Thank you for this very interesting analysis. As a lifelong academic (my PhD is in biological psychology), my opinion is that much of this is driven by arrogance and intellectual laziness. It's much easier to teach one's political/social points of view about science than to teach the science itself. And it's much easier to get student buy-in when you're simply making things up. I saw the roots of this at The University of Chicago when I was a graduate student in the late 1980's, and I see it now in some of my younger students. It takes no intellectual acumen or effort to concoct a wild story about whiteboards. So, of course it is appealing to do so if you garner accolades. Oddly, I see part of the solution tied to reinforcing academic standards, and having the honesty to call out ridiculousness when it appears (as we do on our Substacks).. Thank you again. Sincerely, Frederick
"One wonders what the authors make of “blackboards”." Obviously, the switch from blackboards to whiteboards in classrooms was a reaction to the civil rights movement and attempt to reassert white supremacy in the classroom. OBVIOUSLY.
“Does anyone actually believe such claptrap?” That is the core question. What in the world are they thinking?
For humans it’s not enough to hold correct beliefs. It’s important to recruit others to collective action around held beliefs, because on the evolutionary scale humans seek social support for survival. A strong mechanism for this recruitment is moralizing perceived threat. This is why all the woke speech sanitizing is presented as a moral imperative. Moral repugnance facilitates emotional recruitment.
A subtlety of this dynamic is that people may intuitively embrace beliefs with compelling moralizing content primarily because of their recruitment potential into coalition--- the moralizing is more primary than the validity of the speech.
This is why invoking “the importance of speaking truth to power” always feels a bit feeble to me. Not that I have a better suggestion, but this wokeness contaminating science is such an atavistic tribalism that it feels impervious to reason. I keep thinking that what is needed is some strong, charismatic leadership at the top of academia.
One reason Trump got elected because many people saw that Biden's mental clothes were worn down despite legacy media and the Democratic Party conspiring to conceal that.
Whatever their philosophical foundations, if any, the key manifestation of "woke" is the claim to a life without responsibility, for the woke, and a life of blame, for the un-woke (i.e. the oppressors).
Excuse my shouting but, THIS IS A DELIBERATE MARXIST REGIME. And by Marxist, I mean a world view that life is only a power struggle between groups, and the only righteous outcome is the supremacy of the proletariat visionaries, measured by the vanquishing of all disagreeable individuals and organizations.
All the expressions of this cultural or Neo-Marxism, from DEI to race, gender, body shape, etc varieties of critical theory are just tactics. Yes, many of the dimwitted woke see these as worthy social ends, but the cabal pushing the core agenda will not stop until they have destroyed all of the core values of our Western enlightenment-based intellectual and cultural systems. Most pertinent here is their goal of crushing what we cherish as science, to be replaced by dogmatic post-modern sophistry, spiced with some indigenous fables.
Perhaps this sounds like tin foil hat paranoia. But the woke have openly told us they planned a long march through our core institutions. And just because many of the marchers are not versant in Marx or Marcuse (or Foucault or Freire) does not mean they do not support the ultimate goal of a totalitarian world.
ps. Welcome back to the unwoke world, Micheal.
pps. Trying to defeat the woke with logic and reasoning will fail, since they reject these (and even the concept of objective truth).
pps. I am in the middle of Weiss' On the Warpath: My Battles With Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors, and recommend it highly.
The woke are equal parts delusional and evil. I am amazed at the ease with which they subsume institutions and get everyone on lockstep with their madness.
Excellent summary! Unfortunately, the number of exhibits of wokeness from each domain — education, scientific publishing, science funding — can be easily extended 100-fold (see, for example, the references at the end of this post: https://hxstem.substack.com/p/merit-based-science-is-effective). The extent of wokeness (Critical Social Justice ideology) in science is massive!
It will take a tremendous effort to reverse this death spiral, and it will not happen unless more scientists will be willing to speak up and to fight the Woke on the ground. As I said in my keynote: "I find the current situation precarious. CSJ ideology is pernicious and it must be stopped. But to stop it, people must act. Currently, the majority is against DEI, but most keep silent. Some say, it is not important, it is just a pillow fight among academics. To this I say, it is not. The ideology is already undermining our research, education, and funding in a major way. Some say, it is a pendulum, it will swing back. To that I want to remind about the USSR. The pendulum that was set in motion in 1917 never came back. Is it coming back now? Let’s not deceive ourselves—politicians in Washington may roll back some of the most outrageous DEI policies, but they won’t fix our universities, our professional societies, our publishing houses. We should do the work ourselves."
Terrific! I was a 40 yr subscriber to SciAm. As I cancelled my subscription I wrote the editor and said it was like reading Psychology Today. Is SciAm bankrupt yet?
I would argue that Science at its core is wokeness. “Overt” wokeness found on the far left is as radical as the far right and is running the risk of destroying humanities history of seeking general wokeness aka progressiveness.
Wokeness is a function of momentum. Some useful perspectives pick up speed going downhill and become a religion and then a crusade. Eventually, they hit level ground and the momentum is lost and they come to a stop.
You know, I tink i'm onto something! I'll bet this works in the physical world too.
Thank you for this very interesting analysis. As a lifelong academic (my PhD is in biological psychology), my opinion is that much of this is driven by arrogance and intellectual laziness. It's much easier to teach one's political/social points of view about science than to teach the science itself. And it's much easier to get student buy-in when you're simply making things up. I saw the roots of this at The University of Chicago when I was a graduate student in the late 1980's, and I see it now in some of my younger students. It takes no intellectual acumen or effort to concoct a wild story about whiteboards. So, of course it is appealing to do so if you garner accolades. Oddly, I see part of the solution tied to reinforcing academic standards, and having the honesty to call out ridiculousness when it appears (as we do on our Substacks).. Thank you again. Sincerely, Frederick
"One wonders what the authors make of “blackboards”." Obviously, the switch from blackboards to whiteboards in classrooms was a reaction to the civil rights movement and attempt to reassert white supremacy in the classroom. OBVIOUSLY.
“Does anyone actually believe such claptrap?” That is the core question. What in the world are they thinking?
For humans it’s not enough to hold correct beliefs. It’s important to recruit others to collective action around held beliefs, because on the evolutionary scale humans seek social support for survival. A strong mechanism for this recruitment is moralizing perceived threat. This is why all the woke speech sanitizing is presented as a moral imperative. Moral repugnance facilitates emotional recruitment.
A subtlety of this dynamic is that people may intuitively embrace beliefs with compelling moralizing content primarily because of their recruitment potential into coalition--- the moralizing is more primary than the validity of the speech.
This is why invoking “the importance of speaking truth to power” always feels a bit feeble to me. Not that I have a better suggestion, but this wokeness contaminating science is such an atavistic tribalism that it feels impervious to reason. I keep thinking that what is needed is some strong, charismatic leadership at the top of academia.
I think there’s hope after the election of Trump. Some people are finally seeing that the emperor has no clothes.
One reason Trump got elected because many people saw that Biden's mental clothes were worn down despite legacy media and the Democratic Party conspiring to conceal that.
Whatever their philosophical foundations, if any, the key manifestation of "woke" is the claim to a life without responsibility, for the woke, and a life of blame, for the un-woke (i.e. the oppressors).
Excuse my shouting but, THIS IS A DELIBERATE MARXIST REGIME. And by Marxist, I mean a world view that life is only a power struggle between groups, and the only righteous outcome is the supremacy of the proletariat visionaries, measured by the vanquishing of all disagreeable individuals and organizations.
All the expressions of this cultural or Neo-Marxism, from DEI to race, gender, body shape, etc varieties of critical theory are just tactics. Yes, many of the dimwitted woke see these as worthy social ends, but the cabal pushing the core agenda will not stop until they have destroyed all of the core values of our Western enlightenment-based intellectual and cultural systems. Most pertinent here is their goal of crushing what we cherish as science, to be replaced by dogmatic post-modern sophistry, spiced with some indigenous fables.
Perhaps this sounds like tin foil hat paranoia. But the woke have openly told us they planned a long march through our core institutions. And just because many of the marchers are not versant in Marx or Marcuse (or Foucault or Freire) does not mean they do not support the ultimate goal of a totalitarian world.
ps. Welcome back to the unwoke world, Micheal.
pps. Trying to defeat the woke with logic and reasoning will fail, since they reject these (and even the concept of objective truth).
pps. I am in the middle of Weiss' On the Warpath: My Battles With Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors, and recommend it highly.
The woke are equal parts delusional and evil. I am amazed at the ease with which they subsume institutions and get everyone on lockstep with their madness.
Excellent summary! Unfortunately, the number of exhibits of wokeness from each domain — education, scientific publishing, science funding — can be easily extended 100-fold (see, for example, the references at the end of this post: https://hxstem.substack.com/p/merit-based-science-is-effective). The extent of wokeness (Critical Social Justice ideology) in science is massive!
It will take a tremendous effort to reverse this death spiral, and it will not happen unless more scientists will be willing to speak up and to fight the Woke on the ground. As I said in my keynote: "I find the current situation precarious. CSJ ideology is pernicious and it must be stopped. But to stop it, people must act. Currently, the majority is against DEI, but most keep silent. Some say, it is not important, it is just a pillow fight among academics. To this I say, it is not. The ideology is already undermining our research, education, and funding in a major way. Some say, it is a pendulum, it will swing back. To that I want to remind about the USSR. The pendulum that was set in motion in 1917 never came back. Is it coming back now? Let’s not deceive ourselves—politicians in Washington may roll back some of the most outrageous DEI policies, but they won’t fix our universities, our professional societies, our publishing houses. We should do the work ourselves."
George Carlin once said, "Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners". Updating, "Woke is fascism declaring itself enlightenment".
Terrific! I was a 40 yr subscriber to SciAm. As I cancelled my subscription I wrote the editor and said it was like reading Psychology Today. Is SciAm bankrupt yet?
I would argue that Science at its core is wokeness. “Overt” wokeness found on the far left is as radical as the far right and is running the risk of destroying humanities history of seeking general wokeness aka progressiveness.
Wokeness is a function of momentum. Some useful perspectives pick up speed going downhill and become a religion and then a crusade. Eventually, they hit level ground and the momentum is lost and they come to a stop.
You know, I tink i'm onto something! I'll bet this works in the physical world too.
My head is still spinning from the real life examples. Didn’t know it was that bad. Such a long way to go to fix it
Whiteboards are racist? What do they say about blackboards?
"Woke" is the church of liberalism.
You’re a buffoon who has no idea what he’s talking about.
Which of those Chinese Leaders dragged such people from home and blew their brains out on the streets?
Castrated West. Baby-murdering, and where does it end?