"The line isn't Left vs Right. It's 'the truth matters' versus 'the truth is what we need it to be'."[UPDATED]

 

"The line isn't Left vs Right. It's 'the truth matters' versus 'the truth is what we need it to be.' That's the epistemological line between good and evil. The Activist Left knows that's the actual line, and they've known it for a long time. ...

    "There are people who reject the dialectical approach. Then there are people broken by it. Finally, ... there are people who know exactly what they're doing and do it to deceive and conquer."

~ James Lindsay

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"In universities across the world, humanities departments have, over time, come to reject the notion that there is such a thing as objective truth.
    "This nihilistic outlook was originally promoted by a small group of academics in the mid-20th century, but is now the dominant philosophy in a range of disciplines from literary criticism to gender and cultural studies. And while the doctrine has quietly swallowed the humanities, many thought it would never infiltrate the hard sciences. If one is engineering a bridge, for example, it would be reckless to reject the objective truth of gravity. If one is studying mathematics it would be foolish to deny that 2 + 2 = 4. 

    "And, rather than being a method to discover how the world works, such theorists argue Western science has been used as a tool to subjugate others. Efforts to 'decolonise' science are therefore efforts to undo this subjugation, by bringing into the fold other 'ways of knowing' that exist outside scientific methodology. These might include local knowledge about land management, religious knowledge about cosmology, or traditional ways of healing. Writing at 'The Conversation,' academic Alex Broadbent, of the University of Johannesburg, argues: 'There is African belief, and European belief, and your belief, and mine – but none of us have the right to assert that something is true, is a fact, or works, contrary to anyone else’s belief.' ... 

    "But herein lies the irony – by indulging the de-colonial activist agenda that rejects the existence of objective truths or a hierarchy of knowledge, universities undermine the very premise on which society deems them worthy of public funding. If we accept the de-colonial notion that no form of knowledge can be deemed superior to any other, then what exactly are students paying for? What specialised skills or benefits do university graduates gain that non-graduates lack? Why should the public continue to fund these multibillion-dollar organisations if the knowledge they offer is just as valid as any other 'way of knowing'?"

~ Claire Lehman, from her column 'In maths, truth & knowledge can't be mere matters of opinion'