• The Victims' Revolution is the latest in a series of trenchant bestsellers that analyzes the influence of politics on academia, following The Closing of the American Mind, Tenured Radicals, Illiberal Education, Dictatorship of Virtue and The Shadow University.

• The author’s previous book, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within, was a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Stealing Jesus was a New York Times Notable Book and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly.
 
 

The 1960s and 1970s were a time of revolution in America’s universities as a new generation of scholars rejected traditional humanism in favor of a radical ideology that denied esthetic merit and objective truth. This new philosophy insisted that our thoughts about human behavior, our statements about the nature of man, and all ideas were nothing more or less than assertions of power. Traditional values of truth, goodness, and beauty were disparaged as weapons in an ongoing struggle of the powerful against the powerless.

Once, the purpose of higher education was to introduce students to the glories of Western civilization. But this new generation of educators sought instead to unmask the West as the perpetrator of global injustice via colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. Shifting focus to the victims of Western oppression, their new curricula gave rise to a series of identity-based studies programs, including Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Gay Studies, and Chicano Studies. As a result, the serious and objective study of human civilization and culture has been replaced by “theoretical” approaches emphasizing group identity, victimhood, and lockstep progressive politics.

What has been the result of this transformation?  What have the advocates of this ideology accomplished? In The VIctims' Revolution, Bruce Bawer explores how these disciplines came into being, critically examines their major proponents and texts, and concludes that their influence has impoverished our thought, confused our politics, and filled the minds of their students with politically correct mush.