We have previously discussed how many professors seem to compete in finding new forms of racism in every facet of society and education. Astrophysics, math, runoffs, science, statistics, and meritocracy have all been denounced as racist. In this academic cottage industry, professors secure publications and speaking opportunities by identifying racism in the expressions, images, or entire fields. It was, therefore, only a matter of time before time itself was declared racist.
Zakia Essanhaji, a professor of “organizational ethnography” at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, is the latest to make the case against “white time.” Her recent paper titled “Academic time theft: stealing time, producing racialized inclusion in Dutch academia” builds on prior work condemning time as racist.
Rutgers Women’s and Gender Studies/Africana Studies Professor Brittney Cooper has also written about how time is racist. Mainstream media has positively cooed at the suggestion, including an interview with NPR. Cooper claimed that “white people own time” after framing the concept of time in “histories of European and Western thought.”
There is also apparently black time: “Time has a history, and so do black people. But we treat time as though it is timeless, as though it has always been this way, as though it doesn’t have a political history bound up with the plunder of indigenous lands, the genocide of indigenous people and the stealing of Africans from their homeland.”
Likewise, in “The Chronopolitics of Racial Time,” Jamaican academic Charles W. Mills described the “Euro-chronometer” as a Western-centric, linear timeline.
These works are often heavily laden with jargonistic narratives. In one study from Brazil, academics argue that “thinking of time outside and against the Euro-chronometer requires decolonial epistemologies that have the potential to disrupt racist chronologies.”
Professor Essanhaji continues this scholarship by “drawing on critical race theory and decolonial scholarship on chronopolitics and white time.” She applies with earlier work “to academic time theft to theorize how universities extract, fragment and defer the time of academics of colour through racialized institutional processes.”
“White time is not simply the time of the privileged, but the power to define temporality and progress itself. It is the colonization of time, known as the system of modernity/coloniality. As Vazquez […] argues, this system is maintained by erasing cyclical or relational understandings of time, ensuring that time is perceived as racing towards unattainable, more modern futures. In that sense, white time is both prescriptive and pre-emptive, foreclosing alternative futures and experiences of the past by delegitimizing other temporalities.”
Academics have long argued that non-white histories and figures are often “erased’ in scholarship. Such arguments have led to a move away from Western works or classics in favor of non-Western sources in higher education. However, the time scholarship suggests that the very construct of time has been shaped and furthers white domination and privilege.
In Professor Essanhaji’s work, this scholarship is used to challenge the demands placed on minority academics in publishing and other measures of academic achievement. Again, the work is heavily layered with jargonistic language. Here are her findings:
“The analysis identifies three mechanisms of academic time theft. First, prolonged uncertainty operates through racialized precariousness that keeps academics of colour in a condition of academic probation through insecure contracts and housing precarity. Second, ongoing disruption emerges through everyday racism that fragments attention, diverts emotional and intellectual labour, and interrupts academic continuity. Third, recursive evaluation operates through the continual resetting of inclusion and promotion criteria, producing perpetual states of “not yet” recognition and deferred academic futures. Together, these mechanisms sustain racialized temporal regimes in which academics of colour are positioned as perpetually “almost there” while white institutional time remains uninterrupted.”
These authors largely cite each other with little attention to countervailing viewpoints. It becomes a closed, self-perpetuating system as academics invite one another to speak at their universities and feed off one another. Few academics are willing to challenge such scholarship. Indeed, as we have discussed, departments have largely purged their ranks of conservative or contrarian voices.
As shown in this latest scholarship, the work in this area jettisons such “colonial” or “white” forms of analysis in favor of storytelling:
“I depart from a critical race perspective, employing counter-storytelling to construct (counter)narratives grounded in the lived experiences of people of colour. This method recognizes the connections between the historical impacts of colonialism and contemporary exclusions within organizations. By highlighting the experiences of people of colour navigating the university’s racism, I seek to provide rich accounts that reflect on how time is racialized and experienced in Dutch universities.”
There is a faux statistical framing based on “data” that is largely the subjective descriptions of minority academics:
“Initial open coding focused on participants’ descriptions of inequality across social, material and affective dimensions, including social, material and affective inequalities. While time was not predefined as an analytical category, it emerged inductively through participants’ recurring temporal framings of inequality.”
When one tries to drill down on the “data,” it appears entirely anecdotal and subjective, often turning on one or a handful of “narratives.” These stories are used to claim that academic measurements of success, driven by “white time,” are unfair to minority faculty: “these mechanisms position academics of colour perpetually as ‘almost there’ while their academic futures remain deferred.”
The thrust is that minority faculty should not be subject to traditional or accepted pathways for tenure or promotion:
“Academic time theft is not an incidental by-product of exclusion but a structural mechanism through which universities sustain white institutional time. It works by continuously delaying, interrupting and recalibrating what counts as academic legitimacy, ensuring that the labour of academics of colour remains productive for the institution while their progression is indefinitely postponed.
…To ensure that people of colour have academic futures, researchers and policymakers must break with the white temporality of academic work within which progress for some is enabled and for others is ongoingly deferred.”
Academia has already embraced narrative-driven scholarship in many departments as an alternative to traditional academic analysis. The Critical Legal Studies movement, for example, has challenged conventional scholarship as too restrictive and exclusionary. Few academics today dare to challenge such scholarship on the merits. To do so is to risk being labeled as reactionary or, even worse, racist.
This latest scholarship further challenges the time and structure for advancement for minority faculty as inherently racist. The question is whether the appointments and promotion process is at risk of losing objective and consistent measurements of scholarship.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Only academia writes in such turgid lingo and complex sentence structure that is barely understandable, and I am being charitable about it being comprehensible. In the legal profession, we are taught to write succinctly and clearly. As a young lawyer, I would ask someone (not a lawyer and not necessarily highly educated) to read my appellate brief and tell me what my argument was. If the person could, I knew that I had written a good, clear, understandable brief.
Is the grammar perfect? Believe it or not scientists must use perfect grammar and readers must know perfect grammar to read it. Why? It must be completely understandable.
The grammar in 2A is very clear as an example.
Okay, I’ll bite.
If time is racist, the professor is free to deposit his/her cellphone and computer in the nearest garbage can, along with the watch, any class table or public transportation schedule. Hopefully the professor rides a bicycle to and from work, since automobile combustion engines run on timing. Public transportation is out the window, too. Be interesting to see how she or he manages classes since university rooms have occupancy schedules and the classes are scheduled according to the days of the week. Assignment can be shifted to be due seven sleeps from today or maybe just turned in whenever the student finishes it, if they finish it at all. Also be interesting to see whether or not a paycheck arrives (rather than a scheduled pay day) and what the amount of the check is (based on hours on classroom/office work). Having had to wait around for meeting participants to make quorum in the past, that kind of society i not something I would choose to participate in, but then again, I’m white.
“If time is racist, the professor is free to . . .”
True story:
An academic gave a lecture on the illusionary nature of time. At the end, he looked at his watch and announced: “Oh. I have to go or I’ll miss my train.”
You can always spot an academic con artist. He never acts on his alleged convictions.
The leftists are completely nuts, insane, coo-coo!! Lock them all up for some type of therapy that can bring them back in touch with reality. They’re a danger not only to themselves but to all of society!
Hey sue, your just ripped open your ignorant female mouth; without formulating a counter argument.
Zakia Essenhaji is wholly educated in whiteness world. Her photo shows in a cringeworthy hijab. They wearing that for just one day an white people will develop neck cramps.
I like sociology. She’s chosen to study the white Caucasians. I haven’t any objections to that study in situ except the information gathered can be used by manipulators as is being done. She’s a spy but then I’m a bigot.
White “time” is the marking of major events over a period of change. There isn’t a reason to impose diversity, at least not a good reason. If there’s any current information produced in the middle east true scholars will share it.
Whiteness reveals her scholarship.
In my very jaded opinion.
“Rutgers Women’s and Gender Studies/Africana Studies Professor Brittney Cooper”…..This fool, and the genuflecting cowards that allow her to exist in academia, is Exhibit A of the radical left becoming entrenched like ticks, in colleges and universities. What an absolute waste of money getting a ‘degree’ in ‘Women’s and Gender Studies/Africana Studies’. All you will be taught is to hate white people, and ignore the all too obvious problems with black culture….their problems are not their fault…..it’s whitey that’s too blame. And rest assured this idiot Cooper considers herself the intelligentsia, and smarter than everyone else.
It lacks scholarship. It’s more psychological than sociological.
The First Amendment is not the end-all be-all of free expression.
Zakia Essanjahi’s prose is the academic version of Kamala Harris’ word salads.
The stupidity of the these people is beyond words. I suggest that since they hate western civilization so much they move to a paradise like South Sudan or the DRC.
Sadly, an ongoing slip into the horrors of French Revolution thinking. Mon dieu!
But it is attacked as if it should not exist. Would you prefer that it not exist at all?
“These authors largely cite each other with little attention to countervailing viewpoints. It becomes a closed, self-perpetuating system as academics invite one another to speak at their universities and feed off one another.”
2026-2027 curricular offerings:
Silo Thinking 101.
Non-Critical Thinking 201.
Profitable Storytelling 301.
How to Win Tenure and Influence Your Colleagues 401.
Genetic Lateness 501.
Successful Research Using Selective Research 601.
Genetic Manipulation to Overcome Rabbit vs. Turtle DNA 701.
Gauging Success by Victim Audience Enrollment 801.
Back to the Future, 2026.
Blazing Saddles: from Academy Award to Academic Reality
Practicum: Transformational Healing Using Critical Race Theory to Beat Your Colleagues
Very creative 😂
Adios
Holy Batman. That woman is retarded
Nonsense on display! These academics have apparently missed their daily meds.
Would it kill you to be fair and hear her out?
For people who supposedly believe in free speech, you’re not very Voltarian.
Believing in free speech also means believing in the right to disagree and call out nonsense whenever such nonsense is articulated.
“Would it kill you to be fair and hear her out?”
For how long?
Re:”Would it kill you to be fair and hear her out?” She’s already been heard out. We know what to expect. This is the lot which protested the FISA match being held in Seattle during their Gay Pride celebration. The Egyptians and Iranians demanded that the Pride flags be removed from the stadium They found it offensive and disrespectful of their belief system. The hubris of that culture and faith. My personal issues with ‘Gay Daze’ set aside, I’d march in protest with the “Alphabet People’ in support of their rights if FISA acceded to those ‘Sand People’. They come to our shores and demand that we accommodate to them. A French restauranteur here told me that when his daughter walks the streets of Paris she must wear long dresses. Well not here!! Take your hijab and go back to the Levant. Your dreams of world domination are going to come up against some serious s@#t!
Should she be imprisoned for arguing such a thing?
That’s what insane asylums used to be for. This is literally insane.
The Dutch have a storied history of clock making. Christiaan Huygens, for example, invented the pendulum clock.
How far they have fallen.
Why do free speech advocates have an issue with the content of someone’s speech?
It seems that those who want censorship in Europe are in the United States.
I looked at the 1st Amendment again. Nope. Nothing about it being an infringement to criticize speech. But the left wants to ban speech it doesn’t like. Europe has already done so. In the USA we value the hurly burly of the marketplace of ideas. And have the right to criticize and evaluate speech.
“Why do free speech advocates have an issue . . .”
Why do you have an issue with the content of the commenters’ speech?
Your turn.
An earlier comment pointed to Albert Einstein. What’s the level of optimism that our understanding of Space Time is advanced by application of White Time? And while we’re on it, is Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson a victim of White Time? Or is he surfing on it with the rest of our best and brightest?
Perhaps you can mansplain to her, there is only ONE RACE, the HUMAN RACE. Labeling people by nationality or melanin content in their skin, is definitely man made. With 6+ billion human inhabitants, no 2 are exactly alike, twins are very similar. She seems to want #DEI, on a global scale, and to instantly become equal to everyone else. “People that see perfection, when they look in the mirror, should wipe off the fog!”
An earlier comment pointed to Albert Einstein. What’s the level of optimism that our understanding of Space Time is advanced by application of White Time? And while we’re on it, is Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson a victim of White Time? Or is he surfing on it with the rest of our best and brightest?