What? In the world of “social justice,” someone actually noticed biology prof Bret Weinstein? Someone took time out from hearing the angst and hoo-haw of “[fill in the blank] studies” students to look at the science education issues?
From Michael Shermer at Scientific American:
One underlying cause of this troubling situation may be found in what happened at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., in May, when biologist and self-identified “deeply progressive” professor Bret Weinstein refused to participate in a “Day of Absence” in which “white students, staff and faculty will be invited to leave the campus for the day’s activities.” Weinstein objected, writing in an e-mail: “on a college campus, one’s right to speak—or to be—must never be based on skin color.” In response, an angry mob of 50 students disrupted his biology class, surrounded him, called him a racist and insisted that he resign. He claims that campus police informed him that the college president told them to stand down, but he has been forced to stay off campus for his safety’s sake.
“[ H]e has been forced to stay off campus for his safety’s sake.” Well that’s “deeply progressive,” for sure. It comes down to a battle between the mentors of the unemployable jackboots on the Evergreen campus and the rest of the United States.
If universities are a tax-funded prison riot, don’t American taxpayers fund prisons already? Could Evergreen be declared a state pen? In that case, Weinstein might be entitled to special protection. Yes, of course, students should think carefully about applying to Evergreen in that case but remember, it is the risk of violence we are dealing with here. Not some stupid uproar around “social justice.”
Students are being taught by these postmodern professors that there is no truth, that science and empirical facts are tools of oppression by the white patriarchy, and that nearly everyone in America is racist and bigoted, including their own professors, most of whom are liberals or progressives devoted to fighting these social ills. Of the 58 Evergreen faculty members who signed a statement “in solidarity with students” calling for disciplinary action against Weinstein for “endangering” the community by granting interviews in the national media, I tallied only seven from the sciences. Most specialize in English, literature, the arts, humanities, cultural studies, women’s studies, media studies, and “quotidian imperialisms, intermetropolitan geography [and] detournement.” A course called “Fantastic Resistances” was described as a “training dojo for aspiring ‘social justice warriors’” that focuses on “power asymmetries.”
If you teach students to be warriors against all power asymmetries, don’t be surprised when they turn on their professors and administrators. This is what happens when you separate facts from values, empiricism from morality, science from the humanities. More.
Aw shuddup, Shermer. This is the natural outcome of insisting that our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. We mainly feel sorry for the victims who actually oppose what we take to be your doctrine and suffer the consequences, not for people who espouse it and are now reaping the career “benefits.” Such as they are.
See also: “Intersectionality” and anti-Semitism and Evergreen biologist files suit