AN OBSERVATION REGARDING CONSERVATISM IN ACADEMIA: Prompted, in no small part, by point three of this Phoebe Maltz post.
The observation: Conservative critiques of academia have a way of turning conservatism into an identity-group, which manifests itself in undesirable ways (if you have some sympathy for conservatism). This is, I believe, because the parts of identity-politics movements that have long been of most interest to conservatism are the worst parts of those movements. It's been a long time since I devoted any energy to reading the National Review, but from what I recall, there was a wide separation between the amount of time it spent talking about Al Sharpton as compared to MLK (except to point out he was a philanderer and a plagiarist). On this account, conservatism thinks the identity-politics movement successfully captured American universities, and is now trying to do the same thing. Unfortunately, all the examples in its immediate view are the most obnoxious and least successful.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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