I've mentioned this is some of my comments before, but I'm a master's student in a STEM program at a decent but by no means elite state school. I'm a year in and I've been meaning to post a write up of my experience as a sort of status report on the woke infestation of higher ed. I don't know how much recent experience people here have on the "inside", so this might not be news to anyone. Still, it's good to document what's going on. For full disclosure wouldn't say I'm "in" academia. It's more accurate to say that I have one foot in and one foot out of the culture in a way I didn't expect to be before I started the program. The PhD students are way more immersed in this than I am.

I'll start with the good. Woke shit and politics in general has stayed out of the content of the courses I'm taking. They aren't trying to shoe in race or gender nonsense into any of the course content, and there's no "equity" nonsense when it comes to to stuff related to the courses. I'm in a field that can become involved in politically touchy areas depending on where you go, so it's nice that they're keeping the nonsense out of our courses. It may be different at the undergrad level, but I'll get into that below. The professors also keep their political opinions to themselves, which I can't even say about all my undergrad professors (unsurprisingly that shit happened in non-STEM courses). I have my suspicions about some of them, and in one cases those suspicions are more like flashing red lights, but again I'll get to that below. There's also no mandatory woke indoctrination "orientations" or the like mandated by the school, which is nice.

Now for the bad. It's hard to shake the feeling that a number of the professors are wokists, even if they keep their mouths shut about it. One guy had a hard on for enforcing the mask mandate in class, and his syllabus even banned talking about the Kung Flu restrictions. The guy struck me as a soy boy faggot, and a year later he still strikes me as a soy boy faggot. Even ignoring politics he's such a smug asshole and it's exactly that attitude the makes academia a toxic shithole. That attitude isn't unique to him either. You know how I said the graduate classes are politics free? I can't make that same representation about the classes at the undergrad level in our department. I'm subscribed to the same email lists as the PhD students, and they're constantly pushing them to include DIE shit when they teach undergrads. You know how I said the school doesn't require attendance at woke events? That doesn't mean they don't push it. They require every professor to include a diversity statement that includes pronoun bullshit in their syllabus. The first time I saw this was on the Covid cultist's syllabus and it was a major reason I thought he was a soy boy faggot. I later found it that it's standard boilerplate, but the faggot in question did plenty of other things to confirm my opinion of him. The school also pushes all kind of woke events, and their only saving grace is that they're optional. My inbox is full of this shit. Last year they had every department hold reading events and discussion groups for some race commie's "anti-racism" book and waste money on providing free copies of the book to people. It was the first time in my higher education career that I didn't accept free shit. They also had a Zoom event on masculinity organized by the completely pozzed sociology department, and our chair pimped this to our department. I'm sure no one here will be surprised to hear that it had nothing to do with real masculinity. It was r/menslib tier bullshit where they peddled feminism and whined about not being able to act like pussies without being treated like pussies. If it's anything like r/menslib they probably pushed cross dressing as well. I was tempted to log on and say that the biggest issues with masculinity today is the feminists attacking it, but I work full time and attend grad school full time, so I don't have time for that shit.

I guess my conclusion is that the legitimate programs are still legitimate but they're under attack from the broader culture of academia and woke politics more generally. There's still value in STEM programs but I don't know how much longer that will be the case.