‘I’m getting out’: Professor renounces tenure due to ‘woke takeover of higher education’
Joseph Manson, former professor at UCLA, recently wrote about his departure from the school.
The reason Manson is leaving UCLA is 'because the woke takeover of higher education has ruined academic life.'
Joseph Manson, former anthropology professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), has retired due to what he describes as a “woke takeover” of the institution.
“I am retiring this summer because the woke takeover of higher education has ruined academic life,” Manson wrote in a July 7 essay titled ‘Why I'm Giving Up Tenure at UCLA.’
In the piece, Manson describes his experiences within and outside of the school’s anthropology department, both of which are “showing all the signs of woke capture that typify the contemporary U.S. university,” according to Manson.
Manson lists numerous examples of how the university generally, and his department specifically, have shifted towards the woke side of politics.
Examples include UCLA’s mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements for hiring and promotion, attacks on a colleague for insufficiently woke research, and firings of academics who dissent from the dominant “woke orthodoxy” at the university.
Manson ends his essay by making it clear that he has had enough of woke academia, writing, “I can’t bear to spend one more moment in a place that’s morally and intellectually bankrupt.”
“That’s it: I’m getting out.”
In response to the news of Manson’s departure, UCLA’s Director of Media Relations provided Campus Reform with a statement.
It reads:
“UCLA is deeply committed to the free and open exchange of ideas and we strongly support the academic freedom of our scholars. We actively encourage respectful debate, but we also expect equity and fairness, even when people strongly disagree. We do not tolerate discrimination or harassment and, to that end, UCLA strongly condemns anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred.”
UCLA student Tyler Wilde told Campus Reform that he feels the same way Manson does.
“Politics doesn’t come into conversation too often in my classes,” Wilde said, “but when it does, I know I’m outnumbered by leftists.”
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Wilde also spoke about an example of liberal bias he experienced in an intro to American History class.
“I can’t remember one positive thing the professor said about America. In one way or another, America was at fault for everything bad in the world.”
Campus Reform reached out to Professor Manson and the Anthropology Department for comment, but did not receive a response.
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