I don't understand how one can provide "damning statistics" for a trend based on a single sample. It is more likely that universities are less discriminatory to

I don't understand how one can provide "damning statistics" for a trend based on a single sample. It is more likely that universities are less discriminatory today that fifty years ago, or ever. There were quotas on Jews at US universities as recently as 1960 and blacks were segregated until 1965, not to mention the centuries that women were banned outright. I think that only someone who knows absolutely nothing about the history of universities can think we're on some downward trend in academic discrimination. "The idea that most objects of inquiry exist independently of the social world," is not, as the article states, "a central Enlightenment value," and it was the knowledge about racism acquired through research that uncovered the fact that many "technical" subjects have always been politicised, rather than "the emergence of Black Lives Matter" that politicised them. We've become more aware of the biases that have long existed among us. The discovery of those biases did no more create them than the discovery of microorganisms created the need for hygiene. In both cases, though, the discovery has certainly made some people uncomfortable.