When I went to college at the University of Chicago, we often viewed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as our peer institution on the hard sciences. After all, both schools were composed of socially awkward, clueless geeks. That sense of nerd affinity was lost this week in a controversy over the cancelling of a lecture by Dorian Abbot, an associate professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, after complaints that he has criticized Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs. The cancelling of the event raises many of the concerns that we have previously discussed over the growing intolerance of dissenting views on our campuses — and the retaliation against faculty who challenge a new orthodoxy in our ranks.
Abbot was scheduled to give the John Carlson Lecture in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT on October 21. He received repeated messages from the school that the lecture was going forward even after some objected due to his criticism of DEI policies.
UChicago has always been an island of free speech despite the rising tide of censorship, speech codes, and investigations. It reaffirmed that position with regard to Abbot who faced demands for his termination or punishment for opposing DEI measures and suggesting an alternative. Once again, many faculty and students focused on silencing him rather than responding to his arguments.
Last year, Abbot objected that DEI measures were elevating the race or gender of candidates above their qualifications. He called for the school to reaffirm the long-standing position that academic slots would be filled by the best candidate without consideration to race, gender, or status. The response from “58 students and postdocs of the Department of Geophysical Sciences, and 71 other graduate students and postdocs from other University of Chicago departments” was a letter calling for Abbot to be punished for expressing his views.
Then, to make matters worse in the eyes of the critics, Abbot did not recede into the darkness but continued to state his opinions. In August, Abbot co-authored a column in Newsweek headlined “The Diversity Problem on Campus.” He and his co-author Ivan Marinovic, an associate professor of accounting at Stanford Graduate School of Business, wrote “DEI violates the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment. It entails treating people as members of a group rather than as individuals, repeating the mistake that made possible the atrocities of the 20th century.”
The two professors instead advocated for an alternative framework called Merit, Fairness and Equality, which would treat applicants “as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone.”
That was the final straw. The anti-free speech movement on our campuses seeks to marginalize and silence those with opposing views. They make examples of those who fail to yield and remain silent by taking away conference invitations, publication opportunities, and the other critical elements to a full academic life.
Once the lecture was announced, the same pattern emerged as critics hammered MIT for inviting an academic who holds opposing views. Suddenly the lecture was cancelled and MIT Department Chair Rob van der Hilst reportedly went silent.
The site College Fix detailed academics and fellow scientists calling for Abbot to be canceled or demanding that MIT never again invite an academic with such opposing views. For example, Caroline Morley (@AstroCaroline), Assistant Prof at UT Austin, expressed disgust and told MIT that next time “consider inviting someone who doesn’t hold deeply problematic views on equity in the sciences.” These are intellectuals who are appalled that a professor could still be invited to discuss an entirely separate topic if he holds an opposing view on academic appointments.
The academic flash mob pattern is now all too familiar. Few professors are willing to risk such isolation and shunning. These campaigns take everything of value from an academic if they stand up and express dissenting thoughts. That is why MIT betrayed not just its principles of free speech but academic freedom in cancelling this event. If we allow this mob mentality to take hold, what are we as intellectuals. You do not have to agree with Professor Abbot to oppose such cancellation campaigns.
As free speech advocates, we often support those with whom we disagree. In the past, I have defended extremist views on academic freedom grounds like those of University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis, who has defended the murder of a conservative protester and said that he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence. (Loomis also writes for the site “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.”) I have defended faculty who have made similarly disturbing comments “detonating white people,” denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer, strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters and other outrageous statements.
What occurred at MIT this month is a chilling reminder that even a premier institution will yield to anti-free speech campaigns. The problem is that few department heads or administrators want to risk their own careers in standing between a mob and a controversial speaker. The result is cringing obedience to a rising orthodoxy on our campuses.
“Premier institutions” as you call them are not going to stay that way very long at this rate. They will correct course when their brilliantly silly policies result in such a dumbing down of the curriculum that nobody wants to go there anymore. Personally, I’m looking forward to the time when they stop pretending to choose professors based on merit and instead apply the same principles they want to apply to students in choosing faculty.
Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgement), inequity, and exclusion (DIE). #HateLovesAbortion
That said, diversity of individuals, minority of one.
The Left is such a totalitarian movement. Moderates are going to have a hard time holding them back. Plus they’ll need a spine.
The Left has to be a totalitarian movement, no rational person would (wittingly) ever go along for that ride.
Maybe better stated as, “We’ll need a spine.”
Jonathan: Conservative university professors who espouse racist views are increasingly a vanishing breed. They face, as you claim, isolation because they express “dissenting views” to the “new orthodoxy”–reflected in DEI programs at MIT and elsewhere. The history of racism in academia is well known and documented. The DEI programs are designed to rectify the racial disparity in educational opportunities But you support Professor Abbot because he believes DEI mandates don’t apply to him. He believes his student applicants should continue to be selected without consideration to race, agenda or status. That’s the problem. Such criteria perpetuates white privilege by ensuring white candidates will almost always prevail. It’s sad you would endorse Abbot’s racist views.
You probably noticed Forbes just released its annual list of the richest 400. Trump didn’t make the cut. He must be livid–“fake news”. Trump got kicked off the list because his net worth is only $2.5 billion. Now Forbes requires a net worth of at least $2.9 billion. The Forbes list is revealing because it shows the richest made out like bandits during Covid-19. Their net worth increased by 40%–to a total of $4.5 billion! And this is at a time when a lot of us lost our jobs, struggled to pay our bills, etc. And only 7 Black billionaires were on the Forbes list in 2020. So the 2,153 richest hold more wealth than all Black and Latino households. In the last 30 years the median Black family saw their wealth drop by more than half. That why DEI programs are essential to try to rectify racial disparities–especially in advanced academic programs. Again, it is sad you would oppose such programs.
“He believes his student applicants should continue to be selected without consideration to race . . . That’s the problem.”
Only in a post-modern, post-logic world could one claim that it’s “racist” to be against racism.
Dennis, you kind of missed the whole point. Turley is not agreeing with Abbot. He’s saying Abbot should be able to express unpopular views without punishment (like cancellation of a lecture on an unrelated topic). Don’t worry, it seems lots of other people don’t get this distinction either.
What, exactly, is your point? That we should be happy to be treated by doctors who shouldn’t have to master the corpus of required medical knowledge?
Dennis, 1. you missed the point about this being a free speech issue and not a DEI issue and 2. must understand that having to teach academically unqualified students is not a professor’s job and is the job of the admissions departments. Simply putting students into classes they are unprepared for is moronic and to suggest that that will create equal outcomes is unsupported and, frankly, insane, let alone racist.
Why not simply give 13% of the blacks in the country a degree from wherever they want, not require them to learn a thing, and call it a day and see how it works, because now professors are attacked for not grading minorities easier than whites and asians.
Disparate Impact theory is the biggest load of BS ever.
Stop pandering via virtue signalling.
Obviously, the job of the admin dept is to get qualified students, not to teach them.
The next time you hop on a plane, Dennis, will you remain on the plane for take-off if you learned that the pilot could not successfully pass the exams without someone providing him bonus points to satisfy DIE?
Anyone who would judge a person based upon anything other than their individual merit and achievement is a racist to the core. Anyone who attained (notice I did not say achieved) their position by any other criteria than their personal merit without regard to their race, gender, or any other factor, is unqualified. I don’t give a tinker’s dam what happened in the past. It bears no relevance to the achievements, or the lack thereof, of individuals today.
So the 2,153 richest hold more wealth than all Black and Latino households. In the last 30 years the median Black family saw their wealth drop by more than half. That why DEI programs are essential to try to rectify racial disparities–especially in advanced academic programs. Again, it is sad you would oppose such programs.
Thats a nice cut and paste of someone elses work. An honorable man would give credit to who ever you stole it from. That’s beside the point, that you aren’t bright enough to understand, all of it is meaningless. Serves no purpose.
“reaffirm the long-standing position that academic slots would be filled by the best candidate without consideration to race, gender, or status”
This was the controversial position? Would MLK be banned for saying judge a person on the content of their character and not the color of their skin?
According to the left on this blog MLK is a racist.
“These are intellectuals who are appalled that a professor could still be invited to discuss an entirely separate topic if he holds an opposing view on academic appointments.”
If these are intellectuals, they are more like Alfred Rosenberg than the people who taught me to question everything, to support my opinions with credible evidence, and to listen carefully to others, lest I had made a mistake in my thinking, accepted data that was less than trustworthy, or ignored data that might change my view of things.
Guess graduate school is now run more like the universities in Germany from 1933 to 1945.
Pity!
“If we allow this mob mentality to take hold . . .”
Too late.
Tribalists, collectivists, and fascists-in-spirit have long had a strangle-hold over academia.
In academia, there’s a name for this gang warfare: “academic mobbing.” It’s the equivalent of playground bullies: “We don’t like Susie.” Only these academics are playing for keeps — to keep shoveling a party-line, evil ideology down the throats of bright, innocent students.
They are neither scholars nor educators. They are propagandists.
All of acaddmia? A blanket statement? No exceptions? Not even Hillsdale College?
As a U of Chicago alumnus, and fellow Fiji of Jonathon’s, I am saddened when I hear of this sort of nonsense.
Jonathan*
What do you expect when a third rate “graduate” degree plagiarized by Hunter Biden’s mother affords her the title of “Doctor”? This is our new normal. America’s finest days are behind us. This is not new information. Sorry.
Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an M.D.
By Joseph Epstein
Dec. 11, 2020
WSJ
Madame First Lady—Mrs. Biden—Jill—kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter. Any chance you might drop the “Dr.” before your name? “Dr. Jill Biden” sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic. Your degree is, I believe, an Ed.D., a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware through a dissertation with the unpromising title “Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs.” A wise man once said that no one should call himself “Dr.” unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.
Cue Pink Floyd:
“what are we as intellectuals”
I do not see intellectuals. I see a bunch of little kids given the keys to the car.
Public education is rotten, from the ground up. The DoE and DoJ have weaponized CRT in public schools so that by the time a student hits college age the woke indoctrination is complete. Higher education was always hostile toward free speech to some degree. Today that hostility has reached critical mass. The beast cannot be cured; it can only be starved.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
The left has no reasonable responses to reasonable questions, so their only alternative is to censor.
Cruel! Cowardly! Counter-intuitive! In my humble opinion, the “Diversity and Inclusion” theme is an artificial construct. It has now morphed into “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI). DEI is a dangerous movement because it establishes artificial boundaries that would otherwise not exist. I simply cannot take seriously academic institutions that promote DEI. What happened to diversity of thought?
Dr. Abbot has an excellent article on SubStack.
His area of research is likely beyond the cerebral cortex of the cisgender white privileged folks (fylks?) whose sole expertise is grammatical contortions in their (they/them?) use of pronouns, hardly the stuff of applied math. They’re just ticked their math skills stink.
😎
From his linked bio
Biography
I have an undergraduate degree in physics (2004, Harvard) and a PhD in applied math (2008, Harvard). I came to the University of Chicago as a Chamberlin Fellow in 2009 and stayed on as a faculty member in 2011.
Research Interests
I use mathematical and computational models to understand and explain fundamental problems in Earth and Planetary Sciences. I have worked on problems related to climate, paleoclimate, the cryosphere, planetary habitability, and exoplanets, but I’m always excited to think about new things. I work best with students who have strong mathematical skills that they want to apply to cool problems. Recently I’ve been focusing a lot of effort on terrestrial exoplanets and habitability. We have a really great community with three faculty in our department and three in astronomy working on exoplanets. Here is a list of our recent PhD graduates in the area. Right now I’m particularly interested in planetary dynamics and how it relates to habitability.
This type of activism is not spontaneous. The “proponents” of such absurdity are being manipulated just as members of a cult are manipulated. Same principles of mind control. Group think is nothing less than unchallenged thinking. It is also a propaganda technique to shout down opposing views and dissenters.
If opponents can’t be hushed then they are smeared and delegitimized much like the fictional Emmanuel Goldstein was in the daily Two Minute Hate in George Orwell’s “1984.” His demonization was used by the Party to keep people in line.
Professor Turley, you are right. This is chilling.
For some reason, the seal of UMass Amherst was used to illustrate an article about MIT.
Are these people the illegitimate children of Joseph McCarthy?
You’re getting close, but looking at the wrong side of that coin.
The good news is, Princeton invited him to speak on the same day he was supposed to do the MIT lecture. At least there’s one university not filled with cowards. On another free speech note: Biden is now calling in his FBI dogs to investigate parents opposing school board decisions about CRT and mask mandates. One report said that the national school board requested that the government use the Patriot Act against these activist parents. I guess only Democrats will be allowed to protest in future.
They are going after parents concerned about their kids getting indoctrinated…so they are domestic terrorists…but the illegals that are harassing a Senator in the bathroom and on airplanes are just part of the process?? We live in upside down world.
Don’t forget:
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna50354459
https://cms.nsba.org/News/2021/federal-assistance-letter
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-addresses-violent-threats-against-school-officials-and-teachers
Sickening of the current Fed govt.
Next week Biden Adm. & AG Merrick Garland will likely be file Terrorist Charges against the old ladies & men the volunteer to run the nation’s school cross walks.
What a total crap show, naming all current citizens as enemies of the Federal Bureaucracy Labyrinthine. LOL Nutz
This is an egregious overreach by the federal government.
Remember when Democrats characterized Trump’s Presidency as a threat to democracy, violated political norms and was destabilizing the fabric of our nation?
Fun times.
Left-Wing Billionaire George Soros Bankrolling Group Behind Harassment of Kyrsten Sinema
Open Society Foundation gave Living United $1.5 million in 2019
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/soros-gave-to-left-wing-group-that-accosted-sinema/
Lefty fascists at work.
These people take advantage of our tolerance to try to impose censorship and the destruction (yes, they will destroy the careers and lives) of a despised minority.
What they are doing is itself a crime.