How serious are we about addressing climate change? On the one hand, world leaders, save China and Russia, are meeting in Glasgow to make promises for the future they are unable to keep. On the other hand, a climate scientist was disinvited from speaking at MIT, not because he didn’t have great scholarly value on this matter of grave world importance, but because of his views on diversity and inclusion.
What are those views that have made him such a pariah, so hated, such a threat of harm to marginalized people that he could not possibly be tolerated? University of Chicago professor Dorian Abbot explains.
I believe that every human being should be treated as an individual worthy of dignity and respect. In an academic context, that means evaluating people for positions based on their individual qualities, not on membership in favored or disfavored groups. It also means allowing them to present their ideas and perspectives freely, even when we disagree with them.
I care for all of my students equally. None of them are overrepresented or underrepresented to me: They represent themselves. Their grades are based on a process that I define at the beginning of the quarter. That process treats each student fairly and equally. I hold office hours for students who would like extra help so that everyone has the opportunity to improve his or her grade through hard work and discipline.
While there is room to quibble over whether anyone is owed respect, or respect is earned, for example, that too is within the parameters of the freedom to present ideas and perspectives. So what about this seemingly benign vision made Abbot not merely a choice whom some would find distasteful, but a pariah whose voice on the entirely different, and some might argue critical, subject of climate geophysics, had to be silenced lest the evil molecules that seep out of his words into the souls of listeners at MIT pollute their moral purity?
Is it his refusal to accept that favored groups must be treated more favorably? Is it his emphasis on individual achievement and responsibility? Is it his respect for “hard work and discipline”?
I run a large course on the politically charged topic of climate change. But I refuse to indoctrinate students. The course presents the basic scientific evidence and encourages students to think for themselves about the best solutions to the problem. I correct my students when they make scientifically unsound arguments, but I encourage the full range of political perspectives as students work out their preferred societal response. These practices reflect an understanding that the pursuit of truth is the highest purpose of a university and an acknowledgment that I myself could be wrong.
What makes the scenario that arose at MIT, of all places, significant is that the underlying subject, climate change, is an existential crisis to so many. This, we’re told, is a matter of such extreme concern that the future of humanity, of the planet, depends upon it. Whether this is correct is irrelevant; this is what many, including people far more knowledgeable on the subject than I will ever be, have concluded. So if true, would there be anything, any cause, any ideological tenet, more critical to humanity than to find the best science, the “truth,” to address this global catastrophe?
Apparently not. Better to silence Abbot on the subject of global warming than to allow his ideas of individual worth to pollute the infinite corridor.
It is true that someone will occasionally say something that hurts your feelings. But hurt feelings are no reason to ban certain topics. We are all responsible for our own feelings. We cannot control things that are external to us, such as the comments of others, but we can control how we respond to them. The ancient Stoics developed practices to discipline emotions and pursue rational thought. These techniques have been refined in modern times in logotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy.
Instead of cultivating grievances and encouraging resentment, schools and universities can teach these practices and promote the principle that no one can truly harm us but ourselves. That principle allows for the expression of hurt feelings that does not involve restrictions on speech. This will have the added benefit of preparing students for a world in which anything can hurt their feelings—if they let it.
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that anyone who wants to find offense badly enough will do so, no matter what depth of intellectual dishonesty is demanded. Even if that means that a presentation on climate change must take a backseat to the horrors of objectivity and rigor, those signs of white male dominance.
Having purchased, with enormous pride, a brass rat for my son, the disinvitation of Dorian Abbot from speaking at MIT because of the views he espouses hit hard. Law rarely has answers, but only competing arguments that are pressed for the benefit of our clients in the hope that the marshaling of facts and reason will be persuasive. Science is a very different creature, one where its practitioners eschew the lies, emotions and rationalizations that prevent their calculations, their observations, their methods, from concealing their truths.
You don’t have to agree with Dorian Abbot’s views about equality and personal accomplishment. You don’t have to accept that climate change is an existential crisis of greater importance to humanity than whatever remnants of discrimination outrage you most. But if his views, that each person represents himself, are so horrible that his ideas on climate change cannot be spoken, even in a place so dedicated to scientific discovery as MIT, then what hope is left to fix the problems mankind has created? Each of Prof. Abbot’s students represent themselves. So do we.
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Was the “Dorian Abbot explains” link also meant to go to the WSJ article?
Crap. Wrong link. Now fixed. Thanks for letting me know.
SHG,
I learn a lot from you. It extends from Brass Rats (and a son with whom you are justly proud) to disinviting Dorian Abbot from giving a talk at MIT.
With only a slight smirk, I truly thank you.
All the best.
RGK
Scott’s son might consider forming a redesign committee with disaffected alumni for proposals to the Brass Rat Committee. The Brass Kitten, say. The Brass Snowflake. Geniuses at work.
Brass Monkey? Allow me to submit…
[Ed. Note: No. Just no.]
Beastie Boys, or just the awful attempt at mimicking them?
If you have to ask…
My repertoire extends from the banal to the obscure. But brass kitten isn’t a bad idea.
It’s what the woke minority has become figuratively but they wouldn’t get the point probably. They might go for it.
One minor quibble. You say: “Law rarely has answers, but only competing arguments that are pressed for the benefit of our clients in the hope that the marshaling of facts and reason will be persuasive.”
I would say that real science is also about presenting competing arguments and supporting evidence for the benefit of mankind, in the hope that the marshaling of facts and reason will help us better understand our world. As many have said, science is not about agreement and consensus – it is about poking holes in consensus, continuously.
The amount of ” ies, emotions and rationalizations that prevent their calculations, their observations, their methods, from concealing their truths” in science today is stunning. Climate change is example number one.
I thought about that when I was writing those words, but the fact that truth is hard to find and requires perpetual challenges does not mean that there are no ultimate facts in science. For example, there is gravity, even though it holds us down.
Ouch!!!
There are very few gravity deniers – gravity itself has ways to keep them from multiplying.
But what, exactly gravity IS, and how it works, is the subject of great interest to physicists. Quantum gravity is very much “unsettled science.”
It’s a retread of the failed tactics used by the religious nutjobs in the 90s. If you ain’t with the crackpot peawits, you’re again’ em. Anyone who doesn’t bow to the hat du jour is an obvious heretic who can’t be allowed to speak about anything. Heretical to the hat means heretical to all, and that can be assumed without any actual evaluation. Will this batshit approach ever work for anyone? It seems more likely that it will just keep failing, because normal folk see that it is nuts.
You should do a song about it.
Normal folk! Normal folk!
We’re the most normal folk,
’cause we believe that we are normal folk!
Nice pick. Stills and Young are trading licks in a conversation about normal folk through the whole thing and it’s so good, man.
One increasing view, even from ostensibly smart professionals and academics, is the view that if you don’t fully sign on to the diversity and inclusion initiatives, then you aren’t intelligent or qualified. No matter how many years of experience, how many degrees, how many cited papers, academic awards, etc, you just can’t be a smart person. They will point to something like “Anyone who’s read the Harvard Business Review knows that diverse teams make better decisions” or “Sociology and organizational psychology studies show that diversity *IS* quality”, so if you don’t agree with the studies and/or don’t fully agree with diversity and equity, you’re an anti-science person who rejects data; possibly even a conspiracy theorist if you suggest these studies are biased or ideologically motivated. And not qualified for anything academic or professional. It’s an alarming trend.
Orin Kerr wrote a post years ago called “brilliant people agree with me.” Academics have internalized their bias all too well.
According to legend (ie, it’s Sunday morning and I don’t want to research the details), American physicians made some “breakthrough” discoveries in the 1960s about how long a limb could survive without a blood supply, eg how long you can keep a tourniquet on the leg, say. The word “breakthrough” gets scare quotes, as the findings were actually discovered by evil Nazi experiments 20+ years earlier, but deemed to be forbidden knowledge. Likewise, Israeli audiences were denied/spared the music of Wagner, not because it wasn’t really much better than it sounds, but because of the composer’s supposed ties to the Nazis [Wagner died in 1883].
All this to say, there is a long history of excluding work because of the taint of its origins. The question is whether the work is truly banned, or whether only the person is shunned. Notably, American surgeons in the 1950s somehow “knew” that a tourniquet on the leg could be kept on for 2 hours and not four, but just never cited a source.
I would imagine the best engineering school east of Central Square is not rejecting the science of Abbot, even if they are shamefully keeping the man off campus.
(sorry for proving godwin’s law so quickly)
Curious that you see Abbot’s views on diversity and inclusion as analogous to Nazism.
I mentioned Godwin in anticipation of your comment, acknowledging that the analogy was imperfect [ed: it sucked]. I think there is an important distinction between forbidden knowledge and shunned people. MIT’s behavior was shameful, even if Abbot was a phrenologist. Your speech-content-based sentence-enhancement [ed: you trying to provoke me?] is related to the fact “that the underlying subject, climate change, is an existential crisis to so many.” I would argue that’s relevant only to the extent that Abbot’s work on that topic were excluded.
I like Godwin’s Law better than I like Mike Godwin.
The question here isn’t whether they will ultimately learn whatever it is Abbot had to offer, but the message sent that any deviation from the orthodoxy is more important than science. I didn’t think this was so unclear.
Why are climate change experts flying to Scotland? Zoom is good enough for the rest of us.
You nailed the secret hidden message of this post. Well done.