Recently, Paul Boghossian and some of his friends at New York University, Princeton, Harvard, and other elite institutions, published a screed against the hostile takeover of academia by the woke mob. The term they used, however, was not the woke mob – Elon Musk’s favourite scapegoat – but rather the “progressive left,” a term they chose because they are too “objective” and “impartial” to resort to loaded language, emotional displays, or appeals to any faculties other than transcendental rationality. (Emotions, politics, and poetic language are, as we all know, girly and gay). The point of the screed was that the woke mob – sorry, the “progressive left” – is degrading the standards of humanistic scholarship by transforming research into a vehicle for a political agenda, such as fighting academic ableism or decolonizing the curriculum. This transformation goes against the true purpose of the humanities – especially philosophy – which is not to change the world, but only to interpret it. In other words, Boghossian and his friends are inverting the classic Marxist dictum – one that is widely shared by marginalized philosophers ranging from crip theorists and Indigenous environmentalists to queer theorists and decolonial feminists – to argue that philosophy should be based on pure, apolitical, objective rationality, untainted by politics, emotions, or the limits of one’s perception. It should be, in effect, “a view from nowhere.” 

That this is impossible is the first premise of standpoint epistemology, which holds that knowledge is situated, that marginalized groups have privileged access to knowledge about the oppressions they experience, and that unbiased (some would say “strongly objective”) knowledge depends on incorporating excluded perspectives into the marketplace of ideas (Harding 2015). Boghossian et al. vociferously – I mean, impartially – object to this theory, arguing that standpoint epistemology is a woo-woo mystical ideology on par with astrology, witchcraft, and (presumably) other feminine-coded spiritual practices. To do this, they flatten the plethora of standpoint theories into a single monolith that they label “poststructuralism,” which they in turn reduce to the simple idea that all claims are equally authoritative. Even Foucault, one of the most famous poststructuralists, did not believe this. Instead, he believed that knowledge itself is real, but what counts as knowledge in a given context is conditioned by historically-specific regimes of truth.^[1] So, in one stroke, Boghossian and his friends misrepresent both standpoint epistemology and poststructuralism, compressing them into a flat caricature – also known as committing a strawperson fallacy. 

What’s more, they do this willfully, knowing full well – as tenured professors at the most elite universities in the world – that standpoint epistemology does not say what they claim it does. In other words, they engage in what Nora Berenstain calls “structural gaslighting” (2025), a “strategic forgetting” of the shared knowledge of marginalized groups – in this case, those who have defended the various versions of standpoint theory that they strawperson. And they enact this erasure in the name of a very narrow and tendentious understanding of “objectivity” – one that they take for granted, also known as begging the question.^[2]

The irony of accusing marginalized scholars of mystification and deception while attacking them with obvious fallacies and rhetorical sleights of hand seems entirely lost on the authors. Nowhere is this as clear as when they allege that the progressive left uses “abstract jargon” and obscurantist rhetoric to achieve a veneer of academic respectability. Yet their own manifesto is full of technical academic language and abstract arguments that mask their fallacious reasoning and internal contradictions, while ensuring that their report remains inaccessible to a general audience. If it were an essay, it would be immediately desk-rejected by Aeon.

Ultimately, the manifesto on the woke-mobification of academia confirms the opposite of what it sets out to prove, demonstrating that the so-called “objective” and “impartial” arguments of the authors are riddled with biases, fallacies, and barely-veiled emotions. While their diction is meticulously civil, the underlying message is clearly emotionally-driven, differing only in tone from some of Elon Musk’s Twitter rants against the “woke mind virus.” That message is clear: those vile leftists – especially crips, queers, and women – are stealing privileges from cultural elites, and they must be stopped. That is, the report is a form of political advocacy against the left, cobbled together from the authors’ various publications on (the politics of) epistemology, ethics, and culture, which are equally politically and emotionally charged. Far from a dispassionate review of “the state of academic scholarship,” the report reads more like an angry screed wrapped in the technical jargon of philosophical rationalism – one that trades evidence for fallacies and authenticity for performative civility.   

If the report shows anything, it’s that academic elites on the right are dishonest. At least crip, queer, and decolonial scholars admit to having emotional entanglements and political goals. Boghossian et al. seem determined to prove standpoint epistemologists right by demonstrating that the privileged cannot admit to their own biases, which are simply reinforced when they try to wish them away with magical thinking and rhetorical gymnastics. On Facebook, Jason Read pointed out that philosophical rationalists share with technofascists like Elon Musk “the dream of a ‘God’s eye point of view,’ of looking at something from everywhere and nowhere all at once.” If the mythical “view from nowhere” proved to be true, this would be very lucrative for the technofascists peddling LLMs as authoritative and unbiased, as well as the academics who support their political agenda. 

Indeed, one cannot help but notice that all of the report’s authors enjoy cushy jobs and high salaries, unlike, say, me. As Zachary Levinson observed on Facebook, there is a profound irony in commissioning a report on the state of the humanities from professors at some of “the most prestigious private schools in the country,” who are the least familiar with epistemic oppression – or any kind of oppression, for that matter. They provide no evidence whatsoever that their scholarship has been suppressed, and indeed much evidence to the contrary. The authors don’t see any contradiction in being paid to write about how persecuted they all are, even while enjoying the immense security that comes with tenure, status, and money. Meanwhile, this blog survives on nothing but passion and solidarity. 

Paradoxically, these academic elites – who purport to be purely rational, logical, and not emotional at all – are acting like crybabies, whining about how women, queers, and crips are bullying and silencing them. In other words, they are exemplifying the kind of fragility that comes with social privilege according to some standpoint epistemologists. Should we feel sorry for them? Or should we tell them to stop hijacking identity politics to play the victim? I for one choose the latter option. 

^[1] At least, this is one popular interpretation of Foucault. 

^[2] One of the more notable standpoint epistemologists, Sandra Harding, believed in weaker and stronger versions of objectivity.