Said Robert P. George, director of Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, quoted in "M.I.T.’s Choice of Lecturer Ignited Criticism. So Did Its Decision to Cancel. Dorian Abbot is a scientist who has opposed aspects of affirmative action. He is now at the center of an argument over free speech and acceptable discourse" (NYT).
You know, back in the 1980s, at the University of Wisconsin, I heard a Critical Race Theory professor take the position that affirmative action was a manifestation of systemic racism. That was a legitimate subject of debate for people who were developing the theory. But of course, I also heard professors — mainly white professors — actively suppressing debate. Affirmative action was the chosen policy, so don't dare say anything against it. Don't test it.
But why not test everything — especially if your hypothesis is that white privilege is hidden inside whatever white people do? If the answer is that it makes black students feel unwelcome or unsafe, you ought to have to test that answer for hidden racism. Isn't it mostly white people demanding that their policy not be questioned?
Look at this quote from Phoebe A. Cohen, a Williams College geosciences professor and department chair: "This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated."
Yes, and? Affirmative action comes from a world in which white men dominated. Test the idea. Test the idea of testing the idea. If you won't even do that, you are circling the drain.
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54 comments:
That we are debating this at all is one more data point that we truly live in a dark age…
"Yes, and? Affirmative action comes from a world in which white men dominated. Test the idea. Test the idea of testing the idea. If you won't even do that, you are circling the drain."
Should be ——> If you won't even do that, you are not a scientist.
This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated."
This can be said of literally everything. Feminism and the BLM come from a world in which White men dominated.
We don't need affirmative action anymore. We had a Black President, a "so called" black Vice President. Oprah, LeBron, Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan, Diddy, Jay Z and Beyonce and thousands of other black millionaires around us. What are they protesting for more rights for?? This so called systematic Racism is actually racism against WHITES.
Affirmative action in admissions uniformly gives you black students who are surrounded on all sides by whites who are a lot smarter than they are, quite independent of any question of race IQs.
That's not a good experience and leads to blacks segregating themselves to get away from it.
It also leads to all sorts of demands misreading the causes of the situation.
And it puts a permanent chip on the shoulder of every black, a sure cause of future failure in the marketplace.
By definition, Affirmative Action is systematic racism.
Why not test it?
Well, because social science research with 5 or more variables typically turns to analytical mush. One can use contort data with the incredibly powerful Factor Analysis method to make one's findings say anything. One can also go on a "fishing expedition" and test for 100 possibilities to find 1 or 2 "problems." This does not make them problems, merely statistical outliers.
The failures of grand theories has repeatedly led to "crises" among social scientists (links below).
Keep your ideas and proposals tight and testable to earn respect and credibility. If not, it's all partisan and tribal posturing or selfishness. The left was open about this until the recent mania.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3033744
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
Even VOX admitted to this: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/8/27/17761466/psychology-replication-crisis-nature-social-science
This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated.
Did you even consider the possibility that white men dominated due to this idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism?
If you don't want to keep being dominated, maybe try a little intellectual debate and rigor yourself.
Affirmative action and CRT are both ideologies that confirm the inferiority of blacks. They emphasize the theory that whites are superior. All accomplishments by blacks are therefore suspect. You see examples when the left asserts that Clarence Thomas is inferior to white justices.
I don't know if this link works, but here is Tucker Carlson interviewing Dorian Abbot for 45 minutes.
https://nation.foxnews.com/watch/9ff542d77ed30bf076528863439ccfac/
The democrat regime is not interested in science or discussion.
They are interested in obedience.
They cannot discuss global warming. They are cultists by definition.
"But why not test everything"
There you again with your nice liberal sentiments. The point is not to test but to crush. The point of the culture war is to win. Testing is a white racist bourgeois affectation.
"This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated."
Please tell me this is sarcasm and not a statement of her beliefs. Why is she trying to prove that women do not belong in science?
Universities have lowered academic standards in order to make themselves more ethnically diverse.
By doing so, however, the universities have made discussions intellectually LESS diverse.
If some discussion might hurt the feelings of any individual in an ethnic minority, then that discussion is forbidden.
In this regard, the universities have become our country's laboratory for the development of justifications and methods for the suppression of free speech. From the universities, such justifications and methods are being exported to our larger society.
"...if it makes black students feel unwelcome or unsafe..."
What if it makes black students pretend to feel unwelcome or unsafe? Will you know the difference? Black students said they were made to feel unwelcome by a rock on the UW campus. Was that genuine, or theater? How do you know?
Serious Question... Which of These Statements, are RACIST?
Blacks can get ahead; Only if whites pull them up with preferential treatment?
Blacks can, and should, get ahead on their OWN abilities and skills?
Blacks will feel "unwelcome or unsafe"; unless we coddle them?
Blacks are ADULTS; and realize that words are Not sticks or stones?
Risible: adjective
1. Relating to laughter or used in eliciting laughter.
2. Eliciting laughter; ludicrous.
One should be clear when making an argument. "Risible" is a perfectly cromulent word that only some academicians and a minority of university graduates can define. One might have used the more widely understood words "absurd," "ridiculous," "illegitimate," "contemptuous," or perhaps my personal choice, "bullshit, riding a unicycle, on stilts."
The need to stifle or punish debate over diversity policies is an admission that the policies are indefensible. It is also reminiscent of the decisions taken within the Bolshevik Party at a certain point that no further debate would be allowed concerning policies, strategy, etc. People are surprised that administrators at MIT are so enthusiastic about enforcing right think, but scientists, educators, professors have never been immune from these sorts of totalitarian trends -- pretty often they have been on the vanguard.
"Risible" is a perfectly cromulent adjective that is not widely understood beyond the academy walls. I suggest using "bullshit on stilts" instead, to describe the arguments of the CRT crowd.
Ph.D.'s and MD's by lottery.
Think anybody would go under the knife of a Black Surgeon then?
Standards are needed. Meritocracy makes for reasoned trade-offs of cost versus quality.
economics raises its ugly head.
In the 80s Allan Bloom wrote that at least math and the sciences were resisting affirmative action, diversity in curriculum materials, etc. No women's math. No physics from the old Malian empire. After all, we are making progress in something like objective truth. No bullshit allowed.
Not so true today.
A human conversation free from debate and rigor.
He: Unh.
She: Unh.
But then she points at another guy and lets out a prolonged "Unhhhhhh."
Sounds like a debate.
" "This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated." "
Someone ought to tell her that that's true of literally all of her ideas, even ones she has right now, since I'm assured white men dominate the world even now.
(Even more ironic is that it technically applies to ideas from places in the world where white men don't dominate things, because it's still in "a world" where they "do".
Somehow that corrupts all ideas in a way that cannot be explicated or tested, just because "white men dominate the world".
And this person is supposed to be a scientist! And in a real sciences field, not even sociology or something!)
You know, back in the 1980s, at the University of Wisconsin, I heard a Critical Race Theory professor take the position that affirmative action was a manifestation of systemic racism.
---------
let me FIFY
change manifestation >>>> entrenchment
and that professor would have been right.
the whole point of AA legislation was never to let American forget race and place in society and power structure
Don't lose sight of the core observation of the article, that MIT behaved disgracefully, that MIT caved in to the demands of an ignorant mob.
I am an MIT alum, and in that capacity I am on MIT President Reif's email list. His "explanation" of this fiasco was as terrible as you might expect, including stupid post facto justifications for the institutional cowardice.
MIT is no longer a bulwark of science. All politics, all the way down.
Do you suppose the Egyptians built the pyramids without any rigor or rationality in their planning? Is that how the Incas built their road in the Andes? Was there no intellectual debate or rigor among the Chineses civil Service? When Native Americans held councils for days, do you suppose the outcome was determined by feelings, or by spoken word rapping?
This assumption that only white people have figured out how to calculate, to argue rationally, or to respect logic is very telling.
Prof. A: “… Test the idea. Test the idea of testing the idea. If you won't even do that, you are circling the drain.”
Well said. But a little late. How did these morons ever acquire tenure? Did you ignore their idiocy or did you never notice it during your years as a teacher?
"This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated." - Ms. Cohen
1. Intellectual debate and rigor is a pathway, not a pinnacle.
2. Dominate, not dominated.
I am convinced that a significant amount of white progressives and the overlapping category of the majority of academics are actually quite racist while feeling guilt about their racism.
This is why they assume everyone is racist and project racism into every category, because this is their actually lived battle. They are constantly guilty about it, so are compelled to relieve their guilt however they can. Like Augustine's lust, they can't see a way of finding relief in their own, so they need structures and methods to alleviate their guilt.
The goal of much contemporary discussions of racism for such folks is guilt-alleviation. And there are those who serve as priests who offer absolution or at least indulgences. That's why there can't be any kind of complexity or particularity or nuance. Those things further actual analysis and progress, but aren't made to alleviate guilt. Affirmative action is a clear way to alleviate guilt for those with power (who never give up their own jobs, of course, so both alleviate guilt and make others bear the burden of it), if that is nuanced or challenged, guilt remains.
Again, the goal is not actually addressing racism, that is seen as impossible because the racism is internal to the people. It's very egocentric really, since the goal isn't helping people of color either experience fruitful progress.
This is a lot like cultures that prioritize giving alms making sure there's a lot of people to support, because the goal isn't to help poor people but to check the "giving alms" box for one's own sense of self and restoring personal righteousness amidst a lot of other indulged sins.
That's also why it's impossible to discuss any of this rationally, because it's framed as 'scientific' or 'academic' but is really coming out of a deeply psycho-social, even semi-religious, experience of existential guilt.
A useful explanation of the behavior of middle aged white women like you-know-who.
Moral Panic.
So according to Phoebe Cohen, female professors lack the intellectual capacity to make their case in an intellectually rigorous fashion. Says something about female professors.
/sarc
"...Phoebe A. Cohen, a Williams College geosciences professor and department chair."
Flat earth? Turtles all the way down? What need of hypotheses and testing? The farm animals looked at the wall, which now read "The Science of Belief." Few scarcely remembered that it had previously read "Believe the Science."
The situation reminds me of Galileo's. It's widely thought that he was silenced by intellectually stupid people who didn't understand his work.
The truth is, many top churchmen were pretty good at math, and understood his work very well, and could not refute it. But it contradicted RC (religious correctness) and he was warned, officially, not to ever discuss his theory with others. Which he mildly agreed to.
Only years later did they bust him for the process crime of talking about his theory again.
As for B/black attitudes, a friend of mine who worked in the state prison system said that among the permanent churning population of the ensnared, White Racism is the all-encompassing explanation for their predicaments, and that's just the most concentrated form
of a very widespread feeling.
Many are convinced that Whitey spends most of his time trying to keep them down, and will never process the fact that Whitey mostly doesn't think about him or her at all.
The Galileo comparison is apt too, because like with churchmen, very few academics are actually creative or imaginative. Academia is extremely insular and success in academia is about pleasing the status quo powers, who themselves have built a career of pleasing the powers. It's a mirage that it's about freedom of ideas or creative intellectual pursuit. For some, it is, and in some places. But for the most part it never has been that.
It's also very similar to the anti-sexuality priorities of much contemporary conservative churches, where there is an assumption that this is the problem of everyone, and one's own problem is extroverted as being society's, so you can both not deal with it in your own self while alleviated guilt about it by protesting it in others or as part of culture.
Fundamentalism is very, very present in academia with it's own creeds, values, heresies. And a person can rise very high in the ranks of academia while not being very smart or creative by being a policing force for the asserted orthodoxy.
The sad thing, as the original post emphasizes, is that there really is racism and issues that are prevalent in society, structures, and people, but these aren't actually addressed and even perpetuated by the guilt-management, play-along, sycophantic academic system.
Narr @ 11:51: Nice comment. Anybody who cites Galileo gets my vote. “Eppure, si muove” was enough of a “discussion” to trigger his house arrest.
Look at this quote from Phoebe A. Cohen, a Williams College geosciences professor and department chair...
I've never met her but have seen her on campus. My impression is she's exactly like you think she is...
My experience with Williams represents the rot we see on campuses everywhere. In 2013 I took a niece for the campus tour. The admissions sales pitch emphasized the curriculum and the large alumni reach in he world for such a small institution. Our student tour guide did the backwards walk around campus reciting some of the classic lines I heard 25 years prior as a prospect. She was extremely knowledgeable about campus history and spoke about RA dating, the Bourgeois spider, the Ironic columns, the rare books, this and that alum and their prominent careers. A well polished, knowledgeable student giving a wonderful presentation of the school. Despite my middle age I was ready to apply...
Flash forward to 2018 when we took our nephew to campus: The admissions office presentation was entirely devoted to how woke the school had become. We listened as each student tour guide recited their minority gender, race, sexual preference bona fides. Only during the prospective student Q&A did the conversation turn to any nuts and bolts about academics. Many basic questions were met with 'I'm not sure'' from the Admissions officers. Our campus tour guide was eloquent at reciting her minority status but had no basic knowledge of campus history. She flat out made some shit up. One thing she knew extremely well was where to go on campus for academic help and psychological counseling....
It was frightening.
"Phoebe A. Cohen, a Williams College geosciences professor and department chair: "This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated.""
And that's a good thing, apparently.
Sheesh.
“Phoebe A. Cohen, a Williams College geosciences professor and department chair: "This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated."
How could you possibly trust any data or theory produced by someone who would say this?
Do any of the professors supporting the left side on this issue actually believe what they are saying? Or, are they just running scared of the left's enforcers? I would love to have a private no holds barred discussion with leftist professors to understand what they can justify in their own minds. My premise is that they are reasonably smart people yet they support irrational positions. Why?
It seems pretty obvious that affirmative action undermines the achievements of the same people it's meant to help. That needs to be discussed.
Owen said... How did these morons ever acquire tenure?
They will soon be the only ones eligible to acquire tenure. In today's Wall Street Journal (paywalled, sorry) this dreadful statistic: "The life-sciences department at the University of California-Berkley reports that it rejected 76% of applicants based on their diversity statements WITHOUT LOOKING AT THEIR RESEARCH RECORDS."
Awful, horrifying, infuriating. I wonder if the Stalinists were as efficient at weeding out the undesirables?
Affirmative Action, CRT and the rest if the blabbering are just proof that Blacks are indeed inferior. At least that's what I get from it.
"But why not test everything — especially if your hypothesis is that white privilege is hidden inside whatever white people do?"
I am white. I am male. I am privileged. It is fucking awesome!
hawkeyedjb @ 2:40: thanks for the story on UC Berkeley. Two obvious thoughts: (1) As these Stalinist purges progress, the output from the schools will make the denizens of “Idiocracy” look like a Mensa convention. Grants and employment offers will plummet because, excuse me, reality doesn’t care about your PC status. (2) If that diversity statement is the key hurdle to a faculty position, I foresee a red-hot market in coaches and ghost writers who can crank out the approved rhetoric and faux credentials. Look for applicants bragging of their research into the subconscious whiteness of migrating termites. See the wonderful work done by Helen Pluckrose and
James Lindsay in researching “Grievance Studies” for an example of what can be cooked up.
Addendum to my post above referring to “Grievance Studies” by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose: Peter Boghossian also worked on it. Really excellent stuff —and funny.
Critter said...
Do any of the professors supporting the left side on this issue actually believe what they are saying? Or, are they just running scared of the left's enforcers? I would love to have a private no holds barred discussion with leftist professors to understand what they can justify in their own minds. My premise is that they are reasonably smart people yet they support irrational positions. Why?
---
see an earlier discussion about what is OK :
it is so-oo not OK to say positions are irrational
Freeman Hunt: "It seems pretty obvious that affirmative action undermines the achievements of the same people it's meant to help. That needs to be discussed."
Affirmative Action is designed to make white liberals/lefties/LLR-lefties feel better about themselves.
The actual effect on minorities is entirely beside the point.
Test the idea of testing the idea. If you won't even do that, you are circling the drain.
I would that this were true. But it isn't.
Watched a new Nova on particle physics this afternoon. There wasn't a young white male in sight.
Freeman Hunt: "It seems pretty obvious that affirmative action undermines the achievements of the same people it's meant to help. That needs to be discussed."
It can't be discussed, because then progressives would have to confront the reasons for its failure.
Can we all agree that academics are a intelligent form of invertebrate?
The Drill SGT,
Ph.D.'s and MD's by lottery.
Think anybody would go under the knife of a Black Surgeon then?
No, no, you miss the point. If it's "by lottery," everyone is liable to be shitty, not just Blacks. What we actually have is a species of race-norming, which is worse than a lottery -- both because it artificially erases all group differences, and because it then pretends that everyone in the race-normed cohort is equally good at whatever they do. Which means that the genuinely gifted Blacks (and other minorities/women/whatever) are tainted by the assumption that they have benefited from "preferences" when they haven't.
"you ought to have to test that answer for hidden racism ..."
Why? Conclusion first, evidence later (if ever).
What, you insist presentation of evidence and a fair trial must precede the verdict? Racist.
We anti-racists have a different Way of Knowing: we know what we know, and we know that any who disagree with us must be white supremacists.
Ann, as it happens I signed up for and Zoom-attended Dorian Abbot's lecture today. It was extremely interesting. Mainly about tide-locked exoplanets (those who show only one face to their sun) and how cloud cover depended greatly in solar flux. The most startling statement, to me, was that M-class stars (much dimmer than stars similar to the Sun) are ten times as common, and are much likelier to have tide-locked planets in the habitable range (meaning, with surface temperatures where water is liquid). The argument seemed to be that solar flux has a lot to do with what sorts of cloud formations you are apt to expect.
It was a very interesting lecture. MIT students who wanted to piss all over it have missed a treat.
Look at this quote from Phoebe A. Cohen, a Williams College geosciences professor and department chair: "This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated."
Seeing things like that makes me take more and more pride in being a white man.
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