The New Statesman “journalist” Laurie Penny is on an email circulation list we use occasionally to communicate to large numbers of people, and yesterday we sent a note out to people on that list about our presentation to Dave the Feminist (aka David Cameron, the United Kingdom’s hapless prime minister) of his third consecutive “Toady of the Year” award. Among the ‘auto reply’ emails we received was one from Ms Penny. It read:
Thanks for your email! (Rather upbeat for Ms P, I felt.)
From September 2014 until May 2015, I’ll be on sabbatical, taking up a fellowship with the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. I’ll be checking this email less frequently, and won’t be available for most of my usual work engagements in that time. Thanks for understanding! Meanwhile, here’s how to get to me if it’s urgent and work-related:
(Names and email addresses of three people – all are women – what are the chances?)If it’s work-related and not urgent, get back in touch around April.
Harvard University is, of course, the institution whose president, Larry Summers, was hounded out of office after making some perfectly reasonable remarks (in a lunchtime talk in January 2005) about men outnumbering women in high-end science and engineering positions, and suggesting some explanations for that reality (and “remedies’” it’s often forgotten). Following a radical feminist backlash, he resigned his position 13 months later. An account of the story is here.
So it’s only appropriate that Red Penny – as she likes to call herself – should be undertaking a fellowship at Harvard. Details of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism are here. So Ms Penny will in due course become a “Fellow.” I’m guessing wildly she won’t like that.
The infiltration of radical feminists throughout the mainstream media should come as a surprise to nobody, likewise the fact that it accounts for the virtual exclusion of men’s human rights advocates from the mainstream media. Radical feminists have, of course, infiltrated academia and damaged it immeasurably – perhaps irreparably – so we cannot be surprised to see feminists running journalism courses, taking fellowships etc.
We’ve just published a link to a remarkable piece written by Mallory Millett, sister of the radical feminist writer Kate Millett. In it she described a meeting in 1969 she and her sister attended, in the course of which:
They proceeded with a long discussion on how to advance these goals by establishing The National Organization of Women. It was clear they desired nothing less than the utter deconstruction of Western society. The upshot was that the only way to do this was “to invade every American institution. Every one must be permeated with ‘The Revolution’”: The media, the educational system, universities, (our emphasis) high schools, K-12, school boards, etc.; then, the judiciary, the legislatures, the executive branches and even the library system.
What more fertile ground for radical feminists, then, that university journalism faculties?
In January 2014 we posted a piece about the appointment of Julie Bindel to the position of “Journalist in Residence” at Brunel University. A link on the university’s website took us to this:
Brunel’s Head of Journalism Sarah Niblock welcomed the appointment: “Julie is a phenomenal journalist who never ceases to bring tough social affairs stories to the forefront of the news agenda. She combines the research acumen of a sociologist with the news sense, policy know-how and editorial rigour of a reporter.”
“Our students find her passion for her subject matter infectious, and they can’t wait to work with her,” she added.
Seriously, that’s what she said. Ms Bindel has the “editorial rigour of a reporter,” apparently. Remarkable. The claim surely says more about reporters (and one Head of Journalism) in 2014 than editorial rigour, and why journalists are held in such poor regard today – even lower than politicians, some surveys have concluded. That aside, Professor Niblock has hopefully never been introduced as a speaker at a conference, by someone inclined to switch vowels around in surnames.
Brunel University is, of course, where female MSc engineering students will shortly be receiving sponsorships of £22,750 unavailable to their male colleagues. We posed a public challenge on the matter to Professor Niblock, asking her why the country specifically needs more female engineers – the challenge is accessible through the last link – and she predictably side-stepped the challenge, referring it to the university’s Press Office.
This country – like all countries – no more “needs” more female engineers than it “needs” radical feminist journalists.
