What could be more appropriate than an editorial in an academic journal arguing that the role of academics is to push political "decolonization" research being "AI Slop"?
Lazy, thoughtless leftists outsourcing their cookie-cutter thoughts to an inference engine that does nothing but regurgitate ideas trained into it and filled with fake references.
Taylor & Francis is investigating an article in one of its journals after the editors published an editorial about academic freedom that contains multiple fake references and citation errors.https://t.co/SIcRkvbCk4
— Retraction Watch (@RetractionWatch) September 8, 2026
Taylor & Francis is investigating an article in one of its journals after the editors published an editorial about academic freedom that contains multiple fake references and citation errors.
In May, Anastasia Christou and Steve Lambert, coeditors of Journal of Higher and Further Education (JHFE), published an opinion piece about attacks on academic freedom and social justice research. The journal’s deputy editor Rosalind Latiner Raby also coauthored the editorial.
Of 31 references in the editorial, at least nine are nonexistent articles or contain incorrect journals or inaccurate author names. The problematic references include real scholars linked to articles they didn’t write and real journal titles associated with the wrong authors. The article also has numerous citation errors in the text. Fake references can be a sign of artificial intelligence use since large language models, such as ChatGPT, are known to hallucinate references.
It's a perfect metaphor for the state of academia today: leftist politics, lazy "thinking" that amounts to formulaic repetition of shallow ideas, and inattention to reality. Let the machine churn out the nonsense and cut out the gray matter entirely.
The "point," if you can call it that, of the editorial is that the pushback against the leftist takeover of every academic discipline is an attack on academic freedom itself.
The point is ridiculous — the "decolonization" narrative has near-total dominance in academia, so demanding other viewpoints and challenges to the dominant narrative is essential to academic freedom. The Critical Theorists are actively excluding and punishing dissent, and the pushback is to create space for more discussion, not less.
But Critical Theory is all about total dominance, and the "academic freedom" argument the authors were trying to make is absurd. It's all smoke and mirrors.
Worse, though, is that the smoke and mirrors aren't even theirs. Editors of a journal dedicated to promoting higher education have proven that they are incapable of even regurgitating sloppy ideas. They are so stupid and uneducated themselves that they had to outsource the job to ChatGPT.
One of the references cites a 2025 article about self-censorship in higher education in the Journal of Higher Education by John Skrentny, a professor at the University of California, San Diego. Skrentny told us he did not write the paper attributed to him and has “never published or submitted an article to the Journal of Higher Education.”
Brendan Cantwell, a researcher at Michigan State University who studies higher education, also had a nonexistent paper about academic freedom in Higher Education Policy attributed to him.
“The cited article is not something that I wrote and is presumably ‘a fabricated citation,’” Cantwell told us.
Many Google Scholar links in the editorial return “Sorry we couldn’t find this article” pages, including links for the fake papers by Cantwell and Skrentny. Other reference links connect to articles by different authors.
The editorial also cites real articles but with incorrect authors, including the 2025 paper “Decolonising Solidarity in Higher Education: Navigating Barriers and Enablers in Advocacy with People from Displaced Backgrounds” in International Journal of Inclusive Education. While the editorial identifies “Stevenson, J., M. Asamoah, N. Bouakkaz, and E. Swanby” as authors of the article, the paper is really by Melanie Baak et al.
It's all so tiresome. Higher education consumes nearly a trillion dollars a year and "educates" millions of students. It is the gatekeeper for many industries because the credentials are necessary to get employed or get ahead, yet its professors are mostly hacks, its Overton Window lies between celebrations of "Indigenous knowledge" and Maoism, excluding all rational discourse; and its main product appears to be leftist revolutionaries.
Stacey Patton is a professor at @HowardU
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 14, 2026
She blamed Austin Metcalf’s dad for his son being stabbed to death by Karmelo Anthony
She mourned that Trump wasn’t ass*ssinated
Now she’s mocking Charlie’s ass*ssination
How is this woman still employed @HowardU?? pic.twitter.com/Ey9ySJrhPU
I suppose replacing the professoriate and the journal editors with ChatGPT version 2.0 from a couple of years ago would be a cheap solution to this growing crisis. We could get the same value out of the industry without bothering to pay the outrageous salaries.
I wouldn't mind a decolonization effort in our academic institutions, since the colonizers are people whose goal is the destruction of higher education and Western Civilization.
🚨 UPDATE 🚨
— NizNellie3 (@NizNellie3) September 13, 2026
We’re now sliding into DAY 3 of Carnegie Mellon’s Professor Uju Anya scandal, and somehow it’s getting uglier.
After catching backlash for suggesting on social media that she would dance on the graves of white men, her latest response to any American criticizing… https://t.co/5b9XvEH48I pic.twitter.com/izyNfjfXby
🚨 UPDATE 🚨
We’re now sliding into DAY 3 of Carnegie Mellon’s Professor Uju Anya scandal, and somehow it’s getting uglier.
After catching backlash for suggesting on social media that she would dance on the graves of white men, her latest response to any American criticizing her is simple:
“EAT SHIT.” 😐
As American taxpayers continue pouring $455 MILLION in federal funding into Carnegie Mellon’s coffers, here are some notable quotes from this academic luminary:
- “Die first, white man, then ask yourself why I’m dancing.”
- On the one year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s murder: “He’s a shitbag. May he rot in piss.”
- On Queen Elizabeth’s failing health: “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving and raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”
Americans work for every dollar Washington takes from them. Using those dollars to fund THIS? Absolutely indefensible.
Editor’s Note: I don’t think this genius knows what the definition of doxxing is, but that’s the least of her problems.
Of course, this isn't what they mean by decolonization, just as the Third-World migrants who are "decolonizing" the West are actually the colonizers.
Vdeo shows professor at University of Chicago, Eman Abdelhadi, Abdul El-Sayed's sister at 2025 socialist event
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) August 14, 2026
“F*ck the University of Chicago, it's evil, colonial land ... but it’s my best shot at power.”
Says she's there to "organize" people
pic.twitter.com/NI8taFXpVt
These institutions still have a lot of potential value locked up in them, but it is buried underneath a layer of sewage that has been poured over it to bury what is good.
The solution to the problem is to build up parallel institutions, poaching the best and the brightest from the current academic infrastructure, and blowing up what is left.
Think of it as similar to putting a company in Chapter 7 bankruptcy; wipe out the bad debt, slim down to what is truly valuable, and sell the assets so they can be put to better use. The institution is gone, but what is valuable is redeployed to where it can be put to good use.
Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has been infected by socialism, and it's spreading FAST. Democrats are claiming there's nothing to worry about, but we know the truth.
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