Clio is having a codfish moment
Can someone elucidate for me what exactly the status of the Chronicle of Higher Education? I seem to have encountered several WTF moments over links to pieces in it. Is it equivalent to THE: Times Higher Education? (The THE has perpetrated some lulus of WTFery itself, commented upon by moi over the years.)
Anyway, it has just published a frothing and nastily personal attack on Black Studies by someone whose qualifications to discuss scholarship do not, shall we say, seem entirely apparent? In fact the tone is reminiscent of those Daily Mail diatribes generated by lists of current thesis topics or the programme of the British Sociological Association Annual Conference.
It picks on specific dissertations by named postgrads at a named institution, which is pretty foul play, on the basis of their titles.
And doesn't seem entirely clear on the subject of 'legitimate topic of scholarly investigation': I, for one, and particularly in the light of the current projects in the UK on the general area supported by a Major Funding Body, think that, for example, noticing the whiteness of natural-birth literature and delving into the history of black midwifery is well worth pursuing. Raises a lot of intriguing and productive questions.
But what is an article like that doing in a periodical that, from its title, would appear to be about higher education rather than being arrogantly know-nothing?
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