Dr. Jay Bhatacharya’s Amazing Story

If you asked me five years ago, I might have struggled to name many people I considered to be heroes. I have many heroes now, many of them people who stood up to censorship. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a highly credentialed doctor, which means that we should have been allowed to hear his opinions during the pandemic. But he was censored, so we did not learn of all of these harms that a lock-down would create:

In the following interview, Dr. Bhattacharya tells his story, including his contributions to the Great Barrington Declaration to his role in the case of Missouri v Biden, which appears destined to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

I created the following transcript for those who absorb details better through reading:

The sad fact is that we are living in a time where our once liberal societies are no longer liberal. We live in a deeply illiberal society that punishes people for openly expressing heretical thoughts. And that statement that I just made that we live in, in illiberal society requires some justification. I mean, nominally, we have democracies with constitutions, charters, whatever committed to essential civil liberties necessary for a liberal society.

And I admit, before the pandemic, I took these rights for granted. I took the right to free speech for granted. The right to worship. The right to protest the right to free movement across borders. But during the pandemic, what I learned was that the government could violate each and every one of these rights in the name of infection control. During the pandemic, governments made it nearly impossible for independent scientists to discuss and disseminate ideas contrary to government public health policy. The government censored smeared and defamed dissident scientists who criticized government authorities in the name of science. And I say this from firsthand experience.

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How Public Responds to its Recent Loss of Subscribers

Public, founded by Michael Shellenberger, has recently lost a significant number of subscribers. They responded with an editor's note, which IMO was beautifully written. Here's an excerpt:

Over the last week, we saw the single largest loss of subscribers we have seen in our nearly three years as a publication. Why?

These are some of the messages we received from unsubscribers:

“Don’t lecture us on human rights wrt fighting terrorism. The Geneva Convention wasn’t designed for this.”

“Unbalanced Pro-Israel garbage, amongst all the other garbage that's been accumulating recently.”

“Comparisons between depraved terrorist atrocity and actions designed to ensure that its population can live in safety and security show too much of an absence of moral clarity (or possibly even worse as bordering on antisemitism) to continue following.”

“This tone-deaf most recent post defending free speech of Pro-Hamas supporters turned me off completely.”

“Your support for Israel and their war crimes is reprehensible.”

At first glance, it may appear that the commenters disagree with each other. After all, some people thought we were too pro-Israel, and others thought we weren’t pro-Israel enough. In truth, the commenters agreed that everything they read from us must completely align with their opinions.

We don’t expect our readers to agree with us all the time. We don’t even always agree with each other. Not every article we publish reflects the views of all the editors. Obviously, if our disagreements were so great, we would not work together. But on issues ranging from Ukraine to UAPs to Israelis and Palestinians, you can expect that we have plenty of debates and hold a diversity of views here.

To reiterate: we hope you continue to be a subscriber, paid and free. We are deeply grateful to all of you who are subscribers, and intend to remain ones. We don’t want anyone to unsubscribe, even if — especially if — you disagree with us on some, and even most, things.

We think highly of our readers and welcome healthy disagreements in the comments. We strive to correct any errors we make, and to consider multiple perspectives. We want Public to be an outlet that sometimes confirms your views, sometimes challenges you to think differently, and always gives you new ideas or information to consider.

This is what we seek out from the publications we read, and we want that to be what you find here.

But we would sooner close up shop than compromise on the principles that we hold as journalists, and that we think all journalists should hold. We strongly believe that the principle of human rights must be universally applied, or they are not human rights. We have the same view about freedom of speech: we believe speech rights apply equally to everyone, even those we most firmly disagree with.

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The Wisdom of the Kalven Report

Should Universities (and businesses, sports teams, professional associations) take public positions on hot issues of the day? Or should they leave expression on those issues at the discretion of their individual employees and members?

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: "Now Is the Time for Administrators to Embrace Neutrality: The Israel-Hamas war might finally show colleges the virtues of the Kalven Report.". An excerpt:

The extent to which college leaders should, in addition to their administrative roles, express institutional positions on contestable social and political issues is a matter of legitimate dispute. At one pole are the sentiments expressed in the 1967 Kalven Committee report of the University of Chicago, which argues for “a heavy presumption against the university taking collective action or expressing opinions on the political or social issues of the day ... not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity … but out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.” Exceptions should be made only for situations that “threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry”

Excerpt from the Kalven Report:

The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. It is, to go back once again to the classic phrase, a community of scholars. To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures. A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.

Since the university is a community only for these limited and distinctive purposes, it is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives. It cannot insist that all of its members favor a given view of social policy; if it takes collective action, therefore, it does so at the price of censuring any minority who do not agree with the view adopted. In brief, it is a community which cannot resort to majority vote to reach positions on public issues.

The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints. And this neutrality as an institution has its complement in the fullest freedom for its faculty and students as individuals to participate in political action and social protest. It finds its complement, too, in the obligation of the university to provide a forum for the most searching and candid discussion of public issues.

  

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Conference Panel Discussion on Importance of Biological Sex Cancelled Because of Harm it Would Cause to LBGTQI

From Elizabeth Weiss, Anthropology Professor:

September 25, 2023, my fellow panelists and I received a letter from the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) informing us that our conference panel, “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology”, which had been accepted, is being removed from the program due to the “harm” it will cause the “Trans and LGBTQI community”. We’ve responded to their accusation.

Here is the excuse for the cancellation for the organizers:

Dear panelists, We write to inform you that at the request of numerous members the respective executive boards of AAA and CASCA reviewed the panel submission “Let's Talk about Sex Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology” and reached a decision to remove the session from the AAA/CASCA 2023 conference program(me). This decision was based on extensive consultation and was reached in the spirit of respect for our values, the safety and dignity of our members, and the scientific integrity of the program(me).

The reason the session deserved further scrutiny was that the ideas were advanced in such a way as to cause harm to members represented by the Trans and LGBTQI of the anthropological community as well as the community at large. While there were those who disagree with this decision, we would hope they know their voice was heard and was very much a part of the conversation. It is our hope that we continue to work together so that we become stronger and more unified within each of our associations. Going forward, we will undertake a major review of the processes associated with vetting sessions at our annual meetings and will include our leadership in that discussion

Here is an excerpt from the response from the cancelled panelists.

Your suggestion that our panel would somehow compromise “…the scientific integrity of the programme” seems to us particularly egregious, as the decision to anathematize our panel looks very much like an anti-science response to a politicized lobbying campaign. Had our panel been allowed to go forward, we can assure you that lively contestation would have been welcomed by the panelists and may even have occurred between us, as our own political commitments are diverse. Instead, your letter expresses the alarming hope that the AAA and CASCA will become “more unified within each of our associations” to avoid future debates. Most disturbingly, following other organizations, such as the Society for American Archaeology, the AAA and CASCA have promised that “Going forward, we will undertake a major review of the processes associated with vetting sessions at our annual meetings and will include our leadership in that discussion.” Anthropologists around the world will quite rightly find chilling this declaration of war on dissent and on scholarly controversy. It is a profound betrayal of the AAA’s principle of “advancing human understanding and applying this understanding to the world’s most pressing problems”.

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