~ ITEM: ‘Tolerant Canada’? 2013: Marginalized and on the defensive, university conservatives forced to grow tougher
~ ITEM: The Fiamengo File: A Return of True Liberal Education
~ ONE OF THE great joys whilst wandering the fever-swamps of YouTubia, is occasionally finding islands of sanity, patient explanations, which visiting said islands makes you smarter and better informed for having done so.
Amongst the various offerings from YouTube Channel Studio Brulé, we have the interesting and wisely professorial offerings of Professor Janice Fiamengo of the University Of Ottawa. How she ever survived modern academia, I’ll never know.
That is, she’s not a cringing conservative, a rabid bullying Marxist of whatever stripe, or a dead-souled survivor of one-too-many meetings of Time Waster’s International™, University Division. Imagine!
In fact, Professor Fiamengo appears to be an actual professing old-style liberal. Old School Liberal– Believes 1st year kids have skulls full of mush, which must be shaped and formed. Believes in facts, truth, hard work, and the free exercise of the mind and will on learning & mastering a topic. Education, knowledge, wisdom, and degrees are hard-won over years, not handed out like prizes for everyone– and only in real areas of knowledge.
Someone like Professor Fiamengo represents (like other kick-butt Canucki profs such as Doug Farrow & Dr. Margo Somerville, amongst others) some of the best kind of Canadian scholarship: detailed, insightful, impartial, quietly passionate, and worth hearing and pondering. They are– to the best of my knowledge– unbought, unradical, uncorrected, and serve as educated minds and consciences speaking back from our Western Tradition to the various concerns and controversies of the day.
You know, out loud. In public and stuff. Common sense, even.
Unlike radicalized profs, or the ‘false consensus’ global weather academics, with the best professors & teachers, you don’t feel like you’re listening to the same old script, or hearing only one side of an issue (usually Leftwards), or that a whole dimensions of learning are being deliberately silenced or misrepresented for political or ideological excuses. You know, college as usual: Brainwashing, only $20K+ a year, thank-you Cha-Chinnng!
Watch her on YouTube, read her via Google, and her excellent series via. Studio Brulé. Because Binky said so.
So saith,
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