Early in the Live Not By Liesproject, I gathered information from Eastern bloc émigrés to the US, trying to see what they meant when they said that America today was starting to remind them of life under communism. One of the things I heard over and over from academics had to do with the compulsion to confess one’s supposed sins against woke ideology, and to abase oneself for having violated ideological purity. Czechs talked about the show trials of the early 1950s, in particular.
Today, Inside Higher Ed publishes a spectacular example of this in American academia. A sad and broken man named Matthew J. Mayhew, a professor at Ohio State, denounces himself for — well, read it for yourself. Excerpts:
I recently led a piece in Inside Higher Ed titled “Why America Needs College Football.” I am sorry for the hurt, sadness, frustration, fatigue, exhaustion and pain this article has caused anyone, but specifically Black students in the higher education community and beyond.
I am struggling to find the words to communicate the deep ache for the damage I have done. I don’t want to write anything that further deepens the pain experienced by my ignorance related to Black male athletes and the Black community at any time, but especially in light of the national racial unrest. I also don’t want to write anything that suggests that antiracist learning is quick or easy. This is the beginning of a very long process, one that started with learning about the empirical work related to Black college football athletes.
Rather than make excuses, I should talk about which facets of the article that I have recently learned are harmful — through my students, wider social media community and distinguished academics like Donna Ford, Joy Gaston Gayles and Gilman Whiting.