Professor Dorian Abbott of the University of Chicago Threatened for Expressing Dissent over DEI Policy

What is a hero?  There are many types.  One type of hero is someone who steps up to do what is right and say what is true knowing that the consequences will be painful and potentially damaging to one's livelihood.  The scene is the University of Chicago, which issued the strongly worded "Chicago Statement" in 2015. Here is an excerpt:

“Because the University is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn . . . . [I]t is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”

I learned of the story of Geophysics Professor Abbott through a series of tweets by Colin Wright. Abbot's crime was to question his department's DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) policies. His concerns included the following:

My basic points are: (1) We need to think through the consequences of DEI efforts to make sure they aren’t hurting promising scientists of all demographics, (2) There are major societal problems that we should try to fix as a society as well as by giving our own time and money off campus, but adjusting departmental ratios at elite universities does not really address them, and (3) the current academic climate is making it extremely difficult for people with dissenting viewpoints to voice their opinions.

Abbot's concerns resulted in a letter to Geophysics Department signed by 130 graduate students and post-docs demanding that Abbott be stripped  of all titles, courses, and privileges. Those signing the letter claimed that Abbot's opinions "threaten the safety and belonging of all underrepresented groups" and are "an aggressive act." They issued 11 absurd demands that, again, include a demand that the University ruin Professor Abbott's career. Here is the starting point (click on this link to jump in):

Professor Abbott detailed events of Mid-November in this document.  Here's an excerpt from his report:

On Saturday, 11/14/20, friends started telling me that there were a large number of people on Twitter misrepresenting what I was arguing, saying untrue things about me, and even demanding that I be fired. One friend noted that there were a number of tweets using the logic: “I don’t feel safe when you object to my premises, therefore you cannot object to my premises on campus.” I found this very upsetting because it confirmed my fear that certain people are exploiting the language of personal trauma to silence anyone with dissenting opinions on these issues.

Analysis: I believe that this situation was caused by the collision of two different strongly held worldviews. I subscribe to the traditional University of Chicago perspective, as outlined recently in what has become known as the Chicago Statement. In this view academic freedom and the tolerance of dissenting views are given prominence. The reason for this is that it is important for promoting the discovery of new knowledge, which is the main purpose of a modern university. I and many other faculty specifically chose to work at the University of Chicago in part because it has always affirmed this attitude. The alternative viewpoint is that certain groups feel inherently threatened on campus, and need to be protected from anything that might make them feel unsafe or happy to pursue their work. I am sympathetic to this viewpoint and agree in some cases, such as general department and classroom climate, but I feel that it cannot be applied to intellectual discussions. The reason is that it is associated with the type of logic noted above, in which the position is taken: “I don’t feel safe when you object to my premises, therefore you cannot object to my premises on campus.” This is similar to what philosophers call “begging the question,” or “assuming the answer,” and obviously is not an effective way to resolve an intellectual dispute correctly.

I invite you to click on these links and to keep following this story to see whether the University of Chicago will honor its stated principles that universities must always be places where dissent will always be invited.

Continue ReadingProfessor Dorian Abbott of the University of Chicago Threatened for Expressing Dissent over DEI Policy

People Who Refuse to Read What J. K. Rowling Writes about People Who are Transgender Hate Her for her Writings.

This Tweet and others by John Cleese on transgender issues are eye-opening and raise an important point. This can be confirmed quickly by cruising Twitter. Numerous people refuse to read what J. K. Rowling writes about people who are transgender, yet they hate her for what she supposedly said. This is even more distressing than the large number of people who read only headlines before responding to posts or sharing the entire article. "59 percent of all links shared on social networks aren’t actually clicked on at all, implying the majority of article shares aren’t based on actual reading." I've seen it repeatedly on Twitter that Woke Folk claim that Rowling has said things that she never said.  Tweets by or about Abigail Shrier draw hate from the same crowd (and from large media outlets), most of whom claim that she is "anti trans," when 1) there is no evidence of this and 2) Shrier's book, Irreversible Damage, focuses only on teenagers who are undergoing surgery and hormone treatment based upon self-diagnosis and without the benefit of any counseling in an attempt to change their gender. 

Continue ReadingPeople Who Refuse to Read What J. K. Rowling Writes about People Who are Transgender Hate Her for her Writings.

ACLU Attorney Joins a Nationwide Effort to Ban Abigail Shrier’s Book: Irreversible Damage

In today's WSJ, Abigail Shrier describes the environment into which she released her book, Irreversible Damage:

Social contagions exist, and teen girls are particularly susceptible to them. The book takes a hard look at whether the sudden spike in transgender identification among teen girls is yet another social contagion to befall girls who, in another era, might have fallen prey to anorexia or bulimia . . .Many transgender adults, including some I interviewed for the book, agree that teen girls are undergoing medical transition too fast with too little oversight. Others disagree and have written books. Amid a sea of material unskeptically promoting medical transition for teenage girls, there’s one book that investigates this phenomenon and urges caution. That is the book the activists seek to suppress.

The WSJ article is titled:  "Does the ACLU Want to Ban My Book?"

Despite the importance of Shrier's book, it is being treated as though it an attempt to harm teenage girls when it is actually providing critically important information aimed at protecting teenaged girls as well as encouraging a much needed conversation.

There is nothing hateful in suggesting that most teenagers are not in a good position to approve irreversible alterations to their bodies, particularly if they are suffering from trauma, OCD, depression, or any of the other mental-health problems that are comorbid with expressions of dysphoria. And yet, here we are.

Target removed Irreversible Damage from its shelves this week, until it received an uproar from Twitter supporters of Shrier's right to promote her concerns. This is despite the fact that Robin DiAngelo's blatantly racist book, White Fragility, has been freely available at Target. Amazon has refused to allow Schrier's publisher to advertise her book on its site despite the fact that Irreversible Damage is the #1 book in several categories at Amazon.  Newspapers and magazines are refusing to review Irreversible Damage:

In any case, every major newspaper and legacy magazine summarily turned interested journalists down. Whether they would have reviewed my book favorably or unfavorably, I have no idea—and it doesn’t matter. Kirkus, which reviews 10,000 titles per year, including self-published and obscure works—pretended my book didn’t exist. Its editors, too busy heaping praise on the Trans Teen Survival Guide, When Aiden Became a Brother, Jack (Not Jackie), Rethinking Normal, and of course, Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out.

Two days ago, Chase Strangio of the "free speech" ACLU Tweeted that Shrier's book should be censored.

This is the sort of Tweet on posts when one has not actually read Shrier's book.  I am halfway thru her book (and I had seen her lengthy interview with Joe Rogan). Strangio's Tweet completely mischaracterized Shrier's book, which shows absolute deference to the personal decisions of transgender adults. She urges that they should all receive the full protection under the law.

In response to Strangio's outrageously false Tweet, Glenn Greenwald writes:

It is nothing short of horrifying, but sadly also completely unsurprising, to see an ACLU lawyer proclaim his devotion to “stopping the circulation of [a] book” because he regards its ideas as wrong and dangerous. There are, always have been, and always will be people who want to stop books from being circulated: by banning them, burning them, pressuring publishing houses to rescind publishing contracts or demanding corporations refuse to sell them. But why would someone with such censorious attitudes, with a goal of suppressing ideas with which they disagree, choose to go to work for the ACLU of all places?

As far the claim that Shrier is engaging in "hate speech," consider this excerpt from her recent article at Quillette "Gender Activists Are Trying to Cancel My Book. Why is Silicon Valley Helping Them?"

Sean Scott, a member of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), heard of my book in the fall, and shared what he knew with other science writers. He noted that Nature Communications had published a study “to investigate whether autistic traits were elevated in transgender and gender-diverse individuals.” (To no one’s surprise, they are: Autistic children develop all kinds of strongly expressed fixations about the world they perceive.) Then he wrote: “This, along with [Wall Street Journal] columnist [Abigail Shrier’s] recent book on the onset of transgenderism amongst young girls… should hopefully shed some overdue light on a very sensitive, politically charged topic that potentially carries lifelong medical consequences.” Sound like hate speech? I didn’t think so.

This saga will continue with the political Left increasingly embracing its new role as the anti-free-speech party.  The Left is showing an increased willingness cancel good-hearted people based on false pretenses and an exuberant willingness to peddle faux science at least as well as any nut job on the political Right. And perhaps even better than the political Right.

As noted by Shrier in Quillette, she has received much support from parents who are seeing signs of transgender social contagion in their daughters.  The sought to share this information with other concerned parents. GoFundMe quickly shut down these efforts:

Parents who’ve lived through this social contagion—who’d seen it strike daughters who’d never before exhibited signs of gender dysphoria in childhood—became so alarmed at suppression efforts that they dug into their own pockets to promote my work. That’s how I became one of the few authors in the world to have her own billboard in West Hollywood. Other parents started an account on GoFundMe, a website that facilitates fundraising efforts for all sorts of causes. GoFundMe closed the account. The parents started another campaign. GoFundMe closed that account, too. If a mentally fragile 18-year-old wants help removing her healthy breasts, GoFundMe will happily facilitate it. (The site currently hosts over 35,000 campaigns to pay for female “top surgery” alone.) But if you believe your daughter has become caught up in a movement that will leave her angry, regretful, maimed, and sterile, you’re out of luck.

This saga will continue with the political Left increasingly embracing its new role as the anti-free-speech party.  The Left is showing an increased willingness cancel good-hearted people based on false pretenses and an exuberant willingness to peddle faux science at least as well as any nut job on the political Right. And perhaps even better than the political Right.

Where do you draw your line? When are you going muster the courage to speak out against the excesses of Woke culture? Is it when an Attorney for the ACLU actively seeks to ban an important well-researched book by a good-hearted woman? Yes, I'm referring to the ACLU, whose core principle is advocating for free speech. Or is it when there is a concerted nationwide effort (including Amazon, Target and GoFundMe) to refuse to allow discussion of blatantly anti-scientific claims that endanger millions of teenage girls in the U.S.? Not long ago, only 1 in 10,000 people were diagnosed with sexual disphoria. Are we really willing to stand by when 2% of teenagers have now been convinced by activists on social media and disreputable profit-taking healthcare providers that they were born in the wrong bodies?

Continue ReadingACLU Attorney Joins a Nationwide Effort to Ban Abigail Shrier’s Book: Irreversible Damage

Bill Maher Discusses Dangers Awaiting the Democratic Party Despite Joe Biden’s Victory

IMO, Bill Maher is spot-on here. If the Democrats (and their supporters) don't find the courage to speak out about these excesses of the Woke fringe of the political Left, they won't even be able to win the office of dog catcher next election--we just witnessed how badly Democrats were hurt in lower tier federal and state elections from coast to coast.

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In a year Democrats hoped to capture the Senate and bolster their House majority, the loss of so much ground in Congress has touched off an intense volley of finger-pointing, insults and plotting by each feuding faction to keep the other out of party leadership posts. The familiar ideological rift between the left and the center-left is intensifying after an election in which the message sent by voters was so muddled: embracing Joe Biden while spurning so many down-ballot Democrats.

Joe Biden would have lost in a truly massive landslide except that Trump was the worst candidate who has ever run for the office of President. Biden (for whom I voted) should have won by at least 90/10 over such an arrogant proudly-ignorant self-absorbed bully, yet almost half of our country voted against Biden. As it was, had merely 200,000 people in key states swapped their votes, Trump would have been reelected by a "landslide" the equivalent of the "landslide" Biden's supporters are currently proclaiming. We can't depend on the Republicans ever again choosing such a bad candidate. This bodes terribly for 2022 as indicated (in Maher's video) by Abigail Spanberger (U.S House of Rep-VA).

Here's an inconvenient fact: Many Republicans were voting against the Democrats, not for Trump, and not because "they are all racists."  If you don't believe this, it is because you have been unwilling to listen to real life Republicans who live and work in your community. It's time for all of us to do some serious soul searching. We need to confidently reassert evidence-based principles that have largely (though admittedly imperfectly) worked over time: It is a good thing to reward hard work and competence. It's critically important to set aside our feelings and self-critically get the facts correct before we discuss any political issue. It is absurd to loudly proclaim, contrary to strong evidence, that every "white" person is a "racist." It is unhinged to argue that police should be "abolished" or "defunded" in light the inevitable consequences of defunding, especially on poor communities (who largely want more police presence, not less). Here's a recent crime report from Minnesota, which actively defunded its police:

Homicides in Minneapolis are up 50 percent, with nearly 75 people killed across the city so far this year. More than 500 people have been shot, the highest number in more than a decade and twice as many as in 2019. And there have been more than 4,600 violent crimes — including hundreds of carjackings and robberies — a five-year high.
Do the Democrats really want to take back some seats in 2022?  If so, we need to have the courage to speak out against the sanctimonious left fringe, which excels at making cartoons out of complex individual people by jamming them into identity-silos and rigging public speech with dozens of hair-triggers.

Most of us recognize Wokeness to be a terrible foundation for collaborating with each other to run our country, but we are hesitant to speak out because we might be called names by the fringe left. It often feels uncomfortable to speak up because the Woke are so well embedded in many of America's primary sense-making institutions, including universities, media and political entities.  It will all be much easier if we encourage each other to start publicly saying what almost all of us are privately thinking.  It's time to get to work.

Continue ReadingBill Maher Discusses Dangers Awaiting the Democratic Party Despite Joe Biden’s Victory

New Rule: Don’t Talk about Abigail Shrier’s Well-Researched Book on Gender Transitioning Among Teenaged Girls

I am saddened and angered, but not surprised, by this systematic censorship of Abigail Shrier's well-researched book. Many of the most dangerous things being done by our news media Nannies consist of things you cannot see: important issues they completely refuse to discuss. You can read my original post on this topic here.

I've pasted in evidence of Abigail Shrier's claim below. The people driving the censorship know that if this issue is carefully and dispassionately discussed (as Shrier has done in her book), the jig is up. Untold damage is being done to teenage girls. We need to stop and ask ourselves (as Shrier book does) "What the hell are we doing?"

See the Tweets below for some of the evidence:

Continue ReadingNew Rule: Don’t Talk about Abigail Shrier’s Well-Researched Book on Gender Transitioning Among Teenaged Girls