Jun 23, 2020 06:40 AM
(This post was last modified: Jun 23, 2020 04:12 PM by C C.)
https://quillette.com/2020/06/20/explori...education/
EXCERPTS (Lenny Pier Ramos): Following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer last month, an odd pattern has been playing out among major scientific institutions. In their public pronouncements, prestigious journals have not only professed their unqualified support for activists seeking to highlight the pervasiveness of racism in our society. They also have delivered fervent shows of contrition in regard to (usually unspecified) sins they’ve committed in the past and their “complicity” in racism more generally.
[...] Evidence of racism, such as is presented in these articles, is primarily traced to a lack of racial diversity among scientists. ... despite the fact that university admission offices and faculties ... have, for decades, worked to offer preferential opportunities ... But in recent years, political arguments surrounding the lack of diversity in education have become more intense and rhetorically ambitious. Many advocates now have turned against the very idea of objective meritocratic standards in education. Some accuse entire academic disciplines of being inherently racist.
A popular idea here is that different groups have different “ways of knowing,” different modes of sense-making, and even different epistemic paradigms. To insist on the exclusionary standard of “Western rationality” would therefore amount to suppressing black, Indigenous, or even female knowledges. [...] the insistence on universal scientific standards is, by this logic, connected to the perpetuation of (male) white supremacy. This emerges from critical theory, a body of thought that casts truth as relative, and asserts that some ideas are accepted over others only because those in power perpetuate them.
The way to remedy this injustice, some therefore argue, is to explicitly politicize science so as to reveal it as a culturally biased enterprise. In Canada, where I live, this political project is often referred to as the “decolonization of the university,” and operates under the institutional umbrella of EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion). [...] the most far-reaching EDI initiatives effectively subordinate science to political activism and even mystical obscurantism.
In its most elaborate form, EDI subjects science to the same treatment as has already been meted out to the Western literary canon: a relentless deconstruction whereby each axiom, value, and commitment is presented as infected by cultural imperialism.
[...] To foster more egalitarian access to education, EDI experts argue, we should diversify our ways of teaching, create less hierarchical classrooms, value story-telling and other culture-specific ways to impart knowledge, pay attention to the inequities created by language differences and by the cultural biases of teaching materials and of professors, pay attention to the power dynamics in classrooms, actively encourage the participation of students whose identities have historically been socially framed as less scientifically adept, and so on.
In its stronger formulation, however, the idea of “other ways of knowing” goes further, to the assertion that not only is our way of learning essentially culturally-specific, but so, too, is our most fundamental mode of making sense of reality. In Canada, this translates into a demand for the inclusion of “Indigenous knowledges,” which are typically understood as being attained not through traditional scientific or rational means, but through a unique understanding of the universe that is particular to Indigenous peoples thanks to their relationship to the land and their singular cultural practices.
[...] Dr. Tajmel leads an ongoing initiative -- with Ingo Salzmann, ... and Dr. Louellyn White ... to “decolonize” ... “Even more than other sciences, physics is a white male dominated field and, thus, a mirror of colonial patterns and social inequality ... physics is considered as ‘hard’ and objective science, disconnected from social life and geopolitical history. This narrative both constitutes and reproduces inequality, which is reflected by the underrepresentation of women, racialized people, and Indigenous peoples in physics.”
This EDI initiative proposes to do what the editor of Science magazine seeks: achieve greater diversity amongst the ranks of physicists by deconstructing its white- and male-dominated culture of physics. But then comes the obscurantism:
"Everybody knows light and every culture has knowledge about light. However, only the physical knowledge is regarded as scientific. We are interested in investigating how colonial scientific knowledge authority was and is still reproduced in the context of light. Decolonizing Light follows complementary approaches: We are engaging Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies for knowledge creation, we are studying colonial anchor points in the history of physics in the context of light, we are studying the views of scientists on colonialism, we’re investigating the discourse on contemporary largescale light experiments."
EDI advocates tend to utilize the opaque jargon germane to the critical humanities, which can serve to shield them somewhat from public scrutiny. [...] Even in Western culture, there was, until recently, a “diversity” of explanations for such basic phenomena as the movement of planets and the origin of humans -- with many of Europe’s most important intellectuals insisting that the Bible provided an authoritative account of the universe. Now that we are regressing to this state of affairs in the name of inclusivity (albeit in non-Christian form), it would be hypocritical to discriminate between mysticisms.
[...] During one of the EDI sessions, I pushed this point and asked Dr. Tajmel if her project did not, ultimately, amount to the reintroduction of religion in science. She responded, without missing a beat, that science itself was a form of a religion. With political demands increasingly taking precedence over the pursuit of truth, it seems only a matter of time before Science and Nature get on board with that idea. ... racial essentialism is back in style thanks to the rise in popularity of critical race theory and related doctrines[/b], according to which color-blind humanism is just another smokescreen for racism.
[...] Midway through the week-long EDI seminar, I struck up a conversation with one of the guest lecturers, a physics professor from South America. I pointed out that what many of her fellow lecturers seemed to be advocating for was the outright rejection of reason and logic in the evaluation of knowledge claims, something which, to my mind at least, amounted to rejecting much of the scientific method. “Well,” she said with a knowing smile, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
This line, of course, belongs to the poet Audre Lorde. And one now often hears it cited to signal the need to unmask a racist essence at the core of our liberal institutions. But if the goal of EDI is really to help students of colour succeed in the sciences, does it not do them a disservice to suggest that their unique ways of knowing are somehow at odds with those of their white peers-and, indeed, with the very subject matter itself? Do Dr. Tajmel and her fellow diversity experts care about their students gaining the knowledge required to, say, advance their lives as employable physicists, engineers, researchers, and academics? Or is the point here to proselytize their hatred of the Western intellectual tradition? The two projects seem mutually exclusive.
[...] Recall that numerous public health experts, propelled into Twitter rhapsodies by ideological trends, have just encouraged massive public gatherings in the midst of a pandemic. The goal, one epidemiologist said, was “to change the narrative that those protesting [police brutality] were ‘unsafe’ and ‘putting people at risk.'” The public might be forgiven for finding this sudden change in “narrative” disconcerting on the part of a scientific establishment that, only days previously, had warned us of catastrophic consequences should social distancing measures be relaxed.
But then, perhaps I am just betraying my bias for “objective” reality. As science becomes increasingly politicized, such thinking could become obsolete. Instead, the “other ways of knowing” used to teach students will emerge from the demands of activists, not the fruits of science. (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS (Lenny Pier Ramos): Following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer last month, an odd pattern has been playing out among major scientific institutions. In their public pronouncements, prestigious journals have not only professed their unqualified support for activists seeking to highlight the pervasiveness of racism in our society. They also have delivered fervent shows of contrition in regard to (usually unspecified) sins they’ve committed in the past and their “complicity” in racism more generally.
[...] Evidence of racism, such as is presented in these articles, is primarily traced to a lack of racial diversity among scientists. ... despite the fact that university admission offices and faculties ... have, for decades, worked to offer preferential opportunities ... But in recent years, political arguments surrounding the lack of diversity in education have become more intense and rhetorically ambitious. Many advocates now have turned against the very idea of objective meritocratic standards in education. Some accuse entire academic disciplines of being inherently racist.
A popular idea here is that different groups have different “ways of knowing,” different modes of sense-making, and even different epistemic paradigms. To insist on the exclusionary standard of “Western rationality” would therefore amount to suppressing black, Indigenous, or even female knowledges. [...] the insistence on universal scientific standards is, by this logic, connected to the perpetuation of (male) white supremacy. This emerges from critical theory, a body of thought that casts truth as relative, and asserts that some ideas are accepted over others only because those in power perpetuate them.
The way to remedy this injustice, some therefore argue, is to explicitly politicize science so as to reveal it as a culturally biased enterprise. In Canada, where I live, this political project is often referred to as the “decolonization of the university,” and operates under the institutional umbrella of EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion). [...] the most far-reaching EDI initiatives effectively subordinate science to political activism and even mystical obscurantism.
In its most elaborate form, EDI subjects science to the same treatment as has already been meted out to the Western literary canon: a relentless deconstruction whereby each axiom, value, and commitment is presented as infected by cultural imperialism.
[...] To foster more egalitarian access to education, EDI experts argue, we should diversify our ways of teaching, create less hierarchical classrooms, value story-telling and other culture-specific ways to impart knowledge, pay attention to the inequities created by language differences and by the cultural biases of teaching materials and of professors, pay attention to the power dynamics in classrooms, actively encourage the participation of students whose identities have historically been socially framed as less scientifically adept, and so on.
In its stronger formulation, however, the idea of “other ways of knowing” goes further, to the assertion that not only is our way of learning essentially culturally-specific, but so, too, is our most fundamental mode of making sense of reality. In Canada, this translates into a demand for the inclusion of “Indigenous knowledges,” which are typically understood as being attained not through traditional scientific or rational means, but through a unique understanding of the universe that is particular to Indigenous peoples thanks to their relationship to the land and their singular cultural practices.
[...] Dr. Tajmel leads an ongoing initiative -- with Ingo Salzmann, ... and Dr. Louellyn White ... to “decolonize” ... “Even more than other sciences, physics is a white male dominated field and, thus, a mirror of colonial patterns and social inequality ... physics is considered as ‘hard’ and objective science, disconnected from social life and geopolitical history. This narrative both constitutes and reproduces inequality, which is reflected by the underrepresentation of women, racialized people, and Indigenous peoples in physics.”
This EDI initiative proposes to do what the editor of Science magazine seeks: achieve greater diversity amongst the ranks of physicists by deconstructing its white- and male-dominated culture of physics. But then comes the obscurantism:
"Everybody knows light and every culture has knowledge about light. However, only the physical knowledge is regarded as scientific. We are interested in investigating how colonial scientific knowledge authority was and is still reproduced in the context of light. Decolonizing Light follows complementary approaches: We are engaging Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies for knowledge creation, we are studying colonial anchor points in the history of physics in the context of light, we are studying the views of scientists on colonialism, we’re investigating the discourse on contemporary largescale light experiments."
EDI advocates tend to utilize the opaque jargon germane to the critical humanities, which can serve to shield them somewhat from public scrutiny. [...] Even in Western culture, there was, until recently, a “diversity” of explanations for such basic phenomena as the movement of planets and the origin of humans -- with many of Europe’s most important intellectuals insisting that the Bible provided an authoritative account of the universe. Now that we are regressing to this state of affairs in the name of inclusivity (albeit in non-Christian form), it would be hypocritical to discriminate between mysticisms.
[...] During one of the EDI sessions, I pushed this point and asked Dr. Tajmel if her project did not, ultimately, amount to the reintroduction of religion in science. She responded, without missing a beat, that science itself was a form of a religion. With political demands increasingly taking precedence over the pursuit of truth, it seems only a matter of time before Science and Nature get on board with that idea. ... racial essentialism is back in style thanks to the rise in popularity of critical race theory and related doctrines[/b], according to which color-blind humanism is just another smokescreen for racism.
[...] Midway through the week-long EDI seminar, I struck up a conversation with one of the guest lecturers, a physics professor from South America. I pointed out that what many of her fellow lecturers seemed to be advocating for was the outright rejection of reason and logic in the evaluation of knowledge claims, something which, to my mind at least, amounted to rejecting much of the scientific method. “Well,” she said with a knowing smile, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
This line, of course, belongs to the poet Audre Lorde. And one now often hears it cited to signal the need to unmask a racist essence at the core of our liberal institutions. But if the goal of EDI is really to help students of colour succeed in the sciences, does it not do them a disservice to suggest that their unique ways of knowing are somehow at odds with those of their white peers-and, indeed, with the very subject matter itself? Do Dr. Tajmel and her fellow diversity experts care about their students gaining the knowledge required to, say, advance their lives as employable physicists, engineers, researchers, and academics? Or is the point here to proselytize their hatred of the Western intellectual tradition? The two projects seem mutually exclusive.
[...] Recall that numerous public health experts, propelled into Twitter rhapsodies by ideological trends, have just encouraged massive public gatherings in the midst of a pandemic. The goal, one epidemiologist said, was “to change the narrative that those protesting [police brutality] were ‘unsafe’ and ‘putting people at risk.'” The public might be forgiven for finding this sudden change in “narrative” disconcerting on the part of a scientific establishment that, only days previously, had warned us of catastrophic consequences should social distancing measures be relaxed.
But then, perhaps I am just betraying my bias for “objective” reality. As science becomes increasingly politicized, such thinking could become obsolete. Instead, the “other ways of knowing” used to teach students will emerge from the demands of activists, not the fruits of science. (MORE - details)