But that is not what got Twitter — or X, as it’s now officially known — in a tizzy today. Instead, it was Walsh’s declaration that his failure to get a tenure-track academic job is due, at least in part, to the fact that he is a White man:
When a (nonwhite, female) history professor disputed this assertion, he accused her of “punching down” on him from her position of power.
This angered absolutely everyone on Twitter, from progressives who decried Walsh as just one more mediocre White man who assumes he’s more qualified than women and people of color, to conservatives who derided Walsh as someone who brought this upon himself by supporting the rise of an unfair DEI regime. The only thing the various sides could agree on was that they all despised Walsh. A day-long battle royale ensued. Walsh issued a stumbling apology, but it’s pretty clear that he does in fact believe that he was more qualified than the people who got the jobs he applied for:
——
The Elite Overproduction Hypothesis