Beyond Woke

Public Discourse: The Journal of the Witherspoon Institute , 2018

Michael Rectenwald’s new book offers up: passionate intellectual debate in a climate where the discursive righteousness, sexuality, sex, skin color, and feelings of the speaker too often matter more than the thoughts espoused. It is a portrait of the contemporary scene of academic freedom, which is anything but free, and even less academic.

College Literature, 2006

This is a revolutionary period in world history. The collapse of finance capitalism, the bankers' bailouts across the globe, the continuing bankers' bonuses, and the intrinsic problems of finance capitalism have, under current `bourgeois' parliamentarist rule, resulted in ordinary families, workers and communities,`paying for the crisis'. All this, while the national and international capitalist classes and organisations impose austerity capitalism on a reeling public and public educational, social, health and welfare systems. This `austerity capitalism' has led to an eruption of discontent-against political, economic and financial dictatorship, through the Arab Spring, the indignados in Spain, the Occupy movements throughout the world, and the million strong protests against the 13 Feb 2012 austerity programme enforced by the international capitalist `troika' (European Central bank, International Monetary Fund, and the European Commission) on the Greek people.

T his American Quarterly forum builds on a symposium held in 2011 at Wesleyan University on the relationship between academia and activism. Our symposium was inspired by a pair of concerns: that academics too often either romanticize activism as the site where "real" political work happens or else ascribe an abstracted radical politics to quotidian academic work. These concerns emerge especially within interdisciplinary fields-fields like American studies, women's and gender studies, queer studies, and critical race and ethnic studies-that are grounded in social movements and becoming institutionalized in an increasingly corporatized university.

2013

Ever since I started my graduate study in U.S. history, numerous individuals, both in the United States and in Japan, have generously supported me and followed the development of my work. I owe a special debt to Eric Foner, my graduate advisor, whose careful advice and patience guided me as I completed this work. Alan Brinkeley's insightful comments directed my argument. Elizabeth Blackmar was willing to spend her time listening to me and kindly shared her wisdom. Volker Berghahn encouraged me with his comments from the perspective of international history. Ira Katznelson gave me very productive words of advice. Carol Gluck taught me how historians should think and argue about the world. Charles Tilly shared with me his deep sociological knowledge of social movements. So many scholars and friends inspired me in New York. The community of scholars at Columbia University surely nurtured my work. I would also like to acknowledge and thank the librarians of

Academic Questions, 2018

York University professor Michael Rectenwald found himself the object of a barrage of vicious verbal attacks in 2016 when he took to Twitter and Facebook to object to such recent campus developments as the banning of speakers, the mandate to construct classroom discussions as "safe spaces," "bias reporting hotlines" to which students can anonymously report any deviations from political correctness by their professors, and the absurdity of the pronoun wars. Fearing for his safety, the NYU administration offered him a paid leave of absence from his non-tenured position, which he took. He wrote in the November 3, 2016, Washington Post about his experience, "There was no attempt at constructive dialogue, offering of rational counterargument or even acknowledgment of the possibility of the existence of a legitimate point of view outside of progressive orthodoxy. It showed that this debate isn't about promoting an environment of inclusivity and diversity, but about punishing transgressors." 1 The following are excerpts from Rectenwald's forthcoming book, Springtime for Snowflakes: "Social Justice" and Its Postmodern Parentage (New England Press Review, fall 2018). He discusses the roots of the current irrationalism and so illustrates the challenges to reason on the contemporary campus. The excerpts are two discreet parts of the book; the first his preface, the second a later chapter on transgender theory.

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, 1993

The fundamental problem -a problem of a political nature, and colored by ideological hues -is who chooses the content, and on behalf of which persons and things the 'chooser's' teaching will be performed -in favor of whom, against whom, in favor of what, against what.

PS: Political Science & Politics, 2021