On the alleged socialist dominance in academia
Various forms of Turning Point
Yesterday there came to my attention to a tweet from an organization called `Turning Point’. Disappointingly this is not as its name suggests, something to do with differential calculus, but a far-right propaganda organization which, among other things, is bemoaning the `socialist dominance in academia’.
Left-wing infiltration of university education would be a very serious matter if it existed, so to allay the fears of my readership that this is not really a problem, in the following I am going to list a few physics topics I will be teaching this week to make it clear that they can not possibly be accused of being influenced by political bias.
- Mathematical Physics. I will be explaining how Laplace Transformations can be used to solve ordinary differential equations by seizing the means of production.
- Quantum Mechanics. I will be demonstrating how the path integral formalism allows the result of a quantum mechanical calculation to be obtained by considering the sum over all historical class struggles.
- Electrostatics. I will be discussing why some substances are insulators rather than conductors using the theory of dielectrical materialism.
- Optics. The topic here is Snell’s Law, which relates the Engels of incidence and refraction for light of a given colour and for given pair of media.
It goes without saying that students will not pass the examination on these topics unless they get enough Marx.
I hope this clarifies the situation.
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In the Dark 
February 11, 2019 at 1:30 pm
Don’t forget to tell the students that what is driving British politics at present is how fast the organised left within the Labour Party is growing.
You see, the rate of change of Momentum is a force.
February 11, 2019 at 1:57 pm
Shurely `farce’?
February 11, 2019 at 2:00 pm
Tell them about fluid resistance as an example of a nonconservative force.
February 13, 2019 at 9:00 am
It’s difficult to find an adequate response to that. That is extraordinary.
But then we find, in another area, still far from scientific circles, lots of nonsense about the word quantum.
February 13, 2019 at 12:05 pm
In 1990 I wrote a not-published essay called “Pathological industries of the quantum” which included some satirical asides about what might come next, and suggested that today’s satire would be taken seriously tomorrow. It happened quite quickly, with Danah Zohar’s books.
February 13, 2019 at 6:23 pm
But does Icke invoke quantum theory?
I think the most bizarre scene I have seen on TV was the episode of Jon Ronson’s entertaining series “Secret rulers of the universe” about Icke, in which a bunch of angry Jews were shouting at him that “shape-shifting giant lizards” running the world was so ridiculous as to be unbelieveable and was an obvious code for Jews, in an antisemitic slur that they were secretly running the world; and Icke replying back with equal heat that he really did mean lizards. I think he did mean it!
February 11, 2019 at 2:55 pm
You could relate disaster capitalism to chaos theory, disorder, entropy and enthalpy! https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/09/mystic-mogg-jacob-rees-mogg-willam-predicts-brexit-plans
and how Jacob Rees-Mogg plans to make £700M from a no-deal Brexit!
The Great Reckoning: Protecting Yourself in the Coming Depression: Protect Yourself in the Coming Depression by Davidson & Rees-Mogg.
February 12, 2019 at 11:00 am
Yes, and he also edited The Times newspaper through the 1970s.
February 12, 2019 at 12:04 pm
So it’s not the Astronomer Royal’s cat?
February 12, 2019 at 1:15 pm
Is he an ailurophile too?
February 11, 2019 at 6:26 pm
Let me remind potential commenters of the comments policy on the home page of this blog. In particular, do not accept anonymous or pseudonymous comments or comments that I consider to be abusive.
If you’d like to comment please be prepared to identify yourself.
February 12, 2019 at 9:50 am
This is in response to an attempt by an anonymous person to post defamatory accusations on this thread. The person also implicated a student at Maynooth in these allegations. I cannot and will not publish such comments on this blog.
February 11, 2019 at 8:20 pm
All non directly productive education is left-wing.
February 12, 2019 at 2:40 am
The commentator you refer to may have been incoherent but he was touching on an important point. In a field such as English, sociology and psychology, there is a very left-leaning clear bias. There is a lot of scholarship into this topic.
February 12, 2019 at 9:46 am
The comment was not published. How do you know who the commentator was, and what they were saying? Was it you?
February 12, 2019 at 3:45 pm
I am responding to your comment at the start of your blog post. I have no idea who made whatever comment that you refer too.
BTW I have never heard people describe Turning Point USA as far right. Sounds like a bit of an unsober comment, kinda like claiming all of academia is socialist.
February 12, 2019 at 4:00 pm
Interesting.
February 12, 2019 at 6:08 pm
Oh, and any organisation fronted by a Trump-suppor Hitler apologist is far-right in my book.