I remember how it was -- JR
Combatting Woke tyranny: can science be saved?
Joseph Forgas
The takeover of universities and scientific associations by radical Woke activists seeking to impose an ideological strait jacket on academia has now reached alarming proportions. Compelled speech, compulsory DEI declarations, de-platforming, and worst of all, the hounding and cancellation of anyone accused of departing from politically correct dogmas, have become hallmarks of coercion in academia.
The totalitarian objectives of Woke activism are directly traceable to Marxist-Leninist conflict ideologies, something I was forced to study for several years in my youth while living in a communist society. Strangely, the Woke academic revolution is not a movement by the dispossessed, but rather, is driven by secure upper middle-class activists who infiltrated powerful institutions, straining to outdo each other in vacuous moral posturing and virtue signalling.
The dispassionate pursuit of truth and free speech cannot coexist with such blind ideological activism in our universities and scientific associations. Much damage has already been done by the creeping take-over by zealots of our institutions. This happened while the silent majority remained silent and did nothing to prevent the destruction of some of our most important universities, research institutions, and scholarly associations.
A case in point now worth revisiting is the major recent scandal in psychological science when the executive of the Association of Psychological Science (APS) summarily terminated Prof. Klaus Fiedler, the Senior Editor of their flagship journal, Advances in Psychological Science. Fiedler was accused of racism by racial scholar Steven Othello Roberts [who is black], who was offended by critical reviews by four distinguished scientists (Hommel, Stanovich, Stroebe, Jussim) of his paper on Racial Inequality in Psychological Research. The Spectator Australia also covered this disgraceful incident at the time.
Rather than responding rationally to critical comments, as academic authors must do when getting negative feedback, Roberts published a denunciation of Fiedler and his critics, insinuating that as they were, to quote: ‘All senior White men.’ This illustrates his point that ‘…systemic racism exists in science. There is a racialised power structure that marginalises research by (and about) people of colour.’
Within days, an internet lynch mob was formed demanding Fiedler’s dismissal, while Fiedler was given limited opportunity to present his case. To its indelible shame, the Association of Psychological Science obliged.
Following the time-honored pattern of Woke activism and attendant moral outrage, the Woke warriors specifically demanded that APS should ‘empower and fund your Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee to … address racism’, to ‘conduct remedial training for all editors on … anti-racism’, and ‘give Dr. Roberts the option to have his outstanding and important commentary published in PoPS, with the four other articles in question available only as supplementary online material … and grant him any additional reparative action he might deem necessary’.
This is a complete mockery of how science, and refereed publications in particular, are supposed to work. Woke activists now define what truth is and decide what should or should not be published. Freedom of speech, evidence, and rational discourse are summarily dispensed with, and political pressure is exerted to exact revenge on those declared as ideological enemies. And our scientific associations go along with this.
These are the same Orwellian strategies that oppressive tyrannical regimes have employed throughout history. The carefully constructed institutional edifice of universities and scientific associations exist precisely to resist ideological tyranny – but these institutions have largely failed us in recent years. It could be argued that the only racially-charged rhetoric in this sorry saga came from Dr. Roberts, who did not argue his case in the journal as invited by Fiedler, and resorted instead to publicly accusing Fiedler and his critics.
However, there are some incipient signs that a kind of resistance to Woke tyranny in science may be slowly forming. Recently, over 130 psychological scientists sent a strong letter of protest to APS demanding that the Association revisits Fiedler’s termination. The letter was signed by such influential academics as Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, Robin Dunbar, and Roy Baumeister, among others. Perhaps this rare reaction is due to Fiedler’s widely recognised qualities as an eminent scholar with a highly respected editorial track record for several major journals, also explicitly acknowledged by APS at the time of his appointment.
Once criticisms of the APS decision surfaced, and five out of six associate editors as well as numerous academics resigned in protest from the Association, APS then disingenuously claimed that Roberts’ allegations of racism had nothing at all to do with Fiedler’s termination. This lame explanation lacks credibility.
APS can now be fairly accused of compromising the values of scientific integrity and transparency they are obliged to represent. Their claim that Roberts’ incendiary allusion to racism had nothing at all to do with Fiedler’s termination is unlikely. As Fiedler argues, ‘The APS action was prompted by widespread disquiet about ‘racism’, not editorial practices. A disquiet was triggered by a misconceived and unfounded accusation, as the unreported evidence shows’.
Claims by disgruntled authors against editors would never succeed if it was not for the Woke mob baying for retribution. The spineless activism of APS, the wanton destruction of the career and reputation of a decent and highly respected scientist, and the feeble and dishonest protestations amount to a complete betrayal of APS’ mission that has brought shame and disrepute on the field.
The real issue is that in addition to many university administrations, independent scientific associations like APS have been taken over by ideologues, for whom social activism is more important than defending truth and scientific integrity.
APS is not alone in betraying their foundational values. Numerous scientific associations and conference organisers now impose an absurd requirement that scientific papers must be prefaced by regurgitated statements about how the work promotes diversity, equity, and inclusiveness, a policy reminiscent of the well-honed coercive ideological practices of totalitarian regimes.
Just such Woke activism is also ripe in the STEM disciplines like physics and chemistry, as documented at a recent meeting on free speech and academic freedom at Stanford University.
As the Economist recently noted, many academic job advertisements mandate elaborate statements about an applicant’s commitment to DEI principles, and scientific merit often comes second to political correctness and activism as a selection criterion. Some job ads explicitly exclude white males from applying, all in the name of social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusiveness.
Academic institutions are also eliminating objective tests in the name of improving inclusiveness and equity. Good luck with going to a doctor next time who has not been selected on merit…
Woke ideology sees entire disciplines, such as mathematics, as racist that must be de-colonised because it insists that there can only be one correct answer to a mathematical problem – thereby privileging white supremacy, and denying the legitimacy of alternative ways of ‘knowing’. Once reputable institutions such as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation go along with such bizarre nonsense, and California has a proposal to do away with advanced math programs in schools because they are considered racist.
Is there a way back from such lunacy? Some scholars at Stanford University’s forum on free speech argued that the situation is beyond redemption. As many faculties in the arts, humanities, and social science are now exclusively staffed by like-minded ideologues, even if free speech was miraculously restored, there is nobody left to voice alternative views. After decades of hiring faculty based on ideology and Woke principles rather than merit, entire disciplines may be doomed. The only solution may be to start new institutions and new associations explicitly committed to heterodoxy. Within psychology, just such an initiative is now in progress so that disgraceful episodes like Fiedler’s cannot re-occur.
Recent protests in the Fiedler case may offer a faint hope that things might be slowly turning. But this will only happen if all scientists, and all concerned citizens consistently speak up against the kind of injustice committed by the APS.
https://zephr.spectator.com.au/2023/02/combatting-woke-tyranny-can-science-be-saved/
************************************************************How to promote academic freedom in America
WHEN SEEKING a job to teach in the University of California system, academic excellence is not enough. Applicants must also submit a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) statement, explaining how they will advance those goals. That sounds fair enough, except that a promise to treat everyone equally would constitute a fail. Meanwhile in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis and the state legislature are trying to ban the teaching of critical race theory, an approach to studying racism with which they disagree. While this has been going on, a row has broken out (also in Florida) over a new pre-college course in African-American studies. These three developments have one thing in common: they are attempts to win arguments by controlling the institutions where those arguments take place.
Threats to academic freedom in America can come from many directions. Students sometimes object to being exposed to ideas they deem troubling. Some even try to get faculty members fired for allowing such ideas to be voiced. Donors occasionally threaten to withdraw funding, which has a chilling effect on what can be taught. Speakers can be banned. Academics may self-censor, or succumb to groupthink. Occasionally American society demands restrictions on academic freedom, as when professors in the 1950s were asked to take loyalty tests to prove they were not communist sympathisers.
All these threats still exist. Plenty of people have rightly worried about academic freedom in America in the past. And yet one of the things that is distinctive about this moment is that the warring parties have determined that the best way to win the argument, and the most thorough way to stifle debate, is to remake institutions according to their preferences.
DEI statements may seem innocuous enough, and their intentions may seem laudable. Yet if they are used as a filter for hiring, they will filter out anyone who fails to toe the campus-progressive line, and anyone who objects on principle to ideological litmus tests.
In Florida, Mr DeSantis seems to be hoping that left-wing professors in state colleges will go to work somewhere else, creating openings for more conservative professors. The Stop WOKE Act, now law in Florida, bars teaching about systemic racism unless this is done “in an objective manner”—a qualifier which is rather subjective. Academics who cross the line will be threatened with dismissal.
As for that course on African-American history, a draft version was denounced from the right as dangerous woke nonsense and then, when it was revised, denounced from the left as a whitewashed version of black history. The notion that students might look at contradictory ideas and judge their merits was too terrifying to contemplate.
Partisans on both sides seem indecently eager to create separate institutions for liberals and conservatives, where the liberals would never have to hear wrongthink (a category that would include some of Martin Luther King’s ideas, were they proposed by a less revered speaker), and the conservatives would never have to encounter the works of Derrick Bell (who has as good a claim as anyone to have developed critical race theory).
No doubt this would make both ideological tribes happier. But it would be a disaster for the country. Democracy depends on citizens who can find compromises. Liberalism depends on taking an opponent’s argument seriously and learning from it. America needs institutions that can have these debates, rather than monocultural incubators of mutually exclusive ideologies. DEI statements could even be repurposed to this end: rather than asking applicants what they have done to further racial diversity and equity, institutions of higher learning might start asking how they plan to further real diversity of thought
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/02/09/how-to-promote-academic-freedom-in-america
**************************************************************How ‘Diversity’ Policing Fails Science
At Texas Tech University, a candidate for a faculty job in the department of biological sciences was flagged by the department’s search committee for not knowing the difference between “equality” and “equity.” Another was flagged for his repeated use of the pronoun “he” when referring to professors. Still another was praised for having made a “land acknowledgment” during the interview process. A land acknowledgment is a statement noting that Native Americans once lived in what is now the United States.
Amidst the explosion of university diversity, equity and inclusion policies, Texas Tech’s biology department adopted its own DEI motion promising to “require and strongly weight a diversity statement from all candidates.” These short, written declarations are meant to summarize an academic job seeker’s past and potential contributions to DEI efforts on campus.
The biology department’s motion mandates that every search committee issue a report on its diversity statement evaluations. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, I have acquired the evaluations of more than a dozen job candidates.
To my knowledge, these documents—published in redacted form by the National Association of Scholars—are the first evaluations of prospective faculty DEI contributions to be made publicly available. They confirm what critics of DEI statements have long argued: That they inevitably act as ideological litmus tests.
One Texas Tech search committee penalized a candidate for espousing race-neutrality in teaching. The candidate “mentioned that DEI is not an issue because he respects his students and treats them equally,” the evaluation notes. “This indicates a lack of understanding of equity and inclusion issues.”
Another search committee flagged a candidate for failing to properly understand “the difference between equity and equality, even on re-direct,” noting that this suggests a “rather superficial understanding of DEI more generally.” This distinction arises frequently in DEI training, always as a markedly ideological talking point. According to the schema, equality means equal opportunity, but, to use the words of Vice President Kamala Harris, “Equitable treatment means we all end up in the same place.” Somehow, failing to explain that distinction reflects poorly on a biologist.
The biology department’s search committees also rewarded fluency in the language of identity politics. An immunology candidate was praised for awareness of the problems of “unconscious bias.” “Inclusivity in lab” was listed as a virology candidate’s strength: “her theme will be diversity, and she will actively work to creating the culture—e.g. enforce code of conduct, prevent microaggressions etc.” Another candidate’s strengths included “Land acknowledgement in talk.”
Many critics rightly point out that diversity statements invite viewpoint discrimination. DEI connotes a set of highly contestable social and political views. Requiring faculty to catalog their commitment to those views necessarily blackballs anybody who dissents from an orthodoxy that has nothing to do with scientific competence.
The Texas Tech documents show how DEI evaluations can easily seek out these contestable social and political views. The search committees espouse a narrow definition of diversity, encouraging a myopic fixation on race and gender—a definition over which reasonable people can disagree. “Some of us were surprised that there was limited mention of BIPOC issues,” one evaluation notes, using a DEI acronym for “black, indigenous and people of color.” For another candidate, “Diversity was only defined as country of origin and notably never mentioned women.” Of course, many scholars actively seek to avoid a fixation on race and gender, preferring to promote diversity of thought and equality.
Throughout these reports, the search committees displayed an eagerness to find breaches of DEI orthodoxy. One cell biology candidate was given a “red flag” for alleged “microaggressions towards women faculty.” The report names two examples: “assuming one junior faculty was a graduate student” and “minimizing the difficulties of women in the US by comparing to worse situations elsewhere.”
The evidence shows that diversity statements function as political litmus tests, but it’s worse than that. Heavily valuing DEI while selecting cell biologists, virologists and immunologists constitutes a massive failure of priority. This is an issue of academic freedom, and it is a degradation of higher education.
***********************************
My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
*******************************
No comments:
Post a Comment