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Considering that the humanities sometimes have hard time to be taken seriously at sciences this does not help at all. One can easily say that it's just politic

Considering that the humanities sometimes have hard time to be taken seriously at sciences this does not help at all. One can easily say that it's just politics and not real science if they're even having that discussion. (Everyone whose viewpoint was taken into account in the article was from humanities. No-one was from hard sciences.)

media_obsvr 8y ago
It's a decent article. But in general conservatives have an incentive to attack universities (since they are independent arbiters of truth). More here, including how the Koches and other libertarians spend money to attack universities. https://psmag.com/education/conservative-media-is-waging-a-war-on-the-humanities-and-its-succeeding https://psmag.com/education/conservative-media-is-waging-a-w... So there's often a bit of selective reporting. Universities spend a lot of time debating opinions, and the few times something like this gets discussed, it gets amplified by conservatives. I generally like Friedersdorf, but he's a self-professed libertarian and does a lot of writing about university speech. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/libertarians-arent-all-selfish-jerks/240757/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/liberta... "Libertarians Aren't All Selfish Jerks" CONOR FRIEDERSDORF
Zuider 8y ago
This kind of controversy is intruding on the hard sciences. For one example, a highly abstract math paper on the greater male variability hypothesis was blocked from publication and the authors subjected to uncollegial harassment for purely ideological reasons. https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/ https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-p...
cam_l 8y ago
I propose changing the name of the 'hard' science to 'easy' science. Because there are definitive answers, because the answers don't change when you ask the question, and because political input is rarer. Just think about how much you trust the 'hard' sciences where these points do not hold.. Climate science.. food science.. Quantum physics.. Hell, computer science!

media_obsvr 8y ago

It's a decent article. But in general conservatives have an incentive to attack universities (since they are independent arbiters of truth). More here, including how the Koches and other libertarians spend money to attack universities. https://psmag.com/education/conservative-media-is-waging-a-war-on-the-humanities-and-its-succeeding https://psmag.com/education/conservative-media-is-waging-a-w... So there's often a bit of selective reporting. Universities spend a lot of time debating opinions, and the few times something like this gets discussed, it gets amplified by conservatives. I generally like Friedersdorf, but he's a self-professed libertarian and does a lot of writing about university speech. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/libertarians-arent-all-selfish-jerks/240757/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/liberta... "Libertarians Aren't All Selfish Jerks" CONOR FRIEDERSDORF

Zuider 8y ago

This kind of controversy is intruding on the hard sciences. For one example, a highly abstract math paper on the greater male variability hypothesis was blocked from publication and the authors subjected to uncollegial harassment for purely ideological reasons. https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/ https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-p...

cam_l 8y ago

I propose changing the name of the 'hard' science to 'easy' science. Because there are definitive answers, because the answers don't change when you ask the question, and because political input is rarer. Just think about how much you trust the 'hard' sciences where these points do not hold.. Climate science.. food science.. Quantum physics.. Hell, computer science!