EP78: Intersectionality Catches Up With Claudine Gay - Gracearchy with Jim Babka

Or, why Republicans suddenly love cancel culture!

The demotion of Harvard's Claudine Gay opens up the chance to probe the philosophy of Intersectionality.

Plus, a Harvard donor starts a war and is surprised when it comes to his home

The way this drama is playing out, we also get to explore the motives of billionaire donor and Harvard alum, Bill Ackman, and his sudden interest in plagiarism by academics.

From this episode, you will get distinct, insightful, and virtuous things to say whenever the conversations you're in move to Harvard, Claudine Gay, Bill Ackman, intersectionality, and plagiarism. The people in earshot will be amazed by your wisdom.

Must you pick a side?

As you'll learn during this episode, there's an "assumption that if the bad guys stopped being bad, then everything would be good."

That view is normal yet naive. It leads to judgmentalism, blame, and even scapegoating.

Worse, the incentives of the Conflict Machine (politics) and culture war run in an ugly, escalating direction. They induce fear. And...

You'll also discover, in this program, that once people start acting inside the Conflict Machine, they strongly tend to almost completely shed their principles and, instead, start focusing on the destruction of other persons.

The "side" you should pick is the path to harmony, and the path itself is grace.

So perhaps very little of what I have to say about Claudine Gay or Bill Ackman will make either side happy.

P.S. During the recording, I lost track of Bill Ackman's actual name and called him Ackerman instead. Both the moderator, Bill Protzmann, and I, do it more than once. It's a human mistake, and one I suspect Ackman has experienced scores of times in his life. To him and my listeners, I apologize for my human error. An AI would do better, but it also wouldn't have produced the creative and personal analysis you'll find in this episode.

0:00 Theme
0:43 Finding the gracepoint each time
2:10 Where the story begins
6:28 Iron sharpening or Anti-ism
9:16 Rep. Stefanik stokes the Conflict Machine
11:48 Republicans surrendering their position for politics
12:45 The First Amendment is a grace thing
14:23 Blasphemy doesn't invite the apocalypse
16:34 Acceptance of being held to a higher standard
19:54 Refusing to be part of the problem
22:55 The Exemplar of Non-Violence
24:42 Backfire
26:06 Intersectionality
28:02 Three confused presidents
28:53 Three hypocritical presidents
30:36 Donor awareness and the president's job
31:44 The real reason Claudine Gay "stepped down"
32:54 Bill Ackman starts his own war
34:09 Jim is naive or why we must stoop to Claudine Gay's level
36:06 Plagiarism as a political war tactic
37:25 Ackman's war comes home
38:55 Ackman's next and coming war
40:05 Now who is being naive?
45:17 Free association will reward and punish
46:11 Jim in Bill Ackman's shoes
50:40 Jim in Claudine Gay's shoes
53:31 Right issue for wrong reasons
54:15 Summary of gracepoints

Bill Protzmann is your moderator.

ZERO AGGRESSION PROJECT - https://zeroaggressionproject.org/ - is our sponsor. The views expressed are exclusively those of the participants, and not necessarily those of the board, staff, or supporters of the Zero Aggression Project.

Thank you to Randy Garbin for our amazing thumbnails: http://randygarbin.com/

We are grateful to Sergio at https://www.youtube.com/@KeysofMoonMusic for our intro theme.
► https://www.patreon.com/user?u=10500501
or
you can purchase his music on BandCamp:
► https://keysofmoon.bandcamp.com/
► If you have any questions please feel free to write to Sergio at: serjo.de.lua.music@gmail.com

Be grace-full to each other.