Jerry, if only it still mattered. The people that Darwinians empowered have bigger fish to fry than us. That’s for sure.
They must destroy an entire civilization that, due to their lack of accomplishments, refuses to regard them as geniuses. For now, from Jerry’s post-retirement job, the details:
I’ve spent a lot of time writing and working to try to get colleges and universities—especially mine—to refrain from issuing official political, ideological, or moral statements save under exceptional circumstances. Freedom of speech is a sine qua non for a decent university, and that goes along with a university not trying to stifle or chill speech by issuing their “own” official positions. For institutional statements of morality and ideology will necessarily stifle the speech of those opposed to approved sentiments. We already know that half of college students, and a goodly proportion of professors, are self-censoring lest they incur the wrath of those who have power over them. In colleges, those with power are the Woke. Students and faculty who have issues with wokeness have, by and large decided to keep their mouths shut, and that is not what should be happening in colleges.
Jerry Coyne, “Chair of Stanford’s Department of Computer Science sends out woke and confusing email affirming his department’s virtue” at Why Evolution Is True (December 12, 2021)
Coyne goes on to provide an interesting reason why you should not contribute (if you have in the past) to Stanford’s Alma Mater fund.
But the situation is actually worse than Coyne details. Historian Niall Ferguson told COSM 2021 some stark realities:
In response to a question from the floor, Ferguson, author of Doom: The politics of catastrophe (2021), outlined the seriousness of the problem:
Well, it’s just been announced this week that we’re trying to create a new university, University of Austin, committed to the fundamental principles of, of academic freedom of free inquiry. And the reason we have to do this is that we see so many limitations on free inquiry and academic freedom at the established universities.
The growing illiberalism on campuses is being documented in survey research:
Not only do 66 percent of students say it is acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus, that result is up four percentage points from last year.
Another key finding is that nearly one in four students say it’s acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech — up 5 percent over last year’s survey — with some elite colleges bringing that figure to as high as one in three students accepting of such violence.
KATELYNN RICHARDSON – UNLV, “OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF COLLEGE STUDENTS SAY SHOUTING DOWN A SPEAKER IS ACCEPTABLE: SURVEY” AT THE COLLEGE FIX (SEPTEMBER 23, 2021)
The problem may have worsened during the COVID lockdown (the psychology of which, ironically, was Ferguson’s slated topic). More.
Saving you work: The little fascists are no longer in short pants. They’ll soon be staring at you from across a Big Desk.