Do You Have The Reich Stuff To Be Creative?
The Brownshirting of Creative Education at SUNY Buffalo (Part 1)
Gatekeeping Culture
Gatekeeping is nothing new in higher education, but SUNY Buffalo’s International Center for Studies in Creativity (ICSC) has elevated this practice into a eugenic art — a final solution to the neurodiversity “problem” within society, beginning with the education system. To understand the nationalist and ableist inclinations of this department, we must start at the beginning and look to the earliest ideological seeds that gave rise to their modern hatred of individuals with disabilities. We must start with Alex Osborn’s nationalist manifesto, Applied Imagination.
Those Damn Ruskies!
As much an anti-Soviet screed as the existential ruminations of a fearful capitalist, Osborn’s creative interests were frequently grounded in the belief that world peace could only be reliably achieved on American terms. Our modern impression of a New York ad-chief-turned-fatherly-academic is the stuff of pure fiction, and the ICSC’s purposeful erasure of the discipline’s darker roots. His own words highlighted a deep interest in not only promoting a nationalist, consumerist, and distinctly American brand of creativity across the world; but one that could and should be weaponized into a Cold War tool to combat the Soviet Union.
Deep In The State
Today, we can see that the creative seeds Osborn planted back in the 1950s have taken firm root throughout America’s creative education programs. For example, ICSC professors frequently tout their private consulting work with American multinational corporations, the US State Department, Department of Defense, and Central Intelligence Agency as selling points of the program.
The CIA’s own internal creative education program pulls heavily from FourSight, a CPS model developed by ICSC Department Chair, Dr. Gerard Puccio; and in a 2014 media interview, Dr. John Cabra highlighted that ICSC’s master’s program had graduated CIA managers and officials. Peculiarly, when students responsibly inquire as to why the department maintains and promotes such connections, these questions aren’t merely obfuscated, they are ignored entirely.
Resistance is Futile
What’s this all to do with gatekeeping, you ask? Despite its promotion as a model for everyone that balances divergence and convergence, CPS is fundamentally a convergent process. And like the nationalistic institutions with which the ICSC proudly associates, the program only embraces multicultural and cross-cultural inclusion to the extent that those within their sphere of influence maintain a genteel and unquestioning loyalty.
Yosemite?
As if channeling the misogynistic nostalgia of characters like Don Draper or Will McAvoy, the ICSC sees itself as not being in the business of teaching science or honoring divergent perspectives of creativity, but as a noble and righteous force for shaping responsible and humble creative leaders. They are only looking to advance individuals who buy the bit — who are willing to accept ideological faith in the program’s pseudoscience, despite a significant and growing body of counterfactual evidence and logical refutation of key CPS theories.
Grooming Behavior
In short, the ICSC is looking for students they can successfully groom. And if the grooming doesn’t take, they will reliably seek to abandon them, expel them — or possibly subject them to a BDSM session in a seedy motel room.
Enter this neurodivergent sonofabitch…
