Heather Heying, The Wall Street Journal
The postmodernist left on campus is intolerant not only of opposing views, but of science itself.
Who would have guessed that when America cleaved, the left would get the National Football League and the right would get uncontested custody of science?
The revolution on college campuses, which seeks to eradicate individuals and ideas that are considered unsavory, constitutes a hostile takeover by fringe elements on the extreme left. Last spring at the Evergreen State College, where I was a professor for 15 years, the revolution was televised—proudly and intentionally—by the radicals. Opinions not fitting with the currently accepted dogma—that all white people are racist, that questioning policy changes aimed at achieving “equity” is itself an act of white supremacy—would not be tolerated, and those who disagreed were shouted down, hunted, assaulted, even battered. Similar eruptions have happened all over the country.
What may not be obvious from outside academia is that this revolution is an attack on Enlightenment values: reason, inquiry and dissent. Extremists on the left are going after science. Why? Because science seeks truth, and truth isn’t always convenient.
The left has long pointed to deniers of climate change and evolution to demonstrate that over here, science is a core value. But increasingly, that’s patently not true.
The battle on our campuses—and ever more, in K-12 schools, in cubicles and in meetings, and on the streets—is being framed as a battle for equity, but that’s a false front. True, there are real grievances. Gaps between populations exist, for historical and modern reasons that are neither honorable nor acceptable, and they must be addressed. But what is going on at institutions across the country is—yes—a culture war between science and postmodernism. The extreme left has embraced a facile fiction.
Postmodernism, and specifically its offspring, critical race theory, have abandoned rigor and replaced it with “lived experience” as the primary source of knowledge. Little credence is given to the idea of objective reality. Science has long understood that observation can never be perfectly objective, but it also provides the ultimate tool kit with which to distinguish signal from noise—and from bias. Scientists generate complete lists of alternative hypotheses, with testable predictions, and we try to falsify our own cherished ideas.
Science is imperfect: It is slow and methodical, and it makes errors. But it does work. We have microchips, airplanes and streetlights to show for it.
In a meeting with administrators at Evergreen last May, protesters called, on camera, for college president George Bridges to target STEM faculty in particular for “antibias” training, on the theory that scientists are particularly prone to racism. That’s obvious to them because scientists persist in using terms like “genetic” and “phenotype” when discussing humans. Mr. Bridges offers: “[What] we are working towards is, bring ’em in, train ’em, and if they don’t get it, sanction them.”
Despite the benevolent-sounding label, the equity movement is a highly virulent social pathogen, an autoimmune disease of the academy. Diversity offices, the very places that were supposed to address bigotry and harassment, have been weaponized and repurposed to catch and cull all who disagree. And the attack on STEM is no accident. Once scientists are silenced, narratives can be fully unhooked from any expectation that they be put to the test of evidence. Last month, Evergreen made it clear that they wanted two of its scientists gone—my husband, Bret Weinstein, and me, despite our stellar reputations with the students they claimed to be protecting. First, they came for the biologists . . .
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It’s an old story, originally published in October 2017. Evergreen State is a third-rate institution, not a real university. Its sole reason for existence is that the good people of Washington State would have somewhere to send their stupid kids to. Apparently, stupidity is contagious, with the sad outcome that the school’s third rate faculty and leadership have been infected as well.
I will make a prediction that the STEM schools of many universities will, in the not too distant future, quietly dissociate themselves from their universities and set up shop as independent institutions. They won’t call themselves universities because this term has begun to mean something rather fatuous. The universities will then be left as places of no learning, very little scholarship and zero common sense, and will become little more than cannibalistic noise-making machines. Our youth will then have a choice. Go to a university and make lots of noise for several years, and come out at the other end with no useful knowledge or skills, or go to a STEM institution and learn something worthwhile.
It is already in progress. Some are recommending that it be changed to STEAM. Guess what the A stands for – Art.
Academia is almost the perfect leftwing institution, lots of money and very little oversight. If leftists can cull anyone who believes in science, that will drop to zero oversight.
Do these students really have a mind set of slave owners?
STEM stands for “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics”
Do people who use acronyms without defining them think it makes them look smart?
Some acronyms are so common that they don’t need defining.
USA
NASA
WTF
etc.
And I don’t look those up.
OMG, STEM? WTF? ROFL!
The precursors of a new “Red Guard” who started with minnow bites of Western Civilization will soon
be all devouring sharks if not halted.
These things snowball; there is not much time.
When the lefties went first after the poor rural and blue collar urbans, I was silent.
When they went after religious fundamentalists, I was silent.
When the lefties went after those who supported traditional marriage, I was silent.
When they went after those who supported borders and legal immigrstion, I was silent.
When they went after the climate deniers, I said nothing.
When they came after me, I was alone.
is there a way to read the full story with our subscribing to the WSJ?
Science is expensive. Until the last decade, government grants for university-based research were generous. Scientists paid for their salaries by getting grants as the universities pillages 75% on average for “overhead”. As this grant system declined after the 80’s to cut federal spending, universities responded by raising tuition and over time, getting rid of the scientists, now an overhead burden not paying for itself. Ultimately, who needs a university to do research. It is the scientists who do the research, not the universities. Obama under his tenure said that NSF funding on cancer research would be dramatically cut back but who cares, private companies could take up the slack. Over time, science research will not go away, it will just go away from universities, who now get funded through tuition that is backed by the Fed. The Fed grant money is gone, and a bias against corporate sponsorship prevents pursuing that funding. This has nothing to do with a Left issue. Anything a student wants to study is on the table as long as a pool of students exist willing to be indentured for life to repay that tuition.
Wow. Do you have any idea what you are talking about?
” Scientists paid for their salaries by getting grants as the universities pillages 75% on average for “overhead””
Most are paid by the uni, for teaching and take limited salary in the summer, 3 months. Overhead at 75%? Right. 50% is usual and 60% high.
“As this grant system declined after the 80’s to cut federal spending, universities responded by raising tuition and over time, getting rid of the scientists, now an overhead burden not paying for itself.”
Wrong again. Mostly, higher university bureaucracy and lower state support. What, you thought science supported the entire uni? Dream on. Oh, and BTW, federal spending on research was higher in 2003 than the 80s, and has been flatish/slightly rising since.
“Obama under his tenure said that NSF funding on cancer research would be dramatically cut back but who cares, private companies could take up the slack.”
Love to see the quote on this, because NSF does not fund cancer research. The NIH does.
“…NSF does not fund cancer research”.
https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=137974
College administrations are shirking their duty by allowing these bullies to go unexpelled. I suggest that some entities dedicated to academic freedom (e.g., FIRE, the ACLU, and associations of collegiate academics) collaborate in composing an expulsion-warning statement for colleges to include in their catalogs and application forms. It would list types of unacceptable behavior and state that prospective students who might be tempted to engage in them go elsewhere, lest they be expelled.
This collaboration should publicize its draft statement’s agreed-upon wording and send it off to some large number of colleges, asking them to respond if they intend to adopt it. After four months, say, a list of responses would be publicized.
Maybe the government should weigh in and state that it will no longer provide student loans to colleges that fail to adopt a bully-warning statement, and fail to live up to it. It would be awkward for legislators to vote against such a provision. (If liberal legislators do vote against it and manage to defeat it, or water it down to nothing, it will work against them in the long run, because episodes of intolerance-on-campus are alienating some liberal voters from their party.)
This is not “First, they came for the biologists” it is “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
This seems somewhat unscientific? Glad I don’t live in Ottawa…
https://twitter.com/FeministRoar/status/1015355403713089536
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/05/18/climate-skeptic-professor-peter-ridd-fired-for-his-views-by-james-cook-university-jcu/comment-page-1/#comment-2823863
[excerpt]
Science is not a popularity contest, to be led by scoundrels and followed by imbeciles. There is a bit more to it.
The persecution of many competent scientists by warmist fanatics is the new “Witch Hammer”, and it must stop now.
____________________________________________
Here is a (partial) list of those forced from their institutions by global warming thugs:
Peter Ridd – James Cook University. Australia
George Taylor – Oregon State Climatologist
Sallie Baliunas – Harvard Smithsonian
Pat Michaels – University of Virginia
Murry Salby – Macquarie University, Australia
Caleb Rossiter – Institute for Policy Studies
Nickolas Drapela, PhD – Oregon State University
Henrik Møller – Aalborg University, Denmark
Bob Carter, James Cook University, Australia
Regards, Allan
______________________________________
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/30/study-hyperbole-is-increasing-in-science/comment-page-1/#comment-2110143
Thank you for this post about the Malleus Maleficarum, aka the “Witch Hammer”, first published in 1486 and used by the Roman Catholic Church as a tool of the Inquisition, to torture and murder hundreds of thousands of innocents.
Nowadays, we have the modern equivalent of the Witch Hammer: the phrase “The science is settled”.
“The science is settled” is used by scoundrels and imbeciles to dismiss scientific reality – that we still do not know enough about climate science to even agree on what drives what (for example, warmists “KNOW” that atmospheric CO2 primarily drives global temperatures, but the data shows that atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperatures at all measured time scales – the warmists are in effect alleging that the future is primarily driving the past).
For clarity in this context, scoundrels are warmists who know that global warming alarmism is a fraud, and imbeciles believe it is real.
The list of academics dismissed from their posts for speaking out against the falsehoods of global warming alarmism is growing, and the people compromised by this new Witch Hammer number in the millions.
Global warming alarmist mania will run its course, but it will take years to do so, and society will continue to squander trillions of dollars in scarce global resources in this new false alarm of alleged catastrophic manmade global warming, in a [probably] cooling world.
*************************************
Reopen Trump University
The new president and faculty:
Ivanka Trump – President
Sallie Baliunas – Chair of Department of Astronomy
George Taylor – Chair of Department of Climatology
Peter Ridd – Professor of Physics
Murray Salby – Chair of Department of Physics
Pat Michaels – Chair of Department of Environmental Science
Caleb Rossiter – Chair of Department of Mathematics
Nickolas Drapela – Chair of Department of Chemistry
Henrik Moller – Chair of Department of Electrical Engineering
It’s true that academia is too often bullied by the hard left. Case in point: the most notable recent Rutgers alum is probably the Nobel Prize winning Milton Friedman, but Rutgers has not devoted a building, classroom, statue, plaque, tree, or bush to his memory because he was not politically correct.
For the hard left private enterprise and capitalism is evil, and that is why AGW appeals to them so much because CO2 is the biggest bi-product of modern capitalism. For the hard right government action and particularly government interference in economic activity is evil. There is evidence supporting both views, but both views are over-simplification. Central government control of the economy doesn’t work and uncontrolled capitalism tends toward monopolistic abuse, environmental destruction, and economic injustice.
On the other hand most people like using modern technologies and eating cheap (certified healthy) foods without having to worry that they will be destitute in their old age. Let’s remember what things were like for most old people not long ago: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2897562/When-poverty-meant-poverty-Impoverished-Victorians-revealed-photographs-workhouse-residents-eating-dinner-coffin-beds-inside-shelter.html
Interesting article … as a genuine scientific thinker and a Marxist, I am appalled at the post-modernist usurpation of what is considered to be “left”. Racial and gender politics, i.e. the problem with a particular scientist is not his ideas, but the fact that he is male, white, (often older), and “cis”, whatever the bleep that means, dominated current academic discourse. Post-modernism is both a-historical and a-theoretical, rejecting what they call “meta-narratives”, i.e. encompassing theoretical constructs and scientific concepts; the “End of Theory” according to an article that appeared in “Wired” magazine a few years back.