Critiques of Ideology

[i] (English-Speaking Union, 2017) Free speech in universities is in serious danger of being infringed upon in universities across the Western world. This trend is becoming ever more obvious with speakers at universities having to cancel their events because opposition to their ideas and topics by students and other interest groups [ii] (Nolan, 2017). This has been a dogmatic issue in the United States (US) for some time [iii] (Lukianoff, 2016), but this censorship exercise has begun to spread to the United Kingdom (UK), and now to Ireland. In recent years, impediments to free speech in UK universities have grown to a head with events such as sombreros being banned from campuses, abortion debates being cancelled, and the statue of Cecil Rhodes being removed from Oxford University because of his links to the apartheid regime in South Africa [iv] (Espinoza, 2017). Such actions shield students from the realities of real life and universities are doing their patrons ...

Is it a good idea for a law to compel an individual to call a person a specified pronoun at that person’s request? Is it fair that a person could be criminally convicted on account that they refuse to refer to a person as he, she, him, her, or a myriad of other pronouns? These are just some of the questions which the Canadian parliament have had to ask themselves when the much-publicised Bill C-16 was voted into law earlier this year [i] (Openparliament.ca, 2017). See the picture below which lists some of the pronouns that people will be required by the law to use [ii] (Williamson, 2017): Not included in this list is the pronoun entitled, otherkin. This being defined as “People who identify as other than human” [iii] (University of Cambridge, 2016). As a token of common courteousness, I would always refer to a person using the pronoun of their choice. However, to compel a person with the full weight of the law to do so is another matter entirely. In my opinion this is ...

We are currently in a global phenomenon of guilt by class. This is manifesting itself in many forms, but most prominent is the ideology stating that all white people are racist. This way of thinking is common among white people as well, which can be seen through a statement such as: “For the record, I’m white…. It comes down to this: in western society we are all taught (explicitly or implicitly) that lighter is better” [i] (Craig, 2017). In my opinion, this kind of statement is harmful and can only fuel increased racial tensions between people of different races. This is because it insinuates that one of the main building blocks of Western society is the ethnic supremacy of its white inhabitants over all other groups of contrasting ethnicities. Therefore, the more mainstream that this type of view becomes, it will lead to a demonising view of white people from those of different ethnicities. Examples of this are already apparent, with the president of an equality group at Cam...

Since 1998 the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a test measuring “the strength of associations between concepts (e.g., black people, gay people) and evaluations (e.g., good, bad) or stereotypes (e.g., athletic, clumsy) [i] (Implicit.harvard.edu, 2017) has been used to determine an individual’s so-called biases towards certain social groups [ii] (The Guardian, 2009). However, it is folly to draw the conclusion that a test whose results rely on the reaction time of participants to associate words with people of certain social groups [iii] (Tierney, 2008) can accurately predict their unconscious biases. In fact, it has been proven that the result of an individual can change each time they take the test. In other words, the test has low retest reliability [iv] (Singal, 2017). Even an advocate for the test stated that “If a bathroom scale says you weigh 210 pounds today and 160 tomorrow, you might feel skeptical about the scale” [v] (Nordell, 2017). Indeed, the evidence sugg...

During my first semester of university, I attended a module entitled ‘Critical Thinking for Professionals’. The main critique of this module was to never take anything at face value and to always analyse a situation or topic before arriving at a conclusion. However, students face an up-hill task to perform this kind of analysis in third level education institutions. Generally, only one type of political ideology is presented to them by lecturers. This being a left-wing perspective. According to a Times Higher Education (THE) survey, under 12% of higher education staff in the UK planned to vote for a right-wing or conservative party in the 2015 general election [i] (Morgan, 2015). While this would not be of concern if there was a corresponding consensus in the general public, the fact is, over 50% voted for a right-wing party or candidate. The statistics become increasingly alarming when it is seen that third level faculty of a conservative disposition in the humanities and art...