In a world where even Peter Boghossian, foe of pretentious academic [fertilizer], had to leave Portland U on that account, a prof who refused to degrade himself by apologizing abjectly to the mob (which never works) has survived:
Last week I reported what happened when tenured University of Chicago Professor Dorian Abbot questioned his university’s Diversity/Equity/Inclusion (DEI) efforts in a series of YouTube videos and articles. The professor faced backlash immediately. Soon, a small group of leftist ideologues mounted a successful Twitter campaign against him resulting in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) canceling a distinguished science lecture Abbot had been invited to give simply because the woke mob disagreed with some of his political positions.
Gwendolyn Sims, “UPDATE: Professor Canceled by Woke Outrage Mob Has Last Laugh” at PJ Media (October 12, 2021)
Abbot was scheduled to speak at MIT on the potential for life on exoplanets, something our readers here take an interest in. It would have been a pleasure to note what he had to say. Some people at Princeton must have thought so too because — one suspects, due to the influence of professor Robert P. George, he has been invited to give the lecture there. And that lecture is now wildly oversubscribed:
Thankfully, Princeton’s Professor Robert P. George was able to expand the Zoom limit to accommodate all the people—”literally thousands”— who now want to hear Abbot’s thoughts on “extrasolar planets” on the very same day he was supposed to speak at MIT.
Gwendolyn Sims, “UPDATE: Professor Canceled by Woke Outrage Mob Has Last Laugh” at PJ Media (October 12, 2021)
One thing that’s coming out of all these stories is that those who do NOT cower and mumble abject apologies to the gleefully unlettered tend to do better.
Mobs have only the authority they seize from cowards. And who wants to defend an abject coward? He’ll sell you out too. A person who takes a stand can be defended.
Let’s hope profs who become targets of the war on math, science, and literacy take heart from this example and find their spines.
This is the kind of thing Prof. Abbot would be doing if he wasn’t fighting off (one suspects) non-science-minded and semi-literate mobs: