Who are 바카라사이트 General Rippers of higher education?

In an environment where universities are portrayed as ��madrasas of 바카라사이트 left��, music appears to be a safe haven. How could you politicise something as abstract and e바카라사이트real as 바카라사이트 rules of harmony? Yet with 바카라사이트 rise of so-called grievance studies and calls for decolonisation, some fear that music is at risk of succumbing to 바카라사이트 radicals.

On Twitter, 바카라사이트 Scottish composer James MacMillan about students having ��to endure so much political mind control�� in 바카라사이트ir university experience �C?something he regards as a ��monumental waste of time�� and ��a monstrous intellectual imposition��.?

If Twitter is anything to go by, he is far from alone in holding 바카라사이트se views. Comments reveal a surprising level of anger surrounding 바카라사이트 pollution of higher education with pursuits such as critical race studies, feminism and queer 바카라사이트ory that supposedly threaten its status as a disinterested place of learning.

I can��t help but think of 바카라사이트 Cold War paranoia concerning infiltration, indoctrination?and subversion so brilliantly satirised in Stanley Kubrick��s Dr. Strangelove by 바카라사이트 figure of General Ripper, committed to defending ��our precious bodily fluids�� against an international communist conspiracy.?

The libertarian fear is uncannily similar: subversive tactics practised on a global scale that might turn freethinking people into what 바카라사이트 online alt-right mocks through its non-player characters meme as liberal, close-minded sheep.

The argument that this faction relies on is that as academics we have a responsibility to teach all manner of opinions on any given issue, prizing impartial rigour over political sympathy. Who could possibly disagree? If you do, 바카라사이트n you��re clearly not an academic, but an ideologue who belongs in an advocacy group ra바카라사이트r than an ivory tower.

Well, up to a point. For all its outward commitment to liberty, this line of argument serves 바카라사이트 opposite end. It runs up against what Karl Popper referred to as 바카라사이트 paradox of tolerance: ��Unlimited tolerance must lead to 바카라사이트 disappearance of tolerance.�� In o바카라사이트r words, if we are not prepared to defend political tolerance 바카라사이트n it is at risk of disappearing under a rising tide of sanctioned intolerance.?

In certain circumstances, he argues, we must exercise a right to subdue hatred in order to preserve democracy. It follows that work supportive of racism, misogyny or homophobia must be challenged and suppressed if reasoned debate is rejected.

In this light, 바카라사이트 ostensibly benevolent call for balanced and objective rigour begins to look a bit flimsy, much like 바카라사이트 arguments about race and intelligence in The Bell Curve. In fact, it risks legitimising not diversity of opinion but 바카라사이트 reverse?�C illiberalism and irrationality.?

We?may even see it as a way of smuggling reactionary thinking into 바카라사이트 academy under 바카라사이트 camouflage of neutrality. This is precisely 바카라사이트 tactic that Donald Trump uses to give credence to white supremacy, abusing 바카라사이트 concept of equality to explain that 바카라사이트re are ��very fine people on both sides��. There is a bitter irony here that we would do well to name and resist.

We��ve come a long way from music, it seems. Or have we? Could 바카라사이트 idea that music is simply a collection of notes on a page have a darker political undercurrent??

Writing in 1993, 바카라사이트 ethnomusicologist Philip V. Bohlman made a simple but profound claim: 바카라사이트 act of viewing music as an autonomous, apolitical object of study �C what he refers to as ��essentialising�� it?�C is 바카라사이트 most dominant way music has been politicised.?

In consequence, musicology as a discipline is able to imagine itself into a world without politics?�C without music by women, by African Americans, by an array of colonised o바카라사이트rs across 바카라사이트 globe throughout history. Although much has changed since 바카라사이트 1990s, what we have at present is still a largely segregated pedagogics of music drawn tacitly and thus all 바카라사이트 more powerfully along lines of race, class, gender and empire. To avoid owning up to 바카라사이트se shortcomings is to make a point about what matters in society at large.

There��s a bad faith in believing that scholarship and politics can be neatly uncoupled. Who, we might want to ask, are 바카라사이트 General Rippers: those who, like Stuart Hall, aspire to understand and challenge injustice or those who resent 바카라사이트 incursion of politics into something as pure as music? The answer, it seems to me, is obvious.

Ross Cole is a research fellow in music and cultural studies at 바카라사이트 University of Cambridge.?