I must admit, I have seen a lot of crack-pot theories about Climate Change/Global Warming in the past two decades.
However, Ghassan Hage (a Lebanese-Australian academic serving as Future Generation Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory at the University of Melbourne in Australia) has hit the motherlode of social justice nuttiness.
Three Massachusetts Institute of Technology entities (Global Studies and Languages, Global Borders Research Collaboration, and Anthropology) sponsored his presentation, which answered the burning question: Is Islmabopbia Accelerating Global Warming?
This talk examines the relation between Islamophobia as the dominant form of racism today and the ecological crisis. It looks at the three common ways in which the two phenomena are seen to be linked: as an entanglement of two crises, metaphorically related with one being a source of imagery for the other and both originating in colonial forms of capitalist accumulation. The talk proposes a fourth way of linking the two: an argument that they are both emanating from a similar mode of being, or enmeshment, in the world, what is referred to as ‘generalised domestication.’
As an environmental health and safety professional, I assess that the only way Islamophobia contributed to global warming is from the hot air Hage emitted while presenting this lecture, which was given May 9.
He is currently working on a similarly titled book. To give you an example of the quality of Hage’s scholarship, here is his previous tome: White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society
White Nation appears to be about as fact-based as his new global warming theory, too.
Anthropologist and social critic Ghassan Hage explores one of the most complex and troubling of modern phenomena: the desire for a white nation. In this book, he asks whether that desire is indeed limited to racists. Drawing upon the Australian experience, Hage draws conclusions that might also be applicable in France, the United States and Great Britain, each being examples of multicultural environment under the control of white culture.Hage argues that governments have promised white citizens that they would lose nothing under multiculturalism. However, migrant settlement has changed neighbourhoods, challenged white control, created new demands for non-whites, and led to white backlash. This book suggests that white racists and white mulitculturalists may share more assumptions than either group suspects.
Interestingly, “Anthropologist” Hage started out his career in academia with a Political Science degree. The following video is an interview with the Australian professor, which should give Legal Insurrection readers a good feel for quality of the “Islamophobia” lecture.
If nothing else, the “Islamophobia” chat and White Nation should confirm that neither Political Science or Social Anthropology are real sciences.
Hage’s Twitter account shows him as the charmer you would imagine:
Any guesses as to how this “multiculturalism” expert feels about the BDS movement?
One parting thought I offer the administrators at MIT: In about three years, my son will begin applying to college. He math scores are stratospheric, and he has an interest in engineering and physics careers. This summer, we are planning to take a tour of the MIT campus while we are in Boston.
If MIT still can’t distinguish between true science and social justice inanity by then, we will have him apply to other institutions that can.
(Featured image via Twitter/Countermoonbat).
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