Escaping the Academic Longhouse
Contending with Gynocentric Academia and How to Reestablish Meritocracy in Higher Education
Free speech and open dialogue are imperiled by the progressive civic religion, and its capture of education institutions risks suppressing and alienating great minds.
It has been increasingly evident that academic institutions are becoming hotbeds of female-led hierarchies that espouse a gynocentric mode of competition. In 2023 alone, women outnumbered men as tertiary education students, leading the gender parity at 52 percent. Nearly 40 percent of all academic deans and provosts are women, and six out of eight Ivy League schools are presently led by women. Women earn more than 57 percent of all bachelor's degrees, over 60 percent of master’s degrees, and 54 percent of doctoral degrees.
Female Competition Style and the Death of Meritocracy
The consequences of these demographic shifts have already started to have a notable effect on American pedagogy. Beyond the obvious popularity of critical theory, a pernicious element of the feminization of higher education promulgated a new style of competition in academic institutions. This new feminine form of competition is markedly less meritocratic than the prior system of open academic discourse. The feminine approach to competition differs vastly from its predecessor in its indirectness.
Biologist Joyce F. Benenson describes the female competition style as unique in its primary strategy of minimizing the risk of incurring undue aggression, invariably relying on methods of indirect opposition such as social isolation, reputational harm, and other subtle forms of aggression. Resulting from this competition style is a homogenizing effect stifling discourse and suppresses heterodox views. It is characteristically anti-pluralistic. Unlike the female model, male-led hierarchies embrace direct conflict. This approach provides a framework from which the most erudite can engage in open and free dialogue without fear of repression for consideration of the many. Ultimately, this model of competition once fostered a truer form of competition; a meritocracy where only the best minds are freely expressed and rigorously evaluated.Â
What Can Be Done?
What is to be done today? The solution I propose is both realistic and relevant to the current generation. A major factor in this increase in female graduates is the targeting subsidization of women’s college expenses in scholarships and grants. I propose that American academia systematically delineates between co-ed and same-sex institutions. At the state level, any subsidized grants that place preference towards female application must only be transferable to these female-only educational spaces. Republican-led states can expedite this process by implementing policies restricting grant access for state universities that do not follow these specified criteria. It is important to remove any affirmative action (even the alternative methods of maintaining its use implemented by leftist academic administration) and scholarships that unevenly push women into fields they would ordinarily not be inclined to apply, for instance, STEM. Sex-specific scholarships are not to be used for co-ed institutions whatsoever. The goal is to restore a meritocratic competition style that was lost to academia in recent years since the inception of the academic Longhouse.Â
The shit going on right now at universities and throughout the entire country, has been a long time developing through a lot of powerful men and increasingly women, but these are bad ppl whose values aren’t what they should be. There’s nothing to fear from a woman of principle being in these positions. I think you miss the forest for the trees by focusing on gender. These are insidious people.