Dear colleague
This "Dear Colleague" letter , sent by the Department of Education to institutions of higher education late last week, is exactly what you would do if you were trying to use the logic of liberalism in the service of a narrow authoritarianism.
And as easily as it fell in line with progressive orthodoxy, the academy twists itself in knots to bow to the reaction against it.
Age against the machine
Musil and the Sir Douglass Quintet
After months of reading it little-by-little each evening, I'm finally finishing the second volume of Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities. In a sentence: it's a book that has a surprising lot to say to our moment. And here, on St. Valentine's Day of all days, a breathless comparison of love with anger, in its closing pages:
Now, everyone knows what a great relief it is when one is upset to work off one's anger on someone, even if it has nothing to do with him; but it is less well known that this also applies to love. For love, too, must often be worked off in the same way on someone not really involved, for lack of a more suitable outlet.
And then, this song came on the radio, and the sentiments combined into something complicated.
A bit unrelated to his narrator's voicing of a character's thoughts on love, but here's a smart essay on Musil at the New Criterion that I recently read as well.
The poet vs whitey on Mars