Geophysicist Dorian Abbott Discusses the Immorality of DEI Programs

Peter Boghossian sat down to take about the immorality of DEI programs with Dorian Abbot. Intro:

In 2021, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) canceled a high-profile lecture by Dr. Dorian Abbot, a renowned geophysicist from the University of Chicago. The topic of the lecture was not the issue. Rather, Dorian was targeted by Social Justice activists because of his critique of DEI ideology. MIT buckled to the demands of a handful of ideologues, inadvertently contributing to discussions about academic censorship.

MIT did not expect the blowback it received for hobbling scientific inquiry in favor of ideological conformity. MIT alumni formed the Free Speech Alliance and its faculty overwhelmingly voted to adopt a university statement regarding freedom of expression. Since then, Dorian has become a leading figure in the fight for academic freedom of thought, speech, and inquiry.

In this conversation, Peter Boghossian and Dorian discuss the MIT fiasco, the proper aim of academia, the immorality of DEI, speech as “violence,” University of Chicago’s commitment to academic freedom, finding meaning through religion and naturalism, Dorian’s rejection of tyrannical “equality” mandates, and much more."

Abbott takes the position that DEI programs are immoral because they are based on racism. Instead, he proposes that hirings should be based on merit, fairness and equality, as he argues in a Newsweek article published August 12, 2021.  Excerpt from that article:

DEI violates the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment. It entails treating people as members of a group rather than as individuals, repeating the mistake that made possible the atrocities of the 20th century. It requires being willing to tell an applicant "I will ignore your merits and qualifications and deny you admission because you belong to the wrong group, and I have defined a more important social objective that justifies doing so." It treats persons as merely means to an end, giving primacy to a statistic over the individuality of a human being.

DEI compromises the university's mission. The core business of the university is the search for truth. A university's intellectual environment depends fundamentally on its commitment to hiring the most talented and best trained minds: any departure from this commitment must come at the expense of academic excellence, and ultimately will compromise the university's contribution to society. This point is particularly urgent given that DEI considerations often reduce the pool of truly eligible candidates by a factor of two or more.

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Freddie DeBoer asks Whether College is Worth It . . .

Freddie DeBoer's newest article raises an issue of importance for so many of us these days: Whether College is Worth It. I recommend Freddie's entire article, but here's an excerpt to introduce the topic:

Those of you who have read my (brilliant, eye-opening, majestic) first book know that I do indeed think we are pushing too many people into the college pipeline. But my resistance is a little different than most; it’s not a reflection on the cost of college, at least not for the students. I think a) we push so many people into college because the Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal consensus destroyed middle class jobs in industry and manufacturing and we don’t have many alternatives and b) we shouldn’t push kids into college because most of those who have to be pushed will prove to lack the cognitive and soft skills necessary for them to capitalize on their degrees anyway. When people obsess over the college pipeline, they do so because they think that college can turn everybody into a busy little meritocrat, the kind who go on to get jobs at Google or a SLAC or the Ford Foundation or the Department of the Interior. But the high school excellence to college to enviable PMC employment cycle depends on a level of natural intellectual talent, plus the ability to delay gratification and keep to a schedule etc., that many people don’t have. So we need other models, and in the book I explore some.

Here’s the thing, though. In the debate as it exists in the real world, I think a really trenchant question for the kids who forego college is this: what will you do instead? How will you spend those four-plus years of your life, if not in school?

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Ukraine PsyOp Exposed by Matt Orfalea

This is how these corrupt and manipulative politicians and "news reporters" gaslight you and mislead you, intentionally and repeatedly. THIS is why it is my strong default to disbelieve everything and anything politicians or corporate news outlets tell us. This includes NYT, WaPo, NPR, CNN and MSNBC (as well as Fox). They are playing us on Ukraine just like they did with COVID, transgender ideology, "anti-racism," immigration, Russiagate and almost everything else they pretend to cover. Thanks to Matt Orfalea for another great job of documenting this Ukraine PsyOp.

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New Book by Yascha Mounk: The Identity Trap

I received my copy of Yascha Mounk's new book yesterday and it is excellent. Here's the blurb from the publisher:

Blurb from the publisher regarding Yascha Mounk's new book, "The Identity Trap."

For much of history, societies have violently oppressed ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. It is no surprise that many who passionately believe in social justice came to believe that members of marginalized groups need to take pride in their identity to resist injustice.

But over the past decades, a healthy appreciation for the culture and heritage of minority groups has transformed into a counterproductive obsession with group identity in all its forms. A new ideology aiming to place each person’s matrix of identities at the center of social, cultural, and political life has quickly become highly influential. It stifles discourse, vilifies mutual influence as cultural appropriation, denies that members of different groups can truly understand one another, and insists that the way governments treat their citizens should depend on the color of their skin.

This, Yascha Mounk argues, is the identity trap. Though those who battle for these ideas are full of good intentions, they will ultimately make it harder to achieve progress toward the genuine equality we desperately need. Mounk has built his acclaimed scholarly career on being one of the first to warn of the risks right-wing populists pose to American democracy. But, he shows, those on the left and center who are stuck in the identity trap are now inadvertent allies to the MAGA movement.

In The Identity Trap, Mounk provides the most ambitious and comprehensive account to date of the origins, consequences, and limitations of so-called “wokeness.” He is the first to show how postmodernism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory forged the “identity synthesis” that conquered many college campuses by 2010. He lays out how a relatively marginal set of ideas came to gain tremendous influence in business, media, and government by 2020. He makes a nuanced philosophical case for why the application of these ideas to areas from education to public policy is proving to be so deeply counterproductive—and why universal, humanist values can best serve the vital goal of true equality. In explaining the huge political and cultural transformations of the past decade, The Identity Trap provides truth and clarity where they are needed most.

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