Yes, and?

From "M.I.T. has behaved disgracefully in capitulating to a politically motivated campaign. This is part of a larger trend of the politicization of science." by Ann Althouse.

She is commenting on the most recent risible instance of wokeness in academia, MIT's cancelling of professor's presence because their words and ideas might make some intellectual lightweights and emotional defectives feel bad.  Pshaw.  Reality will be coming for both the snowflakes and for the weak institutions.  Weakness attracts barbarians like blood attracts sharks.

Althouse has a great observation towards the end.

You know, back in the 1980s, at the University of Wisconsin, I heard a Critical Race Theory professor take the position that affirmative action was a manifestation of systemic racism. That was a legitimate subject of debate for people who were developing the theory. But of course, I also heard professors — mainly white professors — actively suppressing debate. Affirmative action was the chosen policy, so don't dare say anything against it. Don't test it. 

But why not test everything — especially if your hypothesis is that white privilege is hidden inside whatever white people do? If the answer is that it makes black students feel unwelcome or unsafe, you ought to have to test that answer for hidden racism. Isn't it mostly white people demanding that their policy not be questioned? 

Look at this quote from Phoebe A. Cohen, a Williams College geosciences professor and department chair: "This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated."

Yes, and? Affirmative action comes from a world in which white men dominated. Test the idea. Test the idea of testing the idea. If you won't even do that, you are circling the drain.

If you won't question your assumptions then you are no scientist or intellectual.  Merely a poseur.  A geosciences professor?  Perhaps not really.  How can you be a geoscientist if you are unwilling to be a scientist?

But Althouse's prompt is even more pressing.  "This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated." is an untrue statement.  The idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which a small minority of white men dominated.  

The Woke seem completely oblivious to fact that we emerged from tens of thousands of years of evolution which, through reality, created hierarchical repressive institutions, always dominated by a small minority of men.  The blessing of the Age of Enlightenment and Classical Liberalism is that it entices us to imagine a world in which all have equal natural rights and full participation of free individuals carrying the burden only of their own actions.  

Such a world has been with us for some 2-300 years and has transformed our species.  We live longer.  We live healthier,  We know more.  We socialize more and with a greater diversity.  We take risks we never could have afforded.  We have more choices.  We have unimaginably more prosperity.

And while the evolution of this world view and all its benefits emerged from a ruthlessly hierarchical male European context, it continued to evolve and spread, in fits and starts, across the whole globe to everyone's massive benefit.

To condemn Age of Enlightenment thinking and Classical Liberalism because it emerged from the primordial swamp of hierarchy and mortal coercion is to commit the genetic fallacy.  

The genetic fallacy (also known as the fallacy of origins or fallacy of virtue) is a fallacy of irrelevance that is based solely on someone's or something's history, origin, or source rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring the positive or negative esteem from the earlier context. In other words, a claim is ignored in favor of attacking or championing its source.

The fallacy therefore fails to assess the claim on its merit. The first criterion of a good argument is that the premises must have bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim in question.  Genetic accounts of an issue may be true, and they may help illuminate the reasons why the issue has assumed its present form, but they are not conclusive in determining its merits.

According to "Professor" Phoebe Cohen's reasoning, no beneficial new behavior or novel actions should be tolerated because all of those new behaviors and novel actions necessarily emerged from a world dominated by a small minority of repressive men.  And even if the new ideas were from individuals not of the repressive minority.  

It is an existential irony that the repressive and coercive Phoebe Cohens of the world are demonstrating that the openness and tolerance of Age of Enlightenment thinking and Classical Liberalism has opened the door to repression and coercion by granting special privileges to the underperforming and only notional achievers such as Phoebe Cohen.  She makes the inadvertent case that Age of Enlightenment thinking and Classical Liberalism opened the door to intellectual barbarism.  

BTW, as is often the case, there is much intellectual meat and humor among Althouse's commenters.  As sampling:

William said...

"Yes, and? Affirmative action comes from a world in which white men dominated. Test the idea. Test the idea of testing the idea. If you won't even do that, you are circling the drain."

Should be ——> If you won't even do that, you are not a scientist.

gahrie said...

"This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated."

This can be said of literally everything. Feminism and the BLM come from a world in which White men dominated. 

Ignorance is Bliss said...

This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated.

Did you even consider the possibility that white men dominated due to this idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism?

If you don't want to keep being dominated, maybe try a little intellectual debate and rigor yourself. 

Richard said...

"This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated."

Please tell me this is sarcasm and not a statement of her beliefs. Why is she trying to prove that women do not belong in science?

Sigivald said...

" "This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated." "

Someone ought to tell her that that's true of literally all of her ideas, even ones she has right now, since I'm assured white men dominate the world even now.

(Even more ironic is that it technically applies to ideas from places in the world where white men don't dominate things, because it's still in "a world" where they "do".

Somehow that corrupts all ideas in a way that cannot be explicated or tested, just because "white men dominate the world".

And this person is supposed to be a scientist! And in a real sciences field, not even sociology or something!) 

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

"...Phoebe A. Cohen, a Williams College geosciences professor and department chair."

Flat earth? Turtles all the way down? What need of hypotheses and testing? The farm animals looked at the wall, which now read "The Science of Belief." Few scarcely remembered that it had previously read "Believe the Science."