Click here to view original web page at amgreatness.com
Bruce Newsome’s The Dark Side of Sunshineis a provocative debut novel. Through the Candide-like adventures of his alter ego, Simon Ranald, Newsome satirizes the woke ideology, cynical self-promotion, and corrupt scholarship prevailing on U.S. and U.K. campuses. The satire recalls earlier university novels like Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe, Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man and David Lodge’s Changing Places. Surprisingly, despite the wealth of material currently available, the genre has fallen into desuetude. Like everything else on the contemporary campus, it has been cancelled, this time by the publishing industry itself rather than by deplatforming students. Newsome, a former lecturer in international politics at the University of California, Berkeley, has, to his credit, made a brave attempt to revive it.
The University of Sunshine, Bayside, on America’s West coast, is the best public university in the world, “because it is the most enlightened university in the world” says the university president.
British exchange lecturer Dr. Simon Ranald soon finds himself out of his depth. Despite teaching international politics at London’s politically correct Riverside University, Simon finds the Bayside campus an altogether more challenging proposition. On the most progressive campus in America, the World and International Studies Programme (WISP) doesn’t teach war, only peace. The history department, which does teach war, “is so last century.” Meanwhile the Director of Asian Studies prefers Asia to the west because it has “no white racism.”
Identity is everything on the Bayside campus and microaggressions are detectable everywhere. As one sympathetic student tells “pale, male and stale” Simon, he will have to pretend to be “melanin and estrogen challenged.” His British accent, too, is a worry at a university where glorifying imperialism is a sackable offense. This, however, is only the beginning of Simon’s woes. His head of department reprimands him for assigning too much course reading. Bayside students “expect their lecturers to tell them what not to read” and prefer learning in “less prescriptive ways,” finding their inner voices by constructing “narratives .” A cynical program director explains the system:
“It is really a sham. We validate the instructors, so that they can validate the students”
Click here to view original web page at amgreatness.com
They’re Trying to Shut Us Down
Over the last several months, I’ve lost count of how many times the powers-that-be have tried to shut us down. They’ve sent hackers at us, forcing us to take extreme measures on web security. They sent attorneys after us, but thankfully we’re not easily intimidated by baseless accusations or threats. They’ve even gone so far as to make physical threats. Those can actually be a bit worrisome but Remington has me covered.
For us to continue to deliver the truth that Americans need to read and hear, we ask you, our amazing audience, for financial assistance. We have a Giving Fuel page to help us pay the bills. It’s brand new so don’t be discouraged by the lack of donations there. It’s a funny reality that the fewer the donations that have been made, the less likely people are willing to donate to it. One would think this is counterintuitive, but sometimes people are skeptical because they think that perhaps there’s a reason others haven’t been donating. In our situation, we’re just getting started so please don’t be shy if you have the means to help.
Thank you and God bless!
JD Rucker