universities.html
Second thought: this crude reductionism is a sad reflection on Ministers' abilities. Currently reading Darren Anderson's 'Inventory', about growing up in Derry. It's a discomforting read through History itself: spectral, surprising, liminal, confusing, confused, counterintuitive.
People are endlessly multiple. Yes, Catholics in Derry have grandparents who served in the British Army. What does that mean? Is it a story about 'ourselves'? You be the judge: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tidewrack-Darran-Anderson/dp/1784741507
Third thought: are you seriously telling me that all the progress we've made unpackaging the roots of the British Empire in the late c17th and through the c18th, all the slaves on which the country house was often built, should just be thrown away? Really?
I use the extraordinary work of the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership Centre at UCL ( @LBS_at_UCL) in my own teaching. You can follow individuals and families as they invest, disinvest, lose money, leave money. Turn it all off? Nope. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/
Fourth thought: are historians 'woke'? Well, maybe if you want to talk a load of nonsense on the front page of what now masquerades as The Telegraph. But not if you want to be taken seriously. https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/glen-ohara-on-the-evolution-of-wokeness-84118
In my teaching practice, I talk about being 'wide open': being able to see the extraordinary bravery of Bomber Command's crews during the Second World War, *and at the same time* the misery and grief wrought by the bombing campaign. Is that a story about 'us'? You tell me.
For these four reasons, I believe that Ministers' 'War on Woke' is so grotesquely misguided on practical, theoretical, evidential and methodological grounds as to rule it out of consideration. It does not even merit a moment's consideration. Long thread, sorry. /END
