The Death of Campus Life

A Review of Brutal Minds: The Dark World of Left-Wing Brainwashing in Our Universities

The Right has cultivated an image of the American university as a bastion of radicalism in which subversive professors recruit impressionable teenagers to the cause of “Gay Race Communism.” It’s a town crier move that more than proves its culture war cred, but also has the quite unintended consequences of making conservatives look like the clueless Fox News devotees that have inspired many a barb on social media. The regular attendees of those county Republican meetings know about “CRT.” They know it's being taught in our schools and is brainwashing America’s youth. However, the problem with acronym spouting is that it makes one feel in the know without obtaining the knowledge necessary to take actual action. 

In my two decades as a professor, I can attest that the concepts of CRT have run rampant through the university (both public and faith-based) for the last ten years. Yet, I have never encountered a more accurate diagnosis of the problem than Dr. Stanley K. Ridgley’s new book, Brutal Minds. A Clinical Full Professor of Management at Drexel University and former military intelligence officer, Ridgley has refused to remain silent during his well-earned post-tenure cush life in the hopes of protecting the marketplace of ideas that has made American universities bastions of knowledge since before the nation’s official founding. The result is an essential back-to-school read for students, parents, professors, college provosts and presidents, and state legislators as we find ourselves on the cusp of another election year semester when the fruits of CRT are palpable on both tickets.

Unlike the blanket generalizations about college education from those who haven’t set foot on a campus in years barring an occasional graduation ceremony, Brutal Minds lays out a damning case against the widespread adoption of what Ridgley calls “antiracist pedagogy” and “racialism” throughout the university. But, Ridgley’s universities are not the site of the leftist professoriate tainting young mind–a  dimensionless critique that has allowed the left to rightly claim that conservatives have turned CRT into a “boogeyman.” Rather, they are an institution overwhelmed by “an inbred administration of clerks” and a few faculty bad actors who have peddled antiracist pedagogy into a lucrative career.

While our culture war climate has produced a bounty of CRT indoctrination screeds, most display a willful misunderstanding of the university’s function and an outright refusal to engage (or even name) the texts to which they object. The result is vague bans drafted by those outside the academy such as the  Tennessee Higher Education Freedom of Expression and Transparency Act that prohibits faculty from teaching “divisive concepts.” Conservative lawmakers clearly want to take action, but they consistently demonstrate a lack of understanding about their intended target that threatens to make CRT’s adherents switch tactics rather than generate their mass exodus from campus. The university’s primary function is to serve as an incubator for debates of all kinds. Any university drifting from a broad inclusion of ideas is a threat both to the quality of knowledge production most tenure track professors produce and the intellectual formation of impressionable students.

🇰🇵 North Korean Spy In Nashville Yesterday, the Department of Justice arrested and a Nashville man for “aiding North Korea's weapons of mass destruction program.” Thirty-eight-year-old Matthew Knoot had allegedly set up a “laptop farm,” helping North Korean actors secure jobs as IT workers at stateside companies before installing unauthorized software on company laptops to funnel money to the DPRK.

“North Korea has dispatched thousands of highly skilled information technology workers around the world to dupe unwitting businesses and evade international sanctions so that it can continue to fund its dangerous weapons program,” said US Attorney Henry C. Leventis in the DOJ’s press release. “Today’s indictment, charging the defendant with facilitating a complex, multi-year scheme that funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to foreign actors, is the most recent example of our office’s commitment to protecting the United States’ national security interests.”

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🦷 To Catch A Predator “Big Tech is using all of their resources to keep children scrolling because addiction is their business model,” said Marsha Blackburn in a back-to-school press release this morning. The senator took care to advertise her Parents’ Guide to Kids’ Online Safety, which contains “helpful safety tips to refresh families on ways to protect children from predators and harmful content on social media.”

Starting this spring, the Metro Nashville Police Department began funding initiatives in three counties across Middle Tennessee as part of the state’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. “We see everything from offenders reaching out to children through chat rooms or apps nowadays,” Lieutenant Michael Foster with the Spring Hill Police Department told News 2 back in April. “Some of them just want to solicit pictures, nude images from them. Others want to meet them.”

You can find Senator Blackburn’s  guide here.

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📰 Quick Headlines There’s a couple of groups trying to rename Cumberland Park, located on the East Bank of the Cumberland River downtown, to Wasioto Park in honor of the Shawnee name for the river. The Indigenous People’s Coalition, along with members of the Global Education Center and the Nashville Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Foundation are behind the effort. “Tribes and nations are clamoring and recommending name changes be given to different sites, rivers and the like that have European names,” Albert Bender, an Indigenous leader and member of the IPC, said. “It is a way of recognizing and further legitimizing the ancient history of the United States.”

House Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) blamed a surge in HIV/syphilis cases in Memphis on the expansion of parents’ rights, specifically on last month’s Family Rights and Responsibilities Act, which requires medical practitioners to get parental consent before administering certain treatments. “The actual, tangible consequence of the movement is this public health crisis,” she told the Lookout, referring to the parental rights movement in Tennessee. So. The more rights parents have, the higher the rate of HIV infection. Did I get that right?

Last year, the San Francisco Chronicle ranked Davidson County second on a list of cities with the most overdose deaths per capita. This morning, the Banner released a story noting that so far this year, the pace of overdose deaths has decreased by 21 percent. Trevor Henderson, a substance use response consultant with the University of Tennessee’s SMART Initiative, attributed the decrease to the wide availability of naloxone.

And lastly, here’s a very good story from NewsChannel 5 on the challenges facing rural communities surrounding Nashville as the area grows.

DEVELOPMENT

• East Nashville slated for Asian-influenced tapas restaurant (Post)
• Cafe to open in October on east side (Post)

THINGS TO DO

View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.

📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.

🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.

👨🏻‍🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide and yearly festival guide.

TONIGHT

🎸 Bush @ Nashville Municipal Auditorium, 6p, $39+, Info

🎸 Chris Stapleton's All-American Road Show @ Bridgestone Arena, 7p, $63+, Info
+ with Marty Stuart & Nikki Lane

🎸 America @ Ryman Auditorium, 7p, $98+, Info

🎵 Hello Honky Tonk DJs @ Vinyl Tap, 8p, No Cover, Info

🪕 The Cowpokes @ Acme Feed & Seed, 12p, Free, Info

🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info

🎸 Kelley’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info

✹ WEEKLY FILM RUNDOWN: August 2-8

The latest releases and special screenings hitting Music City this week. For a complete list of upcoming releases, check out our 2024 Film Guide.

Borderlands (Dir. Eli Roth; Starring Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black, and Kevin Hart) Bad buzz about this adaptation of the first-person shooter game following a ragtag crew searching for a relic on a junkyard planet hasn’t changed our minds that horror maestro Roth’s latest is a must-see. Now playing in theaters. 

Cuckoo (Dir. Tilman Singer; Starring Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens) A teenager living with her father at an idyllic German Alps inn succumbs to bloody visions and unrelenting dread in this indie horror entry. Now playing in theaters. 

It Ends With Us (Dir. Justin Baldoni; Starring Blake Lively) Colleen Hoover’s breakout novel about a woman hoping to break the cycles of abuse that began in her childhood when she falls for a brilliant neurosurgeon is slated to be late summer’s breakout. Now playing in theaters.

Didi (Dir. Sean Wang; Starring Joan Chen and Izaac Wang) This teen dramedy about a Taiwanese-American 13-year-old navigating middle school and online life in the summer of 2008 proved Sundance’s biggest crowd pleaser. Now playing at AMC Thoroughbred 20 and The Belcourt.