NewAge Feminism Feels Like Failing

"I suppose I should not have been surprised that Oprah Winfrey gave the commencement address at Stanford University.

It’s something that I sense my students have come to expect, already versed as they are in the mantra of “I feel” and “that’s your opinion.” The hands are quick to pop up when I pose a question like “Did you like the poem?” or “What did you think of the Misfit?” But when it comes time to closely interpret a couple of lines from Paradise Lost, most of the students (those who have brought the book) do not deign even to look at the page. Few bother to note my clarifications or explications. My colleagues repeat similar observations.

Oprah is us. Course offerings on Oprah appear in college catalogs, while those on Milton disappear.

I blame it on women, specifically those women who, instead of working their ways into the club through rules of evidence, common values, and objective scholarship, have pushed in their alternate 'ways of knowing.' The feminization of education has led to the idolization of Oprah."

-- Mary Grabar, on NewAge Oprah's mind-numbing influence on education, for Pajamas Media