The America I grew up in is disappearing into a vortex of identity politics

This is a blathering article that goes everywhere yet nowhere. The author seems to primarily use it as a soapbox to rail against increased inclusion of minority voices in the sciences, and the bumps in that road.

She has cherrypicked several stories as if they can support a theory of wider corruption of scientific education. For example, the story of a trans man losing his child due to a medical records error is tragic, but the author spins it as an example of the grim future that is to come if medicine attempts to correct decades of poor treatment of trans patients. Not so: charts only need to distinguish sex from gender identity.

The author picks on a black-culture astrology program as though it will render students incapable of ever learning astrology—even if that particular program lacks any merit, it won't be the downfall of western society that the author makes it out to be.

My last bone to pick is that the author was born in Britain and returned to Britain in her teens, and so "the America I grew up in," while factually true, is a strained statement that seems to have been included to enable a British author to more effectively tug on American heartstrings.

This author appears to be a member of Britain's cadre of virulently transphobic "journalists."

I grew up in the Boston area in the 60s-70s, and in those days it was still largely ethnically-segregated neighborhoods, forced busing, race-baiting and redlining.

Archive.is: https://archive.is/JVPDX

Colleges and universities reap what they sow. When you saddle students with ruinous debt to attend, I'm not surprised they expect to have a say in how the place is run, including what language constructs they prefer. If college was freely provided, then if they didn't like it they could always be shown the door and told to go to a college that was more to their liking. Now you have professors groveling to students because student have the power.

There’s a lot of hysteria about identity politics and hate-filled social justice activists. I’ve read about the reaction of mature adults to the hippie culture of the late 60’s and 70’s, they were equally horrified and convinced that the world wouldn’t survive that corrupt generation either.

I wonder what the adults raised in the late 1800’s thought of the scandalous flappers of the early 1900’s.

Could be we’re just old, and forgot how being young means wanting to turn the culture upside down.