Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education Naomi Schaefer Riley launches a rather bizarre attack on black studies by way of ‘evaluating’ a handful of dissertations. This evaluation consists, not of reading the dissertations, as one might expect, but rather, by way of merely reading summaries/extracts/abstracts and then dismissing them out of hand. (‘Higher Education,’ I believe, has something to do with engaging with arguments and content.)
So, for instance, Riley dismisses Ruth Hayes’ dissertation, ‘So I Could Be Easeful’: Black Women’s Authoritative Knowledge on Childbirth,’–which owes its provenance to Hayes noticing that ‘nonwhite women’s experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature’–by saying:
How could we overlook the nonwhite experience in “natural birth literature,” whatever the heck that is?
This, I must admit, is quite a spectacular effort. That sentence quoted is quite clear. Does Riley not know what “natural birth” is? In the surprising eventuality that she really does not know what ‘natural’ birth is, she could have looked it up; like, I mean, used the Internet or something like that. Perhaps a library? Indeed, had she gone to the Wikipedia entry for ‘natural childbirth’ she would even have noted some academic references listed at the end of the article. That, I’m inclined to think, is what the academic world terms ‘literature’; you know, the set of publications relevant to a research topic. (Note that Riley is not claiming that Hayes’ assessment of the attention paid to ‘nonwhite women’s experiences’ is mistaken by providing data, or pointing to articles that refute Hayes’ claim, or anything quite so cerebral. Rather, Riley just flat-out rejects the claim. I refute you thus, indeed.)
Riley then, who writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education, is grounding her critique of a dissertation by not reading it, and by what appears to be a rather proud proclamation of her ignorance of a term used in its abstract/precis/description.
One’s immediate reaction is that this is like an audition for Dumb and Dumber, only it’s a little dumber than that, just because of the venue that she has chosen for her Olympian displays of knuckle-dragging.
But even as I write this post, I’m aware that Riley cannot possibly be so spectacularly stupid. She knows how to type; she has access to the Internet; she can spell. (I’m well aware that these conclusions might be contested but I think they are reasonable inferences to draw.) If that modicum of intelligence can be granted her, then there is an odd discordance with the line quoted above.
So, rather, I’m inclined to think that Riley, who as a blogger knows the Internet quite well, is trolling for hits. And I’ve fallen for it. She knows the rules of the ‘game’: you must be contentious; you must carve out a niche for yourself; you must throw red meat to the faithful who come to haunt your comments spaces; and correspondingly, you must seek to provoke those who would find your claims ludicrous.
Round 1 Riley. I won’t get fooled again. But The Chronicle of Higher Education? Is this what it’s come to? On current evidence, it would seem so.
Samir Chopra 
It’s worse than that. she didn’t read abstracts but rather brief synopses that were attached to the original Chronicle article in question.
It’s worse than reading abstracts; she is basing this “analysis” on synopses that were included in the original Chronicle article on the Northwester Black Studies program.
Thanks for the comment. Clearly, it gets worse. The mind boggles that this piece of ‘writing’ appears where it does.
PS: You’re not the famous Dutch soccer player, are you? 🙂
I have to say that I am not a fan of these kinds of area-studies, but the case made in the “article” is the worst one you could possibly make.
The Chronicle seems a very odd venue for this sort of off-the-cuff/argument-by-ridicule sort of piece. This is the sort of thing you expect to see on a partisan blog.
Is this common in the Chronicle? I admit to not reading it as much as I probably should.
–Dan K.
That’s exactly right, Dan. I’m sure a critic of black studies could come up with some sort of critique of the arguments made, which could then be further contested. This is just plain weird.
And yes, the venue makes it even more surprising!