The Victims' Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind [Hardcover]

Bruce Bawer (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 4, 2012

Respected author, critic, and essayist Bruce Bawer—whose previous book, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within, was a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist—now offers a trenchant and sweeping critique of the sorry state of higher education since the campus revolutions of the late ’60s and early ’70s. In The Victims’ Revolution, Bawer incisively contends that the rise of identity-based college courses and disciplines (Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Gay Studies, etc.) forty years ago has resulted in an impoverishment of thought and widespread political confusion, while filling the brains of students with politically correct mush. Timely, controversial, and brilliantly argued, Bawer’s The Victims’ Revolution is necessary reading for students, educators, and anyone concerned about the contemporary crisis in academia—a serious and important work that stands with other essential books on the subject, like The Shadow University by Alan Kors, Illiberal Education by Dinesh D’Souza, and  Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Bawer scores lots of entertaining points against the insufferable posturing and unreadable prose that pervades identity studies….Bawer’s is a lively, cantankerous takedown of a juicy target.” (Publishers Weekly)

“Bawer is passionate in his criticism of the current state of academia and its effects on broader American culture.” (Booklist)

“The developments described by Mr. Bawer will not surprise readers familiar with the campus wars that broke out in the 1980s, when entire departments devoted to these fields began to be established. Where the author’s text shines is in explaining their root causes.” (Wall Street Journal)

“The book is terrific, exposing the academic criminality that those programs encourage — i.e., teaching naïve and impressionable students things that either are utterly false or are merely wild-eyed opinions as truth....I strongly recommend the book.” (National Review)

“This is a vital, sparkling, and truth-telling book.” (Jay Nordlinger, National Review)

“This book is an adventure in American religious thought, exciting and intelligent.” (Booklist)

From the Back Cover

An eye-opening critique of the identity-based revolution that has transformed American campuses and its effect on politics and society today.

The 1960s and ’70s were a time of dramatic upheaval in American universities as a new generation of scholar-activists rejected traditional humanism in favor of a radical ideology that denied esthetic merit and objective truth. In The Victims’ Revolution, critic and scholar Bruce Bawer provides the first true history of this radical movement and a sweeping assessment of its intellectual and cultural fruits.

Once, Bawer argues, the purpose of higher education had been to introduce students to the legacy of Western civilization—“the best that has been thought and said.” The new generation of radical educators sought instead to unmask the West as the perpetrator of global injustice. Age-old values of goodness, truth, and beauty were disparaged as mere weapons in an ongoing struggle of the powerful against the powerless. Shifting the focus of the humanities to the purported victims of Western colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism, the new politicized approach to the humanities gave rise to a series of identity-based programs, including Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies, and Chicano Studies. As a result, the serious and objective study of human civilization and culture was replaced by “theoretical” approaches emphasizing group identity, victimhood, and lockstep “progressive” politics.

What have the advocates of this new anti-Western ideology accomplished?

Twenty-five years ago, Allan Bloom warned against the corruption of the humanities in The Closing of the American Mind. Bawer’s book presents compelling evidence that Bloom and other conservative critics were right to be alarmed. The Victims’ Revolution describes how the new identity-based disciplines came into being, examines their major proponents and texts, and trenchantly critiques their underlying premises. Bawer concludes that the influence of these programs has impoverished our thought, confused our politics, and filled the minds of their impressionable students with politically correct mush. Bawer’s book is must-reading for all those concerned not only about the declining quality of American higher education, but also about the fate of our society at large.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Broadside Books; Advance readers copy 1st edition edition (September 4, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061807370
• ISBN-13: 978-0061807374
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #99,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > Education & Reference > Schools & Teaching > Education Theory > History

More About the Author

Bruce Bawer is a highly respected author, critic, essayist and translator. He is the author of several collections of literary and film criticism and a collection of poetry. His political journalism is widely published in print and online journals and he reviews books regularly for the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, and Wall Street Journal. Visit his website at www.brucebawer.com. He lives in Oslo with his partner.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 64 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Why Higher Education is Imploding September 6, 2012

By David Clemens

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Every once in a while a book comes along that nicely wraps up a complicated situation and puts a bow on it. If you are unclear on why taxpayers and students have lost faith in higher education, especially the liberal arts and social sciences, this is that book. Confused about why college profs rant about something they call "hegemony?" Bawer explains. Wonder why so-called liberating education is so autocratic and intolerant? Bawer knows and tells. The extent to which left-wing dogma permeates all levels of education is well-documented but hard to fathom. Bawer traces the roots and the current fashion for identity politics masquerading as curriculum. Some students fall for it but many are sick and tired of being proselytized. Some will say that it's not that bad anymore but don't believe them. In the past couple of years, Bawer attended conferences on Women's Studies, Black Studies, Chicano Studies, and Queer Studies to get the lay of the land. The hectoring and postmodern mumbo-jumbo is thicker than ever. One college guy I know just got his first English essay assignment. He can write about Malcolm X, radical feminism, or lesbianism. His choice! The number of conservatives in America's English departments can be counted on one hand with a couple of digits left over. Bawer offers hope at the end but it takes a battle and the ideologues still hold the high ground.

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Former Humanities Major gives this TWO THUMBS UP!!! October 18, 2012

By Native Daughter

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

As a humanities major in the early 80s (thankfully BEFORE all that Bawer describes in this book infected the academy) I can only say THANK YOU MR. BAWER for helping me understand what I faced when I went back to graduate school in 2010. I was shocked to find out that I was now identified as an "oppressor" (because I'm a straight Caucasian female - worse if had I been a straight white male!) and that America is the biggest evil oppressor the world has ever known, etc. This meme is repeated again and again in so many ways in textbooks that it is STUNNING. And since I'd studied humanities prior to this "infection" I was doubly stunned. Students (and their parents) - shelling out big bucks for "higher education" should read this cautionary tome. Know what you are paying for before you patronize "higher education." Kudos to Mr. Bawer, a member of a so-called victim group (by dint of being gay) for having the intellectual honesty and courage to write this book! I'm posting and sharing with everyone.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The continuing erosion of higher education in America and its adverse consequences. October 8, 2012

By Paul Tognetti TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Recently I was discussing with friends an issue that has perplexed me for years. I have always wondered what developments caused much of Black America to turn its back on the integrationist goals of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As I recall the about-face took place in the early 1970's but no one has ever been able to fully explain it to me. All of a sudden angry African-American college students were demanding separate housing on campus and petitioning administrations for Black Studies programs and departments. Indeed, it was a very unsettling time and most white Americans were thoroughly confused. MLK would have been appalled. A few days ago I came across an intriguing new book that I felt would finally give me the answers I have been looking for. As it turns out what author Bruce Bawer had to offer in "The Victims' Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind" not only answered my initial question but went on to explain what has gone so terribly wrong with higher education in America over these past 40 years. Suffice to say this book is a real eye-opener!

The way Bruce Bawer sees it the most disastrous by-product of the civil rights movement was multiculturalism. He quotes the noted liberal historian and social critic Arthur Schlesinger Jr. who believed that multiculturalism was "a philosophy that teaches that America is not a nation of individuals at all but a nation of groups." Thus, it was the rise of multiculturalism that would give birth not only to Black Studies but also to a number of other identity studies programs such as Women's Studies, Queer Studies, Chicano Studies and Cultural Studies.... Bruce Bawer chronicles the emergence of each of these exotic and cryptic disciplines and shines the spotlight on a few of the "hustlers" who head up some of these departments. The truth is that fostering bitterness, resentment and a full-blown entitlement mentality is big business at many so-called "institutions of higher learning" all across America.

So what the hell is going on here? It certainly does not appear to be education. In the pages of "The Victim's Revolution" the reader can detect a distinct lack of seriousness in most of these so-called "Studies". As Bawer points out students enrolled in more traditional "humanities" programs are encouraged to pursue open-ended conversations in which there is always the possibility of fresh insights and perspectives. These students are taught how to think. This is what the so-called "Socratic" method of teaching is all about and why it has proven so successful for more than 2000 years. Contrast that approach to what is being taught in Identity Studies programs in 2012. Political correctness is the rule of the day. Students are being taught that straight, white, Western men are all oppressors while just about everyone else is a victim. There appears to be very little room for dissent in these classes and students are essentially required to regurgitate what the instructor has to say in order to pass the course. And as Bruce Bawer so eloquently points out "Once, the humanities had been concerned with the true, the good, and the beautiful; now they were preoccupied with an evil triumverate of isms--colonialism, imperialism and capitalism--and with a three-headed monster of victimhood: class, race and gender oppression." One has to wonder whether these students are being educated or indoctrinated.

In "The Victim's Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind" you will read example after outrageous example of how our system of higher education has been hijacked by the Left. In my view Bruce Bawer has done an outstanding job of painting this picture and getting us all up to speed. It is hard to believe that students are actually paying big bucks to take courses such as "Geography and Gender", "Healing Through Journal Writing" and "Issues In Lesbian Relationships" to name but a few. What a colossal waste of time! Furthermore, you will discover that many of these so-called courses are being presented in language that might best be described as gobbledygook, drivel. double-talk, gibberish or mumbo-jumbo--take your pick! Whatever has become of academic standards? If you are a parent of a student approaching college age I strongly urge you to read this book. You really do need to know the lay of the land and the minefields you might encounter along the way when helping your child select a college. You are going to need to ask a lot of questions. Likewise, if you are a taxpayer, I would encourage you to pick up a copy of "The Victim's Revolution". It just might prompt you to change your vote on the next "Higher Education" bond issue in your state. This is an extremely thoughtful and very well written book. Very highly recommended! Read more ›

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Super Timely Topic and Very Well Done October 29, 2012

By Bernard Chapin VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I don't really know too much about Bruce Bawer. I know he's a conservative and he's a Facebook friend of mine, but I really hadn't read his work previously. The Victims' Revolution came up on my Amazon recommendations list and I bought it right away. I wasn't sure what to expect but I revile the fashion by which political correctness has corrupted our universities along with the greater culture. The book came in the mail, I quickly opened it, and only discovered that I was reading about 30 pages later. The pages just flashed by and I loved it. This text will prove entertaining and therapeutic for anyone who is horrified by the left's replacement of education with dedicated indoctrination in our colleges. The left has also done the same thing to the field of journalism over the last 50 years. Luckily, and despite its depressing subject matter, Bawer's narrative is wonderful. It reminded me very much of Roger Kimball's Tenured Radicals as it is a tour through the absolutely insane sub-schools and sub-studies of the contemporary university. The body of the book is four chapters that deal with Women's Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies, and Chicano Studies. All of them are very entertaining, but "Gilligan's Island: Women's Studies" was the strongest, and I made many of its paragraphs into 4 videos that I posted to my channel. In reality though, the entire work is sterling and I highly recommend it. No doubt, in a year's time, I'll be reading it again.