Rhode Island Professor Denounces Science, Statistics, and Technology As “Inherently Racist”

We have previously discussed the radical declarations of University of Rhode Island and Director of Graduate Studies Erik Loomis who has defended the murder of a conservative protester and said that he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence. (A view defended by other academics). Loomis is now back in the news with a declaration that “Science, statistics, and technology are all inherently racist because they are developed by racists who live in a racist society, whether they identify as racists or not.” It is a curious position from the person who heads graduate studies at the University of Rhode Island.

For many, science and statistics are fields that are inherently objective not racist. While racism can certainly impact any field in a myriad of ways, these fields are based on proven experiments and calculations. One can support scrutiny of our programs to root out racism without dismissing all fields as “inherently racist.” Yet, this view of math and science is being voiced by others, including those who denounce math as a “tool of whiteness.”

Loomis’ statement came as part of a tweet in reference to a New York Times article and added “This is why I have so much contempt for those, including many liberals, who ‘just want the data.’ The data is racist!”

I have defended the right of Loomis to make his past comments as a matter of free speech. While Loomis has shown nothing by intolerance for opposing views, he has every right to express disturbing, extremist views.

On this occasion, he is making a statement that would appear to undermine the basis for graduate studies at his school and other schools. While I still view the statements as protected, they would appear to undermine faith in the basis of much of the work of his colleagues. The tweet prompted University of Rhode Island Assistant Director of Communications Dave Lavallee to issue a statement:

“Mr. Loomis’ recent social media posts on science, statistics and technology are entirely his own opinions, and in no way represent the positions or values of the University of Rhode Island..His recent tweet runs completely counter to URI’s first Cornerstone Value, which says, ‘We pursue knowledge with honesty, integrity and courage.

In making such remarks, Mr.Loomis calls into question the work of thousands of researchers and scientists across the country and particularly the outstanding work done by our talented and diverse researchers at URI. While Mr. Loomis has a First Amendment right to make such comments as a private citizen, he does not have the right to make such unsubstantiated claims in the context of his university position or role.”

From my perspective, the most important aspect of that statement is the acknowledgment that Loomis has First Amendment protections in uttering such viewpoints. The question for the university is whether those viewpoints undermine his role in leading all graduate studies, particularly in dismissing the very basis for much of that work as racist. Loomis claims that “all” science, statistics, and technology is racist. Period. It is a patently absurd statement that is devoid of any intellectual foundation or inquiry. It will certainly appeal to many who relish extremist and rejectionist views, including some in academia. However, it is the very antithesis of our intellectual mission as scholars and it does a great disservice to the many respected academics at the University of Rhode Island.

Nevertheless, Loomis wrote a column entitled “When Fascists Attack” for the site Lawyers, Guns, and Money. Loomis is listed as as one of a handful of “members” who contribute to the site. (For the record, that is the same site that ran a column by a Colorado law professor who claimed that raising questions about the 2020 was akin to Holocaust denial. That attack occurred a few days after the election when I noted that there were irregularities in the election, including an error in reporting the results from a district using Dominion software. I noted that the error involving a few thousand votes that was quickly corrected, did not indicate any widespread fraud, and would not affect the outcome of the election. It merely raised the question of whether such systems were still vulnerable to “human error.” The site denounced that statement was akin to denying that the Holocaust ever occurred.)

In his column, Loomis blasts the university by writing: “I guess this is how my administration responds to the need for anti-racism in American life and on campus, by openly throwing professors who talk about racism and technology under the fascist bus. Great job URI.” It appears that now Rhode Island, in Professor Loomis’ view, is opposing anti-racism efforts and supporting fascists by rejecting his view of science, statistics, and technology.

Loomis insists that his rejection of all science, statistics, and technology as racist was

“utterly uncontroversial point that when facial recognition technology is throwing innocent Black people in prison, it reflects much larger problems of how racism influences our technology and science in an inherently racist society. … This is…utterly uncontroversial? Or it should be anyway. We see this over and over and over again, from how the medical profession ignores pain in Black patients no matter their social status, how Black people are wary of the vaccine because of traditionally poor treatment by the scientific community, how all sorts of forms of technology end up exacerbating discrimination, etc.”

What is striking about this response is that it is divorced from his actual statement. It is raising insular issues like facial recognition that have been discussed by others without rejecting the entirety of science or statistics. Indeed, I just published a long study that addressed that issue and its underlying causes as part of a comprehensive look at biometrics and privacy. See Jonathan Turley, Anonymity, Obscurity, and Technology: Reconsidering Privacy in the Age of Biometrics, 100 Boston University Law Review 2179 -2261 (2020).

Loomis’ reference a couple of specific areas where racism is a well-documented problem and many of us have sought to suggest ways to address racial injustice. It is not a defense of Loomis’ categorical rejection of all science, statistics, and technology. That view is not “uncontroversial,” it is unhinged and irrational.

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/01/24/rhode-island-professor-denounces-science-statistics-and-technology-as-inherently-racist/

The pandemic is speeding up the mass disappearance of men from college

When he and his male classmates talk about going to college, said Debrin Adon, it always comes down to one thing.

“We’re more focused on money,” said Adon, 17, a senior at a public high school here. “Like, getting that paycheck, you know?” Whereas, “if I go to college, I’ve got to pay this much and take on all this debt.”

That’s among the many reasons the number of men who go to college has for years been badly trailing the number of women who go. And the Covid-19 pandemic has abruptly thrown the ratio even more off balance.

While enrollment in higher education overall fell 2.5 percent in the fall, or by more than 461,000 students compared to the fall of 2019, the decline among men was more than seven times as steep as the decline among women, according to an analysis of figures from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

“In a sense, we have lost a generation of men to Covid-19,” said Adrian Huerta, an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California who studies college-going among boys and men.

“It’s a national crisis,” said Luis Ponjuan, an associate professor of higher education administration at Texas A&M University.

Adon, who attends the University Park Campus School, plans to buck the odds and go to college. He said he decided this after he realized that his parents, who immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic, want a better life for him. His mother is unemployed now, and his father runs a barbershop.

“It wasn’t dramatic,” he said of the moment he made up his mind to pursue a degree in computer science; he described it while standing outside on the asphalt that surrounds the 135-year-old redbrick school, which switched to entirely virtual instruction because of the pandemic. “You know when you’re in the shower and you just think about life?”

That kind of epiphany has eluded many other young men.

Women now comprise nearly 60 percent of enrollment in universities and colleges and men just over 40 percent, the research center reports. Fifty years ago, the gender proportions were reversed.

“We were already not doing so hot,” Ponjuan said. “This pandemic exacerbates what’s happening.”

It’s also opened jobs for young men from Worcester high schools at grocery stores and at Amazon, FedEx and other delivery companies, said Lynnel Reed, head guidance counselor at University Park, nearly two-thirds of whose students are considered economically disadvantaged. The school is in a neighborhood of fast-food restaurants, liquor stores, used-car lots, dollar stores and triple-deckers — homes usually shared by three families, one on each level, that are a staple of urban New England.

“How do you go away to college and leave your family struggling when you know that if you just worked right now, you could help them right now with those everyday needs?” Reed said.

That’s a bigger pull for young men than for young women, said Derrick Brooms, a sociologist at the University of Cincinnati.

“It aligns with this perception that to be a man is to be self-sufficient,” Brooms said. “It’s a little bit different for girls. We’re teaching them about investing for even greater payoffs down the line.”

This has only been exacerbated by Covid-19.

“It makes more sense right now just to say, ‘I’m going to take a break because my family needs this money,’ ” said Huerta. And even if young men resolve to go to college later, he said, history shows that “their chances of actually coming back to higher ed are probably slim to none.”

While the number of students overall fell by more than 461,000 compared to the fall of 2019, the decline among men was more than seven times as steep as the decline among women.

Despite the allure of a paycheck versus going into debt and spending years pursuing a degree, the reality is that “a lot of these young men at 17 or 18 years old end up working 12-hour shifts, getting married, buy a truck, get a mortgage, and by the time they’re 30, their bodies are broken,” Ponjuan said. “And now they have a mortgage, three kids to feed and that truck, and no idea what to do next.”

Stopping education after high school not only limits men’s options; it threatens to further widen socioeconomic and political divides, Brooms said.

Not everyone has to go to college. Faster and less costly career and technical education can lead to in-demand, well-paying jobs in skilled trades, automation and other fields.

Graduates with bachelor’s degrees still generally make more than people with lesser credentials, however. And the pandemic has shown that people without degrees are more vulnerable to economic downturns. Unemployment for them, nationwide, rose more than twice as fast in the spring as unemployment for people with bachelor’s degrees, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found.

“We have a lot of young men who are completely disengaged from our society because quite frankly they don’t feel they’re being valued as men.”

Meanwhile, the shootings of Black civilians by police and the resulting outrage has left some young Black and Hispanic men who are still in high school “disenfranchised almost to the point where they’re feeling like they’re invisible, that the community doesn’t value who they are, at the very time that they’re developing their own identities,” Ponjuan said.

That too, has an immediate impact on their motivation to get further educations, he and others said.

“We have a lot of young men who are completely disengaged from our society because quite frankly they don’t feel they’re being valued as men. So they think, why even try when everybody sees me as a thug, as a delinquent, when everyone assumes the worst of me instead of assuming the best of me?”

Pedro Hidalgo, another senior at University Park, said he “never had that belief within myself” that he could go to college. Then “teachers in middle school actually helped me realize that I’m more than what I seem to think that I am at times. They just helped me progressively become more confident with my abilities, not even as just a student, but as a person.”

Now Hidalgo, 18, whose older brother started but never finished college, plans to pursue a degree in psychology and become a clinical therapist.

He said he made that decision after taking dual-enrollment courses offered by his high school in collaboration with neighboring Clark University.

When they take those college-level classes, “They’re like, ‘All right, you know what? Wait, I can do this,’ ” said Kellie Becker, head guidance counselor at nearby North High School. “It eases their transition to college and builds their confidence.”

It was the dual-enrollment program that clicked with Abdulkadir Abdullahi, 18, a student at North.

“I didn’t think I was going to college. I didn’t think it could be useful to me in the real world,” said Abdullahi, son of a single father who’s a postal carrier. “I would rather hang out with my friends and, like, slack.”

Then an older sister went to college and Abdullahi took a dual-enrollment course.

“I was, like, ‘Oh, I could really do this,’ ” he said. Until then, “I always thought college was going to be, like, writing 20-page essays every other week, staying up overnight.”

Now he plans to get a degree in sociology.

Some of their male classmates still have qualms, said Adon, Abdullahi and Hidalgo.

“They don’t think they’re smart enough,” Adon said. “They don’t think they can do it. They doubt themselves a little bit because of their life and what they’ve been through and what they’ve been seen as.”

In those dual-enrollment classes, Hidalgo, said, there are more girls than boys. “It’s intimidating because, you know, you don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

Young men seem to have shorter attention spans, Abdullahi said. “There’s more distractions for guys. The guy is always the class clown. I think they just lose their motivation.”

There’s research to back that up. Boys are more likely than girls as early as elementary school to be held back, a Brown University researcher found. They are almost 9 percentage points less likely to graduate from high school, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

“Boys realize that teachers and counselors aren’t invested in them in the same way that they’re invested in girls,” said Huerta. “Teachers and counselors are more concerned with ensuring the boys are doing the basics — behaving in class — versus ensuring that they’re college-ready.”

So long has this been going on that enrollment at Worcester State University, across town from the University Park Campus School, is now more than 60 percent women.

Women now comprise nearly 60 percent of enrollment at universities and colleges, and men around 40 percent. Fifty years ago, the proportions were reversed.

In addition to all the other issues caused by the mass disappearance of men from college, it’s a big problem for universities and colleges struggling to fill seats, said Ryan Forsyth, Worcester State’s vice president for enrollment management.

He, too, sees the pandemic as encouraging more young male high school seniors to jump straight into the workforce, “rather than seeing the value of going into a college for a two- or four-year degree to really invest in themselves,” Forsyth said on the cold and nearly empty campus.

That seems unlikely to change soon, Ponjuan said.

“This pandemic only highlights the unspoken truth that it is creating short-term solutions for these young men but not long-term opportunities,” he said. “Long term, they’re going to top out. They’re not going to be able to advance. It has created a false sense of security that they’ll get by just delivering packages.”

https://hechingerreport.org/the-pandemic-is-speeding-up-the-mass-disappearance-of-men-from-college/

Australia: Postgraduate enrolments soar as jobseekers wait out competitive market at university

Australians are enrolling in postgraduate university courses in numbers tipped to reach record highs.

Max Kaplan hadn't had any luck landing a job after completing his engineering degree at the University of New South Wales.

Throughout 2020, he applied for several jobs a week, but to no avail.

"It was a little bit crushing at times when I was facing rejection after rejection," Mr Kaplan said. "You go through five years of uni, a year of work, and still can't find anything … it feels like you've wasted your time."

Despite graduating with honours from a university placed third in the nation for employment, he is now preparing to study a masters of mechatronic engineering at the University of Melbourne.

He believed further specialisation was the best way to spend the next two years while the job market bounces back. "I'm trying to wait out the bad job market and hopefully find myself in a bit of a better place," he said.

Postgraduate courses, on average, cost more than $20,000. "It's a risk I'm willing to take," Mr Kaplan said.

Last year, enrolments in postgraduate study rose sharply across the country.

The universities with the highest growth in enrolments for specialised courses included:

University of New South Wales — 26 per cent
James Cook University — 20 per cent
University of Queensland — 19 per cent
Charles Sturt University — 18 per cent
University of Melbourne — 13 per cent
Curtin University — 10 per cent

Professor Andrew Norton researches higher education policy at the Australian National University and said enrolments historically rose when the economy suffered. "In recessions more people look for education because it's harder to find a job," Mr Norton said.

The official unemployment rate has fallen by 0.9 per cent since its 7.5 per cent peak in July 2020. More than 900,000 Australians remain out of work.

Mr Norton expected university enrolments to hit record highs in 2021. "People with postgraduate qualifications generally do better than those with bachelor degrees, regardless of their subject areas," he said.

In northern NSW, Elizabeth Rose has returned to university to upskill after taking a three-year break from working as a counsellor. The 60-year-old has enrolled in a Graduate Diploma of Psychology at James Cook University in Queensland.

The university is forecasting a 24 per cent increase in both undergraduate and postgraduate enrolments this year.

"I just want to do something … I need to get my brain into gear and investigate more issues," Ms Rose said.

She saw an opportunity to boost her income and fill a gap in mental health support in the regional town of Grafton - a need she said had been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

"There aren't that many psychologists in town, and people are waiting sometimes four and five months to get in," she said.

She said age was not a barrier to achieving her career goals.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-25/postgraduate-enrolments-spike-during-pandemic/13057628

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My other blogs: Main ones below

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