(Dec 12, 2017 08:09 PM)Syne Wrote: Sure, let us know how long a bridge engineered on "other ways of knowing" and "holistic engineering" holds up.
Exactly. This woman might not be bright enough to see that she's playing into the hands of her opponents. The natural conclusion to draw is that if you want a competent engineer who knows what he's doing and is capable of meeting the academic standards of the profession, hire a white (or Asian) male.
Quote:“One of rigor’s purposes is, to put it bluntly, a thinly veiled assertion of white male (hetero)sexuality,” she writes, explaining that rigor “has a historical lineage of being about hardness, stiffness, and erectness; its sexual connotations—and links to masculinity in particular—are undeniable.”
That reads like pseudo-poetic stream of consciousness. A word ('rigor') creates an image in her mind that reminds her of something else (an erect penis) , and that association becomes an alternative to logic and somehow magically turns into an argument against academic standards in engineering.
What's most appalling is that this individual is the head of Purdue's School of Engineeering Education. She has won awards from the National Science Foundation for her work in what she calls "pedagogies of liberation" in engineering (translation: the politicization of engineering classrooms.)
It's examples like this that make me increasingly skeptical about anything that university professors say. There's no way that I'm willing to accept something that seems wrong in my estimation, merely on authority, just because a "professor" or a "scientist" says it. I'm proudly and defiantly, if not a "denier" certainly a skeptic.