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The Victims' Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind Hardcover – September 4, 2012
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBroadside Books
- Publication dateSeptember 4, 2012
- Dimensions6 x 1.25 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100061807370
- ISBN-13978-0061807374
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Bawer scores lots of entertaining points against the insufferable posturing and unreadable prose that pervades identity studies….Bawer’s is a lively, cantankerous takedown of a juicy target.” — Publishers Weekly
“Bawer is passionate in his criticism of the current state of academia and its effects on broader American culture.” — Booklist
“The developments described by Mr. Bawer will not surprise readers familiar with the campus wars that broke out in the 1980s, when entire departments devoted to these fields began to be established. Where the author’s text shines is in explaining their root causes.” — Wall Street Journal
“The book is terrific, exposing the academic criminality that those programs encourage ― i.e., teaching naïve and impressionable students things that either are utterly false or are merely wild-eyed opinions as truth....I strongly recommend the book.” — National Review
“This is a vital, sparkling, and truth-telling book.” — Jay Nordlinger, National Review
“This book is an adventure in American religious thought, exciting and intelligent.” — Booklist
From the Back Cover
An eye-opening critique of the identity-based revolution that has transformed American campuses and its effect on politics and society today.
The 1960s and ’70s were a time of dramatic upheaval in American universities as a new generation of scholar-activists rejected traditional humanism in favor of a radical ideology that denied esthetic merit and objective truth. In The Victims’ Revolution, critic and scholar Bruce Bawer provides the first true history of this radical movement and a sweeping assessment of its intellectual and cultural fruits.
Once, Bawer argues, the purpose of higher education had been to introduce students to the legacy of Western civilization—“the best that has been thought and said.” The new generation of radical educators sought instead to unmask the West as the perpetrator of global injustice. Age-old values of goodness, truth, and beauty were disparaged as mere weapons in an ongoing struggle of the powerful against the powerless. Shifting the focus of the humanities to the purported victims of Western colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism, the new politicized approach to the humanities gave rise to a series of identity-based programs, including Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies, and Chicano Studies. As a result, the serious and objective study of human civilization and culture was replaced by “theoretical” approaches emphasizing group identity, victimhood, and lockstep “progressive” politics.
What have the advocates of this new anti-Western ideology accomplished?
Twenty-five years ago, Allan Bloom warned against the corruption of the humanities in The Closing of the American Mind. Bawer’s book presents compelling evidence that Bloom and other conservative critics were right to be alarmed. The Victims’ Revolution describes how the new identity-based disciplines came into being, examines their major proponents and texts, and trenchantly critiques their underlying premises. Bawer concludes that the influence of these programs has impoverished our thought, confused our politics, and filled the minds of their impressionable students with politically correct mush. Bawer’s book is must-reading for all those concerned not only about the declining quality of American higher education, but also about the fate of our society at large.
About the Author
A native New Yorker who has lived in Norway since 1999, Bruce Bawer has written several influential books on a range of issues. A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society (1993) was named by columnist Dale Carpenter as the most important non-fiction book about homosexuality published in the 1990s; Publishers Weekly called Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity (1997) “a must-read book for anyone concerned with the relationship of Christianity to contemporary American culture”; While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within (2006) was a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom (2009) was hailed by Booklist as “immensely important and urgent." He has also published several collections of literary and film criticism, including Diminishing Fictions and The Aspect of Eternity, and a collection of poetry, Coast to Coast, which was selected by the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook as the best first book of poems published in 1993. He is a frequent contributor to such publications as The Hudson Review, City Journal, The American Scholar, Wilson Quarterly, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and has reviewed books regularly for the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, and Wall Street Journal.
Product details
- Publisher : Broadside Books; First Edition (September 4, 2012)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0061807370
- ISBN-13 : 978-0061807374
- Item Weight : 8 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.25 x 9 inches
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Bruce Bawer is a highly respected author, critic, essayist and translator. He is the author of several collections of literary and film criticism and a collection of poetry. His political journalism is widely published in print and online journals and he reviews books regularly for the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, and Wall Street Journal. Visit his website at www.brucebawer.com. He lives in Oslo with his partner.
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Customers find the book insightful and informative about the current cultural crisis. They praise the writing style as clear, concise, and well-written. The book is described as an excellent, entertaining read with humor.
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Customers find the book insightful and informative about the current cultural crisis. They describe it as an important work that provides a comprehensive treasure of personal experiences in evaluating victimhood. Readers appreciate the well-researched history of ideas from Gramsci to Adorno. The author articulates the Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind perfectly.
"...In this informative, entertaining, and eye-opening book, Bawer describes what has happened in universities' Humanities departments, and particularly..." Read more
"...Basic study of history, literature and the arts -- the Humanities -- has been replaced to a great extent in undergraduate curricula by "studies"..." Read more
"...It is very well-written, thoughtful, and analytically balanced, something we have come to expect from Mr. Bawer...." Read more
"The book is a comprehensive treasure of personal experiences in evaluating victimhood as it has taken over the Academy, the press & media, and our..." Read more
Customers find the writing style clear and well-written. They appreciate the concise and logical presentation of the arguments, with well-chosen words and examples. The book provides an adequate understanding through its lively and serious presentation.
"...’s Island: Women’s Studies," you will have acquired a very adequate understanding not only of when the various waves occurred but also who the..." Read more
"...Brawer is bold and fearless in his rhetoric but always fair and scholarly in his analysis...." Read more
"Bawer is an excellent thinker and writer. He can articulate extremely well what many of us see and know, but cannnot possibly convey so clearly and..." Read more
"...It is very well-written, thoughtful, and analytically balanced, something we have come to expect from Mr. Bawer...." Read more
Customers find the book engaging and informative. They describe it as a good read that is entertaining and educational. The book is described as cathartic and liberating for readers.
"...In this informative, entertaining, and eye-opening book, Bawer describes what has happened in universities' Humanities departments, and particularly..." Read more
"...really to get you thinking just enough to see that this book is worth reading and should not be dismissed as "right-wing sexist/racist/homophobic..." Read more
"...Again, clear, articulate thinkers, all three, and excellent writers to boot...." Read more
"...The concluding chapter is excellent and worthy of a higher rating...." Read more
Customers enjoy the humor in the book. They find the research humorous and entertaining.
"...conferences that Bower attended while researching this book are hilarious, and must be read and savored...." Read more
"...All of them are very entertaining, but "Gilligan's Island: Women's Studies" was the strongest, and I made many of its paragraphs into 4 videos that..." Read more
"Bawer is wryly funny, and his observations are spot on, as usual...." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2014For years, I've been encountering academic gibberish-speak and wondering what the hell it meant. You know, the whole "heteronormative society's hegemonic structures establish a paradigm of rationalistic male imperialistic spheres of racist Othering that transformates the cognitive self as selfness into a ... blah blah blah" Well, it turns out that it doesn't mean anything; it is, in fact, gibberish.
In this informative, entertaining, and eye-opening book, Bawer describes what has happened in universities' Humanities departments, and particularly English Lit. It turns out our kids are not studying quite what we thought they were studying. Apparently, Shakespeare (which some English Lit departments don't teach at all, now) has been replaced by Womens Studies, Black Studies, Chicano Studies, and a slew of other "Studies". When identity politics came to the universities in the 1960s and 1970s, it resulted in new courses and new departments for aggrieved individuals and groups to have organized whine-athons focused on their own victimhood. These courses and departments have attracted a slew of mediocre talent as well as outright frauds, who've strained to achieve academic respectability. To do so, they've developed a pseudo-scientific lingo and body of "theory", which they call critical theory, from whence comes all the vaguely-subversive but basically meaningless gibberish about heternormative hegemonistic imperialism and so forth. Much, if not all, of the so-called "theory" boils down to "We deserve more power and resources and money; give them to us." It's just that such a simple formulation would neither win the argument nor give them the veneer of academic respectability they crave, so an entirely new psuedo-language of post-modernism has been invented. This is not a development to take too lightly, because at hundreds of universities degrees as high as Ph.D.'s are offered in these faux disciplines, sending kids with absolutely no skills, education, or ability to think out into the harsh world of employment and competition.
Descriptions of academic conferences that Bower attended while researching this book are hilarious, and must be read and savored. I gave the book to my wife and we were literally laughing out loud at the pretentious clown-shows going on all over the country, where black lesbian women outrank white lesbian women and both rank under black lesbian Chicano women, who rank less still than a lesbian Chicano handicapped trans-woman. The politically-correct, Marxist-leaning postmodern "theory" movement has driven itself into ideological chaos and mayhem, with a strict pecking order of victimness that ironically contradicts its now-quaint and quite obsolete egalitarian goals, and you will enjoy every page of it. At the same time, the humor is balanced by knowing that this is really happening. Thousands and thousands of students -- young people, who don't know any better -- are being exposed to this nonsense in insular classes and conferences walled off from the real world, creating yet another generation of Marxist parrots who will, like their parents and grandparents, need to learn how to think for themselves. The postmodern theory movement, in which students engage in group therapy sessions and compete to see who is more of a victim for their parents' $50,000 tuition payment per year, is so entrenched in American universities at this point that it will take many, many years to uproot it and replace it with actual educational content. And that is sad. But it's still funny.
I highly recommend this book. I got a lot out of it, both in terms of reading entertaining and in terms of learning about something that matters.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2017The Victims' Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind
When the title of a book intrigues me, I generally first download the Sample of the Kindle version to my Fire HD 8. Next, if I find myself compelled to utilize all four highlighters on most of the pages, then I know the entire book is likely a keeper. The following exceedingly-enlightening 382 words are quoted from the Preface, entitled "The Closing of the Liberal Mind."
"One of the most magnificent examples of America’s struggles for its soul was the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century. The goal of that movement could not have been more consistent with America’s founding ideals—which was why it ultimately succeeded. But that bright success was not without its downside. The most disastrous by-product of the civil rights movement was multiculturalism…. For two centuries, Americans had been held together by a shared sense of national identity, a belief in individual liberty, and a vision of full equality—even though that vision, as many Americans acknowledged, had yet to be fully realized. Yet just when the complete attainment of that vision seemed to lie within our grasp, [it was] replaced by a new conception, founded not on individual rights and liberties but on the claims of group identity and culture. This … represented a betrayal of true liberalism, a rejection of the idea of a sensible center, and a profound danger to the sense of unity that had made America uniquely strong, prosperous, and free. …. [Historian Arthur Schlesinger] warned his fellow liberals that the looming cult of victimhood, while posing as a liberal crusade, was actually an anti-liberal virus that threatened to destroy the very foundations of American democracy.
“What the new academic groupthink really represented was nothing less than the closing of the liberal mind. Armed with a new sense of mission and moral superiority, the new academic elites simultaneously balkanized and politicized the study of society and culture and wrapped their Gramscian Marxist critiques in an impenetrable jargon that only they could understand. They no longer listened to traditional liberals and held conservatives in utter contempt. Meanwhile, the multicultural dogma spread throughout society, transforming the way people think, speak, and act on a wide range of issues. ….
“The problem, to be sure, is not simply a pathological fixation on group identity, but a preoccupation with the historical grievances of certain groups, combined with a virulent hostility to America, which is consistently cast as the prime villain in the histories of these groups and the world at large. If you or I had set out to invent an ideology capable of utterly destroying the America of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the melting pot, we could scarcely have done better."
Are you -- as I was prior to purchasing this book – unaware that there have been three waves in the women's liberation movement to date, and that a fourth may be upon us? By the end of Chapter Two entitled "Gilligan’s Island: Women’s Studies," you will have acquired a very adequate understanding not only of when the various waves occurred but also who the pathfinders were, what they had to say, and how they went about changing society.
How about black studies? Are you curious what the impetus was, when it occurred, where it took place and who the leaders were? It's all here, in Chapter Three entitled, "The Ebony Tower: Black Studies," where we learn that, in addition to learned blacks like W.E.B. Dubois, "crooks" and "hustlers" also played -- and continue to play -- prominent roles. Perhaps the very most interesting discussion in this chapter is the role played by Shelby Steele, a black who was only 22 years old and a mere undergraduate, when he played a prominent role in persuading the leaders of various institutions of the importance of creating Black Studies Programs.
"'I was one of those who were in on the founding of Black Studies programs,' Shelby Steele tells me. His tone, touched with rue, is almost that of a repentant sinner in a confessional booth. .... ‘I was a twenty-two-year-old kid just out of undergraduate school, and I was designing higher education.' .... Now in his mid-sixties, he laughs at the absurdity of it all. 'That’ll give you some idea of the intellectual heft that went into it!' He describes his role in that strange parturition: he flew around the country to places ranging from Long Beach State on the West Coast to City College of New York (CCNY) in the East. 'We’d talk to the administrators, and talk them into having Black Studies programs. .... There was so much white guilt that you could just go into these places and they’d give you everything you wanted,' even though the whole thing was ‘ill-conceived’ from the start."
In Chapter Four entitled, "Visit to a Queer Planet: Queer Studies," we learn that the quintessential characteristic of those who call themselves "queer" is that they refuse to be defined, as to do so would impinge upon their freedoms.
Chapter Five, entitled "The Dream of Aztlán: Chicano Studies," describes, among other historical facts, the details of how Chicano violence at UCLA led to thousands of dollars of damage to property plus 80 arrests, followed by a Chicano hunger strike, that eventually resulted in the emergence, in 2005, of the Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, which offers degrees up to an including Ph.Ds.
Chapter Six, "Studies, Studies, Everywhere," provides details regarding the many other departments that have come into existence, including Men's Studies.
The final chapter, Chapter Seven, "Is There Hope?" describes with great eloquence Bawer's serious concerns regarding the future of the United States; however, there are, he writes, a few "glimmers of hope" that all is not yet lost.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2020The first chapter alone was worth the price of the book. It describes the collapse of what used to be called the study of the "humanities." The search for truth via the history of the great works of Western Culture have been replaced with postmodernism, the idea that there is no truth. The remaining chapters trace out the trajectory of this idea via the "victimizations," i.e black, feminist, LGBT, Chicano, etc. studies. It is a frightful look into the collapse of the humanities at the college level and the devastation that follows. Highly recommend.
Top reviews from other countries
- B C LivingstoneReviewed in the United Kingdom on December 13, 2015
5.0 out of 5 stars The Oneuppersonship of Victimhood
An illuminating account by a brave man. I knew about Black Studies and Women's Studies, I had had no idea, before I read this, that Fat Studies and Whiteness Studies even existed. Bawer draws his most bizarre examples from Disability Studies, When there's an organisation called 'Queers on Wheels', when deafness can be defined as "an aptitude not to hear", and when public breastfeeding can be "constructed in the workplace" as giving entitlement to disability status then one knows that Western higher education is in real trouble.
- A customerReviewed in Canada on June 16, 2013
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
An incisive look at the identity studies and their obsession with indoctrination, platitudes, and political programming. This book exposes and explains the utterly banal words that are such fixtures of identity studies(Colonialism, Imperialism, and Capitalism sound familiar?). This book should be read by anyone with any interest in a true liberal education and by parents who wish to know whether their children are getting the education they paid for.
Spoiler they aren't
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Dioneles Leone Santana FilhoReviewed in Brazil on March 26, 2015
1.0 out of 5 stars Ótimo!
Excelente! Recomendo a leitura. Livro que fez uma análise profunda da ideologia e manipulação nos diversos setores que circundam na esfera pública.
- BretonReviewed in the United Kingdom on May 12, 2016
4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and informative in equal doses
The book condenses a lot of information about a wide array of related identity studies. The author doesnt try to hide his contempt for post-modernism nor the variety of "studies" that were launched from it making it an entertaining read. Highly recommended if you would like some background to the insane antics currently being played out on campuses across the USA and UK.
The author has done all the heavy lifting for us with this book - Im especially glad that I can turn to this book for an insight into the dreadful texts that he describes rather than having to source and read the originals!