Philosopher Peter Boghossian Resigns from Portland State

[Yazata]

"I never once believed ---- nor do I now --- that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion. Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought: to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. This is why I became a teacher and why I love teaching.

But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division."

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/my-univ...-ideas-for

[Syne]

Yep, people paying to be (or have their children) indoctrinated.

[C C]

"[...] But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division."

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/my-univ...-ideas-for

Plus, it's not just serious or critical academic philosophy that is threatened by this invasive reorientation.

Since what ultimately controls science research is the administrative levels of campuses and study institutes. Which are very much influenced by social initiatives, political ideology, humanities prescriptions, etc. And R&D wise, the business/industry sector likewise caters to popular Leftangelical trends. The policies issued from those office establishments is what scientists have to adhere to. In many instances they get rewarded for outputting studies that support scholarly dogmas or give the latter celebrated attention.

So in a crazy kind of way (hooda thunk it possible in the old days), the worst part of philosophy -- the hegemony obsessed, ideocratic mindset descended from the French Revolution, Hegelianism, and Marxism - is flexing itself as science's dominatrix. In a way far worse than it ever did in the old communist regimes, because at least they weren't accommodating and ultimately surrendering to the customs and myths of both pre-modern and postmodern cultures, out of postcolonial guilt.

And the pathetic scientists of today have no backbone to resist it. All it takes is an accusation of racism or sexism for them to fold: Fermilab concedes to Woke ignorance. ("Unfazed by the willful misrepresentation of his words and the incoherence of the response, Lockyer succumbed without a fight...")

And for the sake of pretentious moral posturing, journals like "Nature" last year were babbling silly confessions about being culprits in systemic bigotry without any provocation at all. As if racing to pre-empt a rival's bid to appear noble via such displays of public repentance: "We recognize that Nature is one of the white institutions that is responsible for bias in research and scholarship. The enterprise of science has been — and remains — complicit in systemic racism, and it must strive harder to correct those injustices and amplify marginalized voices." https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01678-x

[Syne]

And the pathetic scientists of today have no backbone to resist it. All it takes is an accusation of racism or sexism for them to fold: Fermilab concedes to Woke ignorance. ("Unfazed by the willful misrepresentation of his words and the incoherence of the response, Lockyer succumbed without a fight...")

To be fair, most people who go into a science career don't tend to have the social acumen to resist such pressure. They come by that lack of backbone naturally, as a direct factor of their chosen profession. We just unreasonable expect that those who study things in a rigorously objective way should be so generally, when it's actually the least empirical fields of study that have the social wherewithal to assert their own agenda as fact.