I agree that Sokal's point of view was uncharitable to the majority of post-structuralists, but I can attest to the fact there is a definite strain of radical r

I agree that Sokal's point of view was uncharitable to the majority of post-structuralists, but I can attest to the fact there is a definite strain of radical relativism on today's campuses. It goes hand in hand with a reflexive questioning of authority, an attitude that views all authority as illegitimate, even when that authority is derived from legitimate learning and knowledge. And when that attitude confronts science, it becomes a rationalization to challenge or deny universal theories that have been proven repeatedly by experiment as somehow merely a 'local' knowledge framework, or 'culturally constructed' or 'patriarchal' and therefore something to be suspicious of. This opens the door to treating all scientific assertions as equivalent and suspect. And you can draw a straight line from that to the anti-intellectualism that dominates our social discourse today. As to your question, in many ways calling Einstein's theory 'relativity' was a misnomer because it was actually a statement about the absolute laws of physical reality - laws that don't change with perspective or reference frame. For example, for special relativity, the absolute laws of electrodynamics require the speed of light to remain constant in every reference frame. And these laws entail that space and time must change with reference frame in order for the laws of physics to remain absolute. For these reasons, the relativity of physics bears little resemblance to moral relativism.