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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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Who the hell is pushing for higher standards and more rigor at universities?

Based on this thread, roughly two people on this entire site while two dozen think an attempt at doing that was grounds for dismissal. I”d liike to say I’m shocked but this isn’t the exactly the first or even the twentieth time people here have argued in simular vein.

To my friends, anything. To my enemies, the law.

I think none of the people involved in this story should have been anywhere near a university education. This paltry assignment, the nauseating submission, the insane grading standard, even the "research" that prompted it. None of this is scholarship. It's posing as such, but quite literally none of this is creating anything approximating the furtherance of human knowledge. And I say this as someone that at least recognizes psychology as a very useful and meritorious discipline when done rigorously.

The correct and unthinkable course of action is to stop letting this sort of people attend universities, let alone teach at them, and kick them back into the pamphleteer masses where they belong instead of pretending politics and truth can be consorts. How's that for raising standards?

False. You are making a clear logical error. Most of the posts aren’t saying “lower standards.” Indeed most don’t address what the standard ought to be. Instead, they are saying the current standard is being applied unevenly.

I think rightfully her paper should get an F (though she is hot so you know D-). But I think there are probably a lot of grades that should be Fs. If you only want high standards for views you don’t like, that isn’t rigor but an isolated demand for one.

It can't be the first time, or any time, because it just doesn't fit the criteria for being an instance of the general case you claim it fits into.

Where did anyone argue against increasing standards? Where did anyone even show that the discussed case was an attempt at increasing standards to begin with?