Editor’s Note: The following is the second in a series of satirical articles loosely inspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. To read Part I, click here.
PART II: THE YEAR 2029 OC (Old Calendar)
Prologue:
In the year 2024, after Congress created the new states of Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Democratic Socialists were able to take full control of both houses of Congress in perpetuity. After that, President Kamala Harris was able to push through legislation which eliminated the filibuster, packed the Supreme Court, and gave executive orders the full force of federal law. Once that was done, the 28th & 29th constitutional amendments were introduced to get rid of the electoral college and rescind the 22nd amendment, which limited the number times a person could be elected as president. It was then decided that the three-quarters requirement for states to approve a constitutional amendment was systemically racist, as it allowed majority-white states to exercise their white privilege on matters primarily affecting BIPOC communities. Both amendments were passed with simple majorities in a matter of weeks.
As President Harris began her first full term in January 2025, the calendar was reset to better reflect the true history of the United States, which began in 1619 with the creation of slavery and white supremacy in North America and ended in 2024 with the triumph of Critical Race Theory and Antiracism over the forces of darkness. Hence, the year 2025 became the Year 1 NC (New Calendar). At that time, the newly created Federal Department of Antiracism, overseen by Dr. Ibram X Kendi and a group of experts with lifetime appointments, began the arduous task of remaking American society, and, in particular, American education, into a truly equitable model for the rest of the world to follow. They were given unlimited resources to accomplish this goal, but despite that, pockets of resistance continue to crop up across the country. This is the story of one of those pockets.
To Whomever Manages To Read What I Have Posted Before the Internet Censors Take It Down:
Please archive the following emails and preserve them in the hopes that, one day, they will explain to future generations much of what has happened during these very dark days of higher education. After Dr. Kendi’s Department of Antiracism was created by the federal government in 2023, and after Critical Race Theory became the basis of all educational curricula in the United States in 2024, a small group of faculty have gone deep underground to collect and document the methods used by the now-mandated Offices of Diversity, Inclusion, Equity & Decolonization (DIED) on each college campus. These offices reeducate faculty and indoctrinate students in preparation for their lives as radical social justice advocates, mostly peaceful protestors, and useful governmental pawns in the creation of a culturally complete and everlasting Marxist/Socially Democratic state.
8-12-Year 5 NC (New Calendar)
Dean S-24781:
I’m pleased to hear how well the reeducation of faculty member T-345-296 is going. The process has certainly become much easier and faster now that we can use neural implants for those faculty that have proved resistant to more conventional methods of programming. However, the problem still remains in identifying all of those faculty who are not fully onboard with the federally mandated curricular theories. Despite our best efforts, there are those who continue to slip under the radar and hold non-approved, potentially seditious ideas like equality, academic freedom, and freedom of expression. These concepts must be eradicated from higher education if we are to have any hope of disseminating diversity, inclusion, equity, and decolonization throughout the general public writ large. The Department of Antiracism has set a goal of 90-95% compliance among higher education faculty and staff by the end of Year 8 NC.
In order to meet that goal, we must search out and squash those who hold these antiquated and racist doctrines of the past. It is not enough to monitor email, social media, and the like, as many have abandoned virtually all public technological platforms in order to hide their personal views and opinions. We administrators have an obligation to observe and report any faculty behavior that might give any hint as to personal beliefs that do not align with government mandates. This could be almost anything, from an unguarded conversation with a colleague to an unpleasant facial expression during a mandatory training session. We must be ever-alert for even the subtlest resistance of faculty to the true narrative of antiracism. Remember what Dr. Kendi has taught us! A person must be fully invested and engaged in doing the work of antiracism. Any lethargy or reticence is almost a sure sign that a faculty member may need reeducation. Of course, any questioning of presented material or the data being used to support it is an immediate red flag and must be reported to the director of the DIED office for instant correction. While in rare instances, this may take the form of reassignment or reeducation, it most likely will result in instant termination. Since the removal of tenure protections two years ago, the process for removing recalcitrant faculty has been streamlined and can be accomplished with as little as 48 hours’ notice.
I encourage you to meticulously monitor your faculty, as we have reason to believe that one or more may be involved with a new underground movement that is seeking to undermine government objectives. This can’t be allowed to continue. If it is, it will reflect poorly on your own chances for career advancement. I would hate to see that happen to such a promising young administrator. Tread carefully!
Yours In Solidarity,
VP D-6789
Department of Faculty Affairs & Curricular Integrity
9-4-Year 5 NC
Dean S-24781:
I am sending this email to all department deans, as we have recently received information from the regional office of DIED that there is an underground movement of faculty scattered across the western states which is organizing and sharing information outside the currently approved curricular models. While this development was initially dismissed as a few isolated incidents, recent evidence suggests that the problem is much more widespread and better organized than we thought. The true scope of the issue is proving to be incredibly difficult to track, as many of those involved in this movement are disseminating their forbidden ideas in ways that do not involve digital means. To use the colloquial phrase, they are operating “off the grid.”
I share this with you to emphasize the importance of our local efforts in monitoring and reporting any suspect behavior amongst our own faculty for immediate correction. If this is indeed part of a more widespread organization, it threatens to undermine all of our accomplishments in recent years. Critical Race Theory and Antiracism cannot survive as the basis of our curriculum and our society as long as students and faculty are aware that there are alternative modes of thinking. Replacing writers like John Locke and James Madison with Karl Marx or Chairman Mao was an excellent start, but as long as concepts like limited government and personal responsibility survive, our entire system is in danger of collapse. There will always be those individuals who believe that they can decide for themselves what they need, how they want to live, and what actions they should take, rather than relying on those of us who know what is best, not just for the individual, but for the common good of society. Individual autonomy is proving more stubborn to eradicate than we originally anticipated.
So, I encourage you to redouble your efforts and be keenly aware of any signs of resistance. Any minute change or slip of the tongue may be evidence of failure to comply with the accepted standards. Nothing is too small to be overlooked. If you see something, say something, or you yourself could be considered complicit. Be vigilant!
Yours In Solidarity,
VP D-6789
Department of Faculty Affairs & Curricular Integrity
10-18-Year 5 NC
Dean S-24781:
I am contacting you directly this afternoon to inform you about some troubling rumors involving members of your department. A student recently reported that ze had overheard during a conversation involving one of our instructors that, for most of human history, there were only two genders, male and female, and that everyone fit into one of those two categories with rare biological exceptions. If this is true, this accusation is grounds for immediate dismissal. More than that, the individual would be required to submit themselves for reeducation at one of the federally funded Centers for Gender Orientation. As recent scientific studies have proven, failure to recognize the entire spectrum of genders across all of human history is most often the result of one’s own repressed gender dysphoria. Reeducation can help a person fully embrace the wide range of genders and sexualities recognized by modern science and find their true self within that spectrum. While the student couldn’t positively identify the instructor in the report, we have reason to suspect that it is one of the faculty in your department.
I don’t need to remind you that, if this rumor turns out to be true, it can not only result in the dismissal of the offending instructor but also in your own demotion or reassignment. I would hate to think that you haven’t noticed or, worse yet, might be actively ignoring serious infractions. I can see from your record that you aced the mandatory trainings on identifying systemic racism in the curriculum, decolonizing the classroom, and keeping white privilege at bay in higher education. I also see that you were part of the team that wrote the committee operating agreement for our new Equity By Elimination group, which will oversee the dismantling of our Honors Program and all other classes deemed as “accelerated.” This could be the beginning of a highly distinguished career in the administrative bureaucracy. It would be a shame for one small mistake to ruin it.
I recommend that you begin a thorough interrogation of all faculty under your administrative purview. While this will most likely not result in a direct confession, it can often be a useful tool in identifying those faculty who exhibit signs of deception. Once those faculty have been identified, we can begin comprehensive surveillance of their activities on campus, monitor their lectures in the classroom, and search their browser histories and social media accounts for any signs of subversive activity. The campus Office of Accountability has virtually unlimited resources and authority at this time to conduct investigations and will place themselves at your disposal should the need arise. Good luck!
Yours In Solidarity,
VP D-6789
Department of Faculty Affairs & Curricular Integrity
11-22- Year 5 NC
Dean S-24781:
I’m disappointed by your recent report regarding the interrogation of your faculty. I find it hard to believe that none of the instructors under your direct control had anything to say. Every other department dean referred at least two persons for reeducation and, in one instance, five department members were found to have engaged in subversive behavior for failing to condemn one of their colleagues who spoke out in favor of academic freedom. Of course, that faculty member was immediately removed from their position and turned over to the custody of ICE (Internal Conformity Enforcement), while the rest were suspended without pay until they complete mandatory training on how the imposition of Eurocentric ideas such as academic freedom, individual critical analysis, and personal choice have been used for centuries to suppress and exploit BIPOC communities. Their return will be contingent on their ability to articulate the principles of antiracism, equity, and community before the executive board at the regional Office of DIED.
In light of such explosive activity, I find it suspicious that your department had nothing to report. Statistically, it would be nearly impossible for the other deans to have uncovered such a plethora of punishable offenses while your faculty remained untouched and unexposed. Even if that were the case, it shouldn’t be hard to find a faculty member or two who would be willing to manufacture the evidence necessary to indict one of their troublesome colleagues in return for certain administrative considerations. Remember, the ends always justify the means! If we are to create a truly equitable campus where the outcomes for all students are exactly the same regardless of energy, effort, or ability, we must root out the free thinkers and nonconformists who threaten our utopia. We are doing the hard work of laying the foundations for a society where success is guaranteed for all except those whose privilege demand their eradication. We knew this wouldn’t be easy, but it is the work we have committed ourselves to do.
I would advise you to use the upcoming Indigenous Peoples Holiday to reflect carefully on what white supremacy, colonization, and western privilege did to this nation. Do we really want to live in a world where people believe that they can advance themselves through their own decisions and that merit rather than need is the final arbiter in the distribution of resources? If the last fifteen years have taught us anything, it is that the inequalities of the old world can only be eliminated through the ruthless application of force, whether it be through the community or the government. Dr. Kendi was at his most profound when he said in How To Be An Antiracist, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” We are engaged in this holy struggle right here on our campus, and none of us wants to be on the wrong side of history. Think hard!
Yours In Solidarity,
VP D-6789
Office of Faculty Affairs & Curricular Integrity
12-5-Year 5 NC
Dean S-24781:
I am writing to inform you of the college president’s decision to bring in your entire department, including yourself, over the winter break for enhanced interrogation. Your failure to identify a single faculty member within your department who needs even the most rudimentary reeducation convinced him that the entire department needs to be questioned. Since this involves a much larger group that we are accustomed to handling on our own, we will be bringing in additional interrogators from the regional Office of DIED as well as hiring a government-sanctioned private firm.
Even if no evidence of wrongdoing is uncovered, the mere fact that this action has become necessary highlights your inability to properly fulfill the requirements of your current position. You will be relieved of your administrative duties at the end of the semester and replaced by an interim selected from the Department of Antiracism database. Depending on the results of the interrogations, you will either be reassigned to a clerical position on another campus or, in the worst-case scenario, you will be remanded to the custody of ICE for placement in a detention center pending neural readjustment surgery. Be warned!
VP D-6789
Office of Faculty Affairs & Curricular Integrity
Image: Solen Feyissa, Public Domain
It’s so refreshing and inspiring to find such a group of intellectuals resisting the crazy direction our country is going in. thanks so much for being there to offer reason to the discussion.
This clever article is in the great tradition of anti-collectivist dystopian fiction such as Zamyatin’s We and Ayn Rand’s Anthem. (It could have borrowed from Rand the elimination of first-person and singular pronouns.) I taught those books, and many other similar ones, over decades in courses on dystopian fiction. Even though I witnessed, and wrote against, the attack on free speech that got seriously underway in the 1990s, I never envisioned that our whole society could descend into group insanity and inanity so rapidly, and with so little resistance on the part of faculty.
My conclusion is that my generation (those who went to college in the 1960s), which started identity programs such as Women Studies–where I spent ten years– and Black Studies, have a lot to answer for. Nothing going on now–not the identity politics, ideological policing, censorship, moral grandstanding, personal attacks, standpoint epistemology, antagonism to science, hatred of merit and accomplishment, pettiness and backbiting–was not clearly visible then. Only now it’s worse, in the true spirit of Gleichschaltung.
One important example. When I was in Women’s Studies at UMass Amherst, a colleague was Janice Raymond, author of the 1979 book The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Her critical perspective could still be discussed in those days. Check out the WGSS website now and you will see at once a programmatic affirmation of loyalty to the trans agenda, and an apology (without naming her) for ever having had Jan on the faculty — see https://www.umass.edu/wgss/about-wgss .
From the late 1980s on, “anti-racism” became a major focus of our program and white students were expected to “confront” their racism in class and their written work. When this drove out any serious discussion of intellectual standards, I left the program.
In short: it was a preview of what is now poisoning the entire country and the Western world. Just as is occurring now, personal antagonisms then were always dressed up as political and most faculty simply conformed–or, in a few cases, left, as I did.
We have a lot to answer for.
I’ve been sounding the warning bell since engaging in academia in 2001. This after 20 years in private sector. I was introduced to the dangerous direction of these issues by an art history prof in the early 90’s. I’ve always maintained that the “Academy” comprised of the colleges and universities, is the vanguard of our cultural identity and freedom, and that we must “re-take the high ground” of academic rigor and intellectual freedom that should characterize it.
The mistake was made in the 1980s when the radicals of the late 1960s (Hillary Clinton’s generation) were permitted to gain tenure — and in the 1990s these self-identified “tenured radicals” proceeded to purge all sanity from academia.
Taking the attitude of “they shall die”, they concentrated on things like networking and graduate admissions, building a cadre of young radicals because they knew that the older faculty would eventually retire. They concentrated on things that most faculty didn’t really care about, things like the freshman writing program which was quietly subverted into a vehicle for political indoctrination. (CHE wrote about this, circa 1991.) They imposed diversity requirements, something that brave people like Daphne fought against.
I blame Reagan because while he had campaigned on the promise to abolish the Department of Education (which Carter had created two years earlier as a favor to the National Education Association), Reagan instead nominated Terrel Bell and allowed ED to establish itself and expand its influence.
I blame the purported conservatives of Reagan’s era because they all concentrated on Wall Street and making money instead of worrying about the politicized gulags that their schools were rapidly becoming — on both the K-12 and higher ed levels. They were worried about national defense, going from an era of Soviet expansion to the total implosion of the Soviet Union in a little more than a decade, but they forgot about cultural defense.
The Millennials were dumped in daycare and then quietly indoctrinated from that point onward — and look at what we now have. The “tenured radicals” of higher education are now retiring, being replaced by Millennials so radical that the “tenured radicals” look downright tolerant by comparison, and K-12 is even worse.
Far worse….
We abandoned ‘the high ground” for the quick buck, and we are now paying the price for that….
I could not agree more with your evaluation of our generation. Being a late-60s college student myself, I was struck by the fact that my parents’ cohort is commonly called “the greatest generation.” Given how we took America from what is was in the early 60s to what it is today, I really suspect that somewhere down the line, we will be labeled the “most pathetic generation.” That saddens me.
The presumption is that higher education as we know it will survive.
As late as 1961, similar presumptions were made about the rail industry.
And while freight rail is actually starting to return as double stacked cargo containers, the freight rail of sixty years ago is no more. Nor are cabooses, nor are the extra 3 guys who used to ride in them — both replaced by “FRED.” (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-train_device)
Higher education as we know it is imploding. Tuition discount rates have now reached 53.9% for first-time, full-time students and 48.1% for all undergraduates. See: https://www.highereddive.com/news/private-college-tuition-discount-rates-hit-new-highs-during-the-pandemic/600453/
Biden is rapidly becoming Carter Part Deux — inflation has already started to return — and I don’t see the left remaining intact.
And then there are situations like this: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/05/25/conflict-over-power-and-theology-ensues-southwest-baptist-university