Interesting look at why some liberals voted for Trump, even in 2020. As a lifelong card-carrying Democrat, I'm annoyed at some of the less liberal aspects of what the Right calls "Cancel Culture." However, I don't get what you mean by "condemning scientific rigor." Your link goes to an article called "Researchers around the world prepare to #ShutDownSTEM and ‘Strike For Black Lives’." It talks only about a one-day pause on work for scientists and academics, to discuss BLM. There's nothing anti-science there.
Thank you for this question/pushback. The link I used was meant more as shorthand for a broader phenomenon rather than the ideal example. But the anti-STEM trend goes beyond that one day strike. It originates with a bizarre (but decades-old) niche in academic critical theory that argues that all the products of the Enlightenment – including ideas like "rationality," "mathematics," and "merit" – are intrinsically bigoted and are essentially the intellectual prison by which European colonialism/white supremacy is perpetuated. There's some substance to this argument, to be sure (surely, the scientific discourse isn't immune to the prejudices of the traditions from which it sprouted). But in recent years this provocative philosophical idea has morphed into a literalist, political program. You can see it in the edges of the push to eliminate standardized testing (an admittedly flawed tool that has nevertheless created a social ladder for many immigrants and people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds). You can see it in equity seminars that disturbingly list "rationality" and "punctuality" as a white attribute. In 2020 the National Museum of African History in DC counted "emphasis on scientific method," "objective thinking" and "quantitative emphasis" as features of "white culture" (If you're interested in that surreal graphic – which the museum eventually took down – here it is: https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/1283483729135112195/photo/1)
If you're interested, we discussed the complexities of these theories (the good and the bad) in our conversations with Moshe Sluhovsky and Chloe Valdary. And please let me know if you feel I didn't answer your question/pushback adequately.
Interesting look at why some liberals voted for Trump, even in 2020. As a lifelong card-carrying Democrat, I'm annoyed at some of the less liberal aspects of what the Right calls "Cancel Culture." However, I don't get what you mean by "condemning scientific rigor." Your link goes to an article called "Researchers around the world prepare to #ShutDownSTEM and ‘Strike For Black Lives’." It talks only about a one-day pause on work for scientists and academics, to discuss BLM. There's nothing anti-science there.
Thank you for this question/pushback. The link I used was meant more as shorthand for a broader phenomenon rather than the ideal example. But the anti-STEM trend goes beyond that one day strike. It originates with a bizarre (but decades-old) niche in academic critical theory that argues that all the products of the Enlightenment – including ideas like "rationality," "mathematics," and "merit" – are intrinsically bigoted and are essentially the intellectual prison by which European colonialism/white supremacy is perpetuated. There's some substance to this argument, to be sure (surely, the scientific discourse isn't immune to the prejudices of the traditions from which it sprouted). But in recent years this provocative philosophical idea has morphed into a literalist, political program. You can see it in the edges of the push to eliminate standardized testing (an admittedly flawed tool that has nevertheless created a social ladder for many immigrants and people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds). You can see it in equity seminars that disturbingly list "rationality" and "punctuality" as a white attribute. In 2020 the National Museum of African History in DC counted "emphasis on scientific method," "objective thinking" and "quantitative emphasis" as features of "white culture" (If you're interested in that surreal graphic – which the museum eventually took down – here it is: https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/1283483729135112195/photo/1)
If you're interested, we discussed the complexities of these theories (the good and the bad) in our conversations with Moshe Sluhovsky and Chloe Valdary. And please let me know if you feel I didn't answer your question/pushback adequately.
Cheers!