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"Now that many university presidents have agreed to implement many of the demands, I believe that the conflict between truth and social justice is likely to bec

• gnull 4y ago
  > "The telos of a knife is to cut, the telos of medicine is to heal, and the telos of a university is truth."
  • pas 4y ago
    That sounds nice, but the de facto the purpose of a university is the furtherance of the intellectuals. The scientific method's purpose is to get closer to the truth. Some research does happen at universities, but academia in its current state is far from the ideal vessel for that. (Especially when it comes to softer sciences.)
    • mpweiher 4y ago
      > the de facto the purpose of a university is the furtherance of the intellectuals Yes, and unavoidably so. That is why it is society's task to structure the universities in such a fashion that those goals align with society's goals.
      • sgc 4y ago
        Ah yes, the always correct "society" should be heavy handed, to counter unnecessary heavy-handed university administration. That is just shifting the tyranny of the majority from an internal to a less qualified external source. Universities' end should be pursuit of the truth, not society's "goals". If society must intervene, it should be to uphold the pursuit of truth, not its own goals. That is a tall task, but lets at least aim in the right direction. This comment is also a bit odd given the context of the last 5 years of society being ever more overrun by anti-intellectualism, that is diametrically opposed to higher learning.
        • 0x445442 4y ago
          I don’t think society is opposed to higher learning. I think they’re opposed to scientism.
        • pas 4y ago
          > society being ever more overrun by anti-intellectualism, that is diametrically opposed to higher learning. This has been ongoing for ever. This happens because there's a big overlap between rich, powerful, and educated groups, and there's simply a fuckton of bad "us vs them" arguments that pick one easy to identify trait and attack anyone using that. And of course the ongoing globalization led to a lot of job displacement. Whole regions suffered and continue to suffer heavily, and ... while the whole country reaps the benefits the affected areas only got a lip service. (And of course a lot of federal transfer payments.) This created a big group ripe for populist resentment, ready to project the drawbacks of free markets onto whatever Trump said. China. Mexico. Millenials. Green stuff. Welfare queens.
    • rightbyte 4y ago
      Whether the purpose of a bakery is to make bread or make money.
    • Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
      I would argue the telos of modern american universities is revenue generation. This wasn't always the case, but it is now and increasingly so.
    • bluescrn 4y ago
      These days, the purpose of a university is to make money.
• BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Basically, social justice is pushing its goals under a narrative which may not be true. It is merely assumed it is.
  • busterarm 4y ago
    It goes a little bit beyond this. You're supposed to do research with an open mind and allow your conclusions to reveal themselves through the course of study. Swearing that your research advances the goals of anti-racism and equity means that your research can only have pre-formed conclusions. It completely taints your research and any results you might come to.
• ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  This is the Motte and Bailey technique. Attacking "Political Correctness" in a vague and non-specific way lets you sound noble. As soon as you specify what that means in practice you just sound like a nasty bully (at best), so best leave that implied. But a quick glance as the history of social science that these things are a direct response to, would reveal people "proving" that various groups are inferior in ways that mirror contemporary prejudices and reinforce right-wing politics that consistently builds hierarchical models to justify current social inequalities.
  • trention 4y ago
    • dekhn 4y ago
      It doesn't matter. Why would it?
    • collegeburner 4y ago
      does it rly change anything? like, take sports. asians have some structural advantages (endomorphism and limb to body ratio) for lifting, west africans at mnay explosive/power sports (fast twitch muscle concentration, arms/legs to body), east africans at long-distance running etc. (lighter structure, efficient muscles over long term), whites at swimming (shoulder structure & torso length). should we stop large swathes of research into athletic performance? bc i guess it doesn't provide sufficiently "antiracist" outcomes?
      • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        Studies that show the genetic diversity of the continent of Africa are in fact "anti-racist". They truthfully reveal that the psuedoscientific 19th century ideas we refer to as race had no scientific basis. Some people really haven't taken this "truth" well though. They still try to fit every new fact into their old model. Like "West African Scorpios" are much more open to emotion, while "East African Scorpios" are open to new experience. So should we stop all research into Astrology? Yes, because it's psuedoscientific nonsense that only distracts from the actual truth. This current controversy includes the attempts to stop exactly this, with rules saying if you do medical research, and classify people by "race" then you need to explain who made this classification and why. Because a Brazilian looking a photos might put people into different races than an American or Japanese researcher, which might differ from the subjects chosen race, which definately differs from their genetic race, because genetic races don't exist.
• tomp 4y ago
  Social justice advocates oppose publishing academic research that opposes their (“social justice”) goals. It’s Galileo all over again.
  • mpweiher 4y ago
    It's actually even worse. It is enough for research to not actively promote "social justice" (which is of course anything but social or just) to get the boot. So everything must be politicised. "How does your new caching algorithm promote social justice?". (If the same criteria were applied in CS).
    • 0x445442 4y ago
      > If the same criteria were applied in CS And this will be here before you know it unless more people start calling bullshit.
      • CrazyPyroLinux 4y ago
        I already can't commit to a master branch or have a master key, because reasons.
        • chowells 4y ago
          • trention 4y ago
            It seems to me that the real snowflakes are those who got out of their way to have the convention changed. But then again, I am just a slav who thankfully doesn't have to live in the shithole that is contemporary usa (or the valley).
          • Tr3nton 4y ago
            Are you offended when someone expresses that they want to "master the art of pasta making?" The word 'master' has many meanings, only one of which relates to slavery; every color of people on the planet has practiced slavery at some point; your boogeyman white people stopped practicing it a century and a half ago; yet just the existence of the word prevents you from being able to push code to a repo. And you call other people snowflakes...
• concordDance 4y ago
  Basically if your research is considered bad for the dominant DEI narratives you're going to be in for a bad time. E.g. if your research gets the "wrong" results regarding police shootings then anyone who defends your research will have to resign: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/resignation.html?m=1 https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/resignation.html?m=1 And anything regarding differences in crime numbers or IQ? Forget it.
  • canadiantim 4y ago
    Anyone else find it unsettling that the acronym the social justice crowd settled on was DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, Equality)?
    • topaz0 4y ago
      I've never seen it ordered that way before reading the reactionary comments in this comment section.
    • orf 4y ago
      No, because the acronym is DEI…
      • canadiantim 4y ago
        mhmm, because of course everyone knows that we order the letters in an acronym according to the least rememberable order, right?
        • orf 4y ago
          You seem to know very little about the topic and yet seem to have strong opinions about what the “social justice crowd” is up to. I’d reflect on that.
          • canadiantim 4y ago
            You seem to defend the social justice crowd without putting in any critical thinking for yourself. I'd reflect on that.
• scaramanga 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • joenot443 4y ago
    Is it really a conspiracy when we're watching exactly what the theorists said would happen, happen? An earnest, good-hearted, and well-cited author and scientist is removing himself from academia because of the ever-accelerating creep of DEI influence into entirely unrelated work. This sounds like exactly what the so-called 'conspiracy theorists' were trying to warn us about back in 2012 or so. If anything, your comment really just solidified to me that maybe we should have taken those folks a bit more seriously, and encouraged folks like you to quiet down. :)
    • xrd 4y ago
      The way I read it was he was removing himself from an organization, not from academia entirely. This particular organization wants to follow the antiracist line of thinking, and they probably feel that strengthens their community. He's perfectly entitled to leave it and complain about it. But, the organizations reasons for making people who join the organization align with this values statement seems like it should be their prerogative. Maybe they feel like to grow as an organization, they need to ask their community to that line of thinking. If they have done the work to understand that's what they should do, isn't it correct, even if they lose a researcher like Haidt?
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    • scaramanga 4y ago
      Something of almost no significance to freedom of speech. Universities are advising their staff not to council in favour of abortion or offer condoms for the purposes of birth control (but OK for purposes of diseas prevenion). Violating these rules can result in felony convictions. This is what an attack on freedom of speech looks like. And the consequences are of far more significance in this case. Being fired for bringing the university in to disrepute barely even registers. So if you want to know whether someone's position on free speech is hysterical posturing, or whether it's genuine, you can compare their reaction on these two paired issues.
• tomohawk 4y ago
  "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." - Kendi Kendi is a key promoter of "anti-racism", which is described in the above quote. Many institutions are signing on to this agenda, which requires people to view everything through this ideological (social justice) lens and to participate in discriminatory activity as described above. This lens ensures that instead of seeking truth, you will just find more social injustice. A demon under every rock, if you will.
  • tgv 4y ago
    Did you notice that that promotes an eternal cycle of hatred? Because present day discrimination would mean discriminating against yesterday's powerful, and thus future discrimination will be the opposite. That someone, who seriously wrote something like that, has got influence is not a good sign.
    • busterarm 4y ago
      The people pushing this garbage are dependent on racial conflict to exist in order to keep having a job. Of course they want the blood feuds to continue forever.
  • socialismisok 4y ago
    Let's apply this to a material, concrete condition that exists in our world. We can all hopefully agree that: A) Redlining existed B) Redlining was explicitly racist C) Redlining has impacts that are still felt today Let's use an antiracist lens to talk about it and compare to a modern, liberal "just don't be racist" lens. The standard liberal response is, "well, redlining is over, and we know now not to do that. So, problem solved, right?" The antiracist lens might be, "there are still people suffering from the impact of Redlining. The people who benefited from it should be helping those who suffered from it." In this case, wealthy white folks explicitly benefited from Redlining. Maaaaaybe we should tap on the shoulders of wealthy white folks and say, "hey, there was a major injustice done very recently, we want to fix it, and since you benefitted from it, we're asking you to pay a slightly larger share in fixing it."
• aaplok 4y ago
  The key quote is this: "most academic work has nothing to do with diversity, so these mandatory statements force many academics to betray their quasi-fiduciary duty to the truth by spinning, twisting, or otherwise inventing some tenuous connection to diversity." In other words a researcher studying a topic unrelated to diversity will need to lie by claiming that there is a link.
  • jknoepfler 4y ago
    "Our lab specializes in developing hypergraph analysis techniques with applications in cybersecurity. The success of these techniques will force threat actors to innovate in order to survive. As more diverse organizations are more innovative [1][5][26] and threat actors are rational and well-informed [9][10], we expect our efforts to encourage threat actors to become more diverse as more effective cybersecurity techniques pressure them to adapt and innovate. As threat actors account for a non-trivial fraction of global economic activity [6], we expect our research to play an active role in the co-creation of a more inclusive and diverse lifeworld for the people of earth."
    • auntienomen 4y ago
      This is a bad example: local knowledge (popular scams, exploits, software, etc) does play a nontrivial role in determining what the population of threats looks like; this activity is in part socially determined. So having a more diverse crowd of researchers -- with all else equal -- can improve your research group's understanding of what threats are out there. Diversity gives you edge here. Unless of course, the graph analysis research isn't really about the applications and that was just some bullshit to drum up funding.
      • jknoepfler 4y ago
        It was a satirical example of "bullshit" application writing. I personally don't dispute the relevance of diversity (variously operationalized) within human knowledge production institutions. I do - I think reasonably - dispute the applicability of the outputs of many of our knowledge production institutions to social justice questions. (Just as I don't dispute that there are, conversely many which are). If we find ourselves in a situation where we can't make a useful distinction between research that is and isn't relavent to social justice, I think we're at risk of our language seeming vaccuous and nonsensical.
• stereolambda 4y ago
  One way to look at it: this is like requiring all Maths research to be applied mathematics, because we demand to get the social benefits right now and it is your job to find it. I don't know if they actually verify what you wrote in your declaration and how.
• rogershock 4y ago
  Haidt gave a lecture on the topic at Duke in 2016. It's titled, "Two incompatible sacred values in American universities." It's on the YouTube channel of Duke's political science department. It's been a while since I've watched the lecture, but what I remember is that Haidt sees the academy seeking truth as (potentially?) incompatible with the academy seeking social justice. As such, he anticipates a day when universities will have to choose individually which path they will follow. I suspect that's the context in which Haidt is making this decision.