From my friend Lachlan Mead, a report from the Institute of Public Affairs, a think tank based in Melbourne, Australia, entitled The Rise of Identity Politics: An Audit of History Teaching at Australian Universities in 2017. A choice excerpt, with which I happen to agree:

The teaching of history in Australian universities has become a bastion of the cultural theory of Identity Politics, whereby people are divided by their class, race, gender and their individuality is denied. Students studying history in Australia are at risk of finishing their degrees with a distorted view of the world in which the past is viewed as a contest between the oppressors and the oppressed.

As Brendan O’Neill commented, ‘ Western Campuses in particular have become hotbeds of identity politics, or what is sometimes referred to as the ‘identitarian left’ which now defines itself, and engages with others, through the prism of identity rather than on the basis of ideas…’

There is a direct correlation between the recent rise of the ‘snowflake’ generation, a neologism used to describe young adults of the twenty-first century as being less resistant and more inclined to taking offence and being offended. These ‘coddled students’, encouraged by both university administrators and academics are eager to restrict freedom of speech and freedom of academic enquiry through mechanisms such as ‘trigger warnings’ and ‘safe spaces’ on campus. Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University, calls this phenomenon ‘the purification of the universities.’

But there’s hope! Click on the link to read about the IPA’s Foundations of Western Civilization Program.