Sadly, the Darwinians are now learning the value of the very intellectual freedom they have so long denied to non-Darwinians of all stripes.
Tag: Cancel Culture
First recipient of the Lysenko Award was one of Dorian Abbot’s Cancellers
The winner!: “This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated,” she replied.
Canceled exoplanets prof Dorian Abbot at the Wall Street Journal
The thing is, in 2017, it was ultra-progressive places like Evergreen where the liberal biology teachers could be run off campus. Now it’s MIT, folks… Either Woke goes or science does. But bureaucrats find it easier to cater to Woke than to resist. The more bureaucrats there are, the less university there will be.
At The Times of London: “Charles Darwin will be next if his great defender is toppled”
Huh? What? If Huxley (or Darwin) is cancelled, “the practice of science itself no longer matters.” Well, that’s true but for Cancel Culture, that’s a feature, not a bug. It shows their immense power, generally in the robes of victimhood. Has none of these people been paying attention to the war on math and the war on science?
Berkeley scientist and center director resigns over MIT’s deplatforming of exoplanet scientist
Note how little difference facts of science make in these matters — whether Abbot has anything to say that contributes to our knowledge does not matter of the Woke are displeased. Darwinism was the original Wokeness in science — immune to fact-based critique. The people who thought that that didn’t concern them are now formally wrong. It’s everywhere now.
Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne learns s thing or three about censorship – when he’s not doling it out
The explanation for Coyne’s sudden support for academic freedom might be fairly simple: He thought that Cancel Culture would only ever be deployed against people who think that nature shows evidence of design. He never expected it to come for people HE values.
Here’s more on Canceled prof Dorian Abbot’s talk on climate and exoplanets — Thursday
Abbot: “Whether a planet could be habitable is determined primarily by the planet’s climate. This lecture will address insights we’ve gained from studying Earth’s climate and how those have been used to make predictions about which exoplanets might be habitable, and how astronomical observations indicate the possibility of new climatic regimes not found on modern Earth…” [The Woke are, of course, welcome to scream, assault passersby, and torch cars and buildings in the comfort of their own Zoom meeting at the same time.]
Classifier of life forms Linnaeus gets the chop due to concerns about racism
The friend who sent this in wonders, will the Woke come for Darwin too? It’s a bit more complicated in that case. No one, after all, strikes a serious blow against science by attacking contemporary Darwinism. Darwinism is really more about atheism than about science — and the Woke are in a war on science, not on atheism.
Expert in exoplanets gets the better of Outrage, Inc.
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.
Jerry Coyne as opponent of Cancel Culture
One used to hear many people say “Cancel Culture is so ridiculous, it will go away soon.” Well, that’s not happening. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who usually writes about other matters, discusses two representative incidents.
Off topic: The Cancel Culture ragtag volunteer army of censors
Malicious envy was always out there but before social media it could rarely assemble so large a mob. But that’s a challenge, not a prophecy. We ID types can help fend them off. We are used to fighting Cancel Culture.
At Physical Chemistry Letters: The Perils of Politicizing Science
Cancel Culture: People who could not advance by achievement advance by thinning out the ranks above them by denouncing the societal sins du jour that they can stick on them, truly or falsely. NOT going out on a limb here: Most Cancel Culture types actually wouldn’t care about the same offenses, if practised by people who advance their interests. Mediocrities can’t afford to be that fussy.
Reflecting on the cancel!ation of Richard Dawkins
Calls for Random House to stop publishing his books? As if he were Michael Behe or something? Clearly, Darwinism is losing its cultural teflon.
Another Darwinian who should surely be Canceled! by the Righteous Woke!
Yawn. Move over and make room for Cancel!ed George Romanes. Or… Whatever Cancel Culture demands that we do, let’s all just stop doing it. Soon, they will be looking for really small holes to hide in.
Science historian Michael Flannery offers some thoughts on the drive to deplatform Darwin
Darwin’s racism doesn’t make his theory — either in its original form or any current iteration — right or wrong. The theory must be addressed on the merits of the case. So no deplatforming. Bring on the debate.