Taking place at the University of Sheffield, researchers “will take an unflinching look at the white-centricity of folk music repertory, performers and audience by conducting fieldwork to shed light on long-standing vernacular singing practices of ethnic minority cultures in England”.
They then hope to “increase accessibility to the folk club scene and take the first step in a process of decolonisation within the folk music canon”.
The project has been awarded £1,485,400 from the taxpayer-funded UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), under its “future leaders fellowship’’. It has also been granted extra funds on top of this from bodies such as Research England (which also falls under the remit of UKRI).
Prof Dennis Hayes, director of Academics for Academic Freedom, told The Telegraph: “Journalists will be pleased to know that there will be an endless supply of stories about disciplines being told by universities to ‘decolonise’ and of money being spent on studies of ‘whiteness’ in any and every conceivable subject.
A new toolkit for ‘decolonising’ philosophy in universities dismisses canonical western philosophers from Plato to Wittgenstein as ‘dead white males’ who engaged in “armchair theorising” and must now make way for voices from the ‘Global South’.https://t.co/wOsgdTPYa7
— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) June 20, 2024
“The reason for this is institutional groupthink in universities. Universities have adopted the need for decolonisation, and the victim hierarchy of intersectional theory, as essential to upholding their inclusive values. This groupthink is a threat to academic freedom. It silences almost all opposition as academics fear being charged with racism if they speak up against being told what to think.
Fay Hield, professor of music at the University of Sheffield, said: “The term decolonisation is often misinterpreted. Our research highlights the different under-recognised communities who have helped to establish cultural life in England. Folk music is a constantly evolving genre, which has taken influences from a diverse range of people over centuries. It is part of the UK’s cultural heritage and should be celebrated. Our aim is to break down the barriers for people to get involved in folk music. Opening up the genre to different audiences will help to sustain the nation’s folk music for decades to come.”
History lecturers at Liverpool University are being urged to "problematise" whiteness and heterosexuality in their teaching — the Russell Group institution's new 'diversity' guidance also proposes compulsory inclusivity training for academic staff.https://t.co/W8SHRj1N9r
— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) June 18, 2024
Speaking as a philosophag, I remember when philosophy departments were going full-pozz and I tried to warn my peers that the bandwagon they were hopping on would eventually destroy their field. I was also disgusted, despite being left-leaning at the time, simply because philosophy, of all fields, is where you're supposed to autistically analyze everything. Philosophy isn't just an abstract subject, it's a commitment to interrogate every belief no matter how cherished, with the understanding that this notion is itself a cherished belief which has to be balanced with other values.
But seeing so many otherwise very intelligent people turn their back on thousands of years of great thinkers who paved the way for Western civilization to reach a peerless level of sophistication, for no other reason than getting swept up in the zeitgeist, all while asserting this zeitgeist with an overwhelming level of smugness, left me disgusted. It's with a combination of bemusement, schaudenfreude, and a dash of pity that I watch many of the same people who condemned me for challenging the bandwagon they hopped on now express dismay because I was right, and they now carry themselves with an air of disenchantment and defeat, having been humbled by the very creatures they enabled.
Ultimately though this is a bittersweet "victory" because I wish I was wrong, the level of nihilism our civilization has descended to wherein the greatest intellectual legacy the world has ever known can just be unceremoniously tossed aside, to die with a whimper rather than a bang, is existentially horrifying. Nietzsche was right about the death of God inevitably leading us down the path of a nihilistic dark age, and it falls on the very few based humanities fags (like yours truly) to take up the role of Hari Seldon.