The Grievance Studies Scandal Isn’t Just A Problem For Academia
A group of scholars got the most outlandish hoax papers published in top academic journals. But the implications go far beyond the academy.
by John Daniel Davidson
The Federalist
October 4, 2018
Something has gone horribly wrong in academia. Last August, a trio of scholars began writing hoax academic papers and submitting them to peer-reviewed journals that specialize in what the scholars call “grievance studies”—identity politics thinly disguised as scholarship. Instead of being laughed off, a surprising number of these scholarly lampoons were actually published over the past year by some of the leading feminist and gender studies journals.
One journal published a paper that includes a chapter from Adolph Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” rewritten in the language of intersectionality theory. Another journal, specializing in “feminist geography,” published a paper online in May about how dog parks are “petri dishes for canine ‘rape culture.’” The pseudonymous author issued “a call for awareness into the different ways dogs are treated on th…