Yesterday, a prematurely aged-looking Assange (he is 47) — a founder of Wikileaks and Australian — was arrested by UK Police after the Ecuadorean Embassy he has sought asylum in since 2012 withdrew its protection. The arrest raises questions on dissidents, privacy, protection of legitimate secrets, the public’s right to know more than officials, power […]
Intellectual freedom
Darwinian PZ Myers blows off attack on Bret Weinstein
The progressive war is, increasingly, with facts, with nature itself. They can’t win but we can certainly lose.
New US free speech policy for universities miffs boffins at Nature
The universities are “spooked by” Trump, are they? Well, they brought him on themselves. They could have listened before, when someone nicer than he is was telling them.
Total surveillance should worry us more than an AI news writing machine
The most dangerous tyrannies are the ones intended to bring about some public good. It’s the difference between someone who just wants to rob you and someone who wants to fix you and run your life.
US prez Trump vows to tie federal funding to campus free speech
Details are unclear but U.S. President Trump has threatened to cut off federal research funds to colleges and universities that deny free speech: In an interview after Trump’s speech, Terry Hartle, senior vice president for the American Council on Education, called the executive order “a solution in search of a problem,” because “free speech and […]
Bill Dembski on censorship of books at Amazon
You think you’re free to read what you want? Think again: Three days ago on this forum, I raised the question how long would it be before Amazon, which has now started banning videos skeptical of vaccines, starts banning books. I thought books would be safer. But no. Tommy Robinson’s book Mohammed’s Koran has now been banned […]
French author muses on why Darwinism never dies
In an essay on Paul Gosselin ’s Flight from the Absolute: Cynical Observations on the Postmodern West, Volume II, we are told, Over two and a half decades have passed since Phillip E. Johnson kick-started the intelligent design (ID) movement in America with the publication of his path-breaking book, Darwin on Trial (1991). In this […]
Maybe dissent from Darwin can’t kill a career any more?
Too soon to tell but in an age when “trust in science” is demanded in the teeth of evidence, not on account of it, maybe Darwinism can’t kill opponents the way it used to. Or does it?
FIRE’s Ten Worst Colleges for Free Speech
Unless, of course, you are an authoritarian bureaucrat in training. Or maybe your subject area is, for example, sexual assault among dogs. If so, academia is all yours. With any luck, you will be shouting down empty halls.
Jerry Coyne discovers the lack of intellectual freedom on campus
Students will graduate ignorant, intellectually unable to meet challenges, and mad as stink that the world doesn’t care to hear from them.
Inference Review did NOT set out to make a fool of cosmologist Adam Becker
It’s not a job that needs doing, the editors say.
Jerry Coyne has another reason to be mad at Templeton
Coyne is distressed by the fact that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which supports people who are being jackbooted by authoritarian leftists, is supported by… Templeton.
We’re NOT easily fooled by fake news
And the science paper that claimed so has been retracted. A team from the Shanghai Institute of Technology sought to study whether accuracy made any difference to whether a post goes viral on social media. They cited a concern about “the digital misinformation that threatens our democracy”: “The paper found that even though individuals may […]
Jerry Coyne: Just sign Chicago “Statement on Principles of Free Expression”
Good for him but what will be really interesting to see now is how many of his fellow Darwinian evolutionary biologists join him in protest. People tend to think the mob is coming for someone else, someone who “deserves” it.
Darwinian Jerry Coyne as free speech warrior
Retired biologist Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution Is True, has begun to understand what it means to say that university campuses are no longer a home for ideas, but for grievances: Many universities, including public ones, have created “bias response teams,” in which speech considered hateful or offensive is reported to […]