I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. On academic boycotts

Previous posts on this issue can be found here, here, here, and here.

Limiting academic freedom is poor and morally inconsistent way to further the growth of constructive communication.  And constructive communication is precisely what is needed in the Israel/Palestine conflict.  If an academic body wants to put their spoon in there are moral and cosntructive ways to do that that preserve academic freedome and further the growth of communication and the pursuit of knowledge.  For example, the University and Colleges Union could issue a statement in in support of Palestinian education and academic pursuits, or the UCU could twin with a Palestinian university, or could offer scholarships for Palestinian students, or could offer resources for Palestinian educational institutions.

The UCU has recently passed Motion 25 which effectively advises members to boycott Israeli academics, but does not use the word “boycott” (unlikely previous UCU attempts to pass policy of this kind).  The full text of the motion is here.  In particular, among it’s resolutions is the following:

colleagues be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions

There is now debate on whether the motion violates the Race Relations Act of 1976.  More about that here. (Via Normblog.)

Via Engage, I also learn that St Peter’s College, Oxford, has passed a resolution against Motion  25.

–IP

The presidential race don’t prove nothin’

Gloria, you’re a bright cookie, but this got up my nose (to use a technical term), I’m afraid.

So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.

I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That’s why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a coalition of outsiders to win a general election. The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that.

[...]

But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex.

What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations.

What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.

The thing is, while Steinem claims not to be “advocating a competition for who has it toughest”, her article is devoted to analyzing who has it, in her view, toughest. It’s certainly true that race and gender are treated differently by the media and the electorate, and that experiences of opression in the form of sexism often do differ from experiences of opression in the form of racism. But that doesn’t establish that it is meaningful to talk about whether gender “trumps” race.

Steinem’s concerns are selective. She is careful to isolate the assumption that male Iowa voters are seen as gender-free — an observation I believe to be accurate. But she doesn’t, for example, comment on the fact that white voters are also seen as race-free, and it is black voters who are seen as biased if they support black candidates and disloyal if they don’t. I also disagree with Steinem in that I think Obama has not been universally seen as “unifying by his race” — a number of op-ed have appeard on my RSS news reader in the last few months along the lines of “Is Obama black enough?” and other similarly incomprehensible (to me) titles. Steinem does not comment on Obama’s “unifying” nature being dependent on his being “black enough” (a racist stereotype), whereas Clinton is expected not to be too feminine in order to be “unifying” (a sexist stereotype). Both candidates face prejudiced stereotypes, but I don’t see what basis Steinem has for concluding that one is “worse” than the other.

I’m also not convinced that once can conclude that racism is negligible in the US when compared the sexism, purely from the media treatment of two people, when there are other variables. It’s equivalent to saying that sexism was negligible in the UK when Margaret Thatcher was elected, which is totally bogus. It’s just not as simple as saying “a black candidate beat a female candidate in the Iowa caucus so racism is secondary to sexism”.

Talking about whether black men or white women are more opressed is meaningless. But people who face racism and people who face sexism may experience opression differently, and the intersection of different kinds of opression is interesting and worth talking about.

For more good commentary on this topic, see Pinko Feminist Hellcat, and BrownFemiPower has a roundup of more good responses to the editorial.

–IP

All worn out

I was already tired before the last few weeks.  And then the tiredness really started.  Despite being ill and sleeping about five hours a night, I was working over ten hours a day most days (that’s just sitting-down-to-work time, doesn’t include thinking time).  Since a lot of that was for a group project, there was some fairly intense investment into “people skills.”  Fortunately, I had a good group, with people I got on well with.  I didn’t know them well before this term, but I think I’ve made some good friendships with that group.  But even with great working relationships, there are always going to be times when people get stressed and snappy and tired.

And there were Issues With The Flatmate.  Apparently I’m an inconsiderate flatmate because I think that sharing a flat means sharing the living room and kitchen, not turning them into IrrationalPoint’s Flatmate’s Totally Silent Space That Nobody Else Should Make Any Noise In, where “noise” includes typing, eating, studying, or phoning your mum.  Not at two in the morning at a squillion decibels, I hasten to add, when complaints would be more than justified.  No — even at normal waking hours and quieter-than-normal volumes, my flatmate still seems to think it is perfectly ok to demand that I not study in the living room because the noise of my writing bothers her.  Also, there was no call for her to be downright rude to my friends on multiple occasions (by repeatedly and surlily interrupting quiet conversations behind two sets of closed doors to tell us to whisper, and on a couple of occasions, shouting at us to do so), who have been nothing but nice to her, and who are now aware that they are not welcome in my flat as far as she is concerned.
She has now decided that she is moving out when the lease ends, which is fine, although it means I probably have to move out too.  I just wish she’d accepted that, if one cannot cope with hearing other people type occasionally one shouldn’t try to share a flat (or alternatively, one should take responsibility for one’s needs and get a pair of earplugs instead of expecting others to mollycoddle one), before expending so much of my time and effort.

Anyway, I have an exam tomorrow, and then I’ll be flathunting and present-shopping.  And then maybe I’ll get a wee break.

Just plain burnout, baby.  I’ll try to blog something vaguely worth reading soon.

–IP

“Unscientific” does not mean “controversial”

No, really, it doesn’t. I looked both words up in a dictionary just to double check, and nope, they don’t mean the same thing:

Unscientific:

1. not scientific; not employed in science: an unscientific measuring device.
2. not conforming to the principles or methods of science: an unscientific approach to a problem.
3. not demonstrating scientific knowledge or scientific methods: an unscientific report.

Controversial:

1. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of controversy; polemical: a controversial book.
2. subject to controversy; debatable: a controversial decision.
3. given to controversy; disputatious.

(Courtesy of Dictionary.com*)

Scientists shouldn’t be afraid of tackling contravertial issues. Science shouldn’t be limited by social controversy. Academic freedom means being able to talk in a scholarly manner about things that may be controversial. And yes, if you are a scientist, then offering an unscientific opinion about science is unscholarly.

What science should be limited by is science. That is, science should be limited by the definition of what constitutes scientific research. If a study is unscientific and unscholarly, then it’s not science. If something is not scientific, then scientists shouldn’t be concened about it (in their scientific capacity).

What am I talking about?

James Watson. Larry Summers. The IQ debates. Jensen and Galton. Is-science-PC discussions. The perennial is-gayness-genetic question. Intelligent Design, for that matter. But specifically I’m taing about the reaction to James Watson’s genes-in-mouth debacle.

I was disappointed. Not by James Watson, because frankly, it’s not as if we didn’t know before that he’s chauvinist down to his bootstraps. I was dissapointed by all the people who defended him on the basis of academic freedom, that thus win prizes for phenomenally missing the point of academic freedom.

Quoth Watson:

James Watson provoked widespread outrage with his comments to The Sunday Times, which quoted the 79-year-old American as saying he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”

He told the paper he hoped that everyone was equal, but added: “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

Watson was later suspended from his post at Cold Springs Harbour Lab, and uninvited by at least one university a which he was scheduled to give a lecture.

Over at Harry’s Place, Alec McPherson responded:

I don’t think this was even refusing to allow him to promulgate his wretched views instead of publicly repudiating them, which would be questionable enough. This strikes as silencing him in one field, where he may well excel, because of his opinions in another, which we are told is unrelated. As so often is said in the hallowed pages of Harry’s Place, this is the Stalinist approach to debate.

PZ Meyers commented:

It’s a sign, though, that CSHL will not be administered by anyone willing to assert controversy, and that’s too bad.

It’s worth reading Zuska’s take on the matter, by the way (not quoted because the quotes would be too long, just hop on over and read).

I would argue that Myers and McPherson have simply missed the point of the controversy about Watson’s comments, since it wasn’t the case that Watson was drawing a scientifically justified conclusion. He was just expressing racism. It wasn’t scholarly, it wasn’t scientific, it wasn’t academic. It’s not a matter of academic freedom. In what way is Watson being silenced in genetics? He was suspended from Cold Spring Harbor Lab, that’s true. That was a post he got because of his scientific acheivements, and since his suspension was a response his talking about social policy in an unscientific and unscholarly manner. Suspension may or may not have been the appropriate response, but it hardly prevents Watson from talking about his field in a scientific and scholarly manner, especially since the post he was suspended from was not an academic post but an administrative one. It’s not his scientific career that’s suspended, it’s his administrative tasks.

He was also uninvited to give a lecture, that’s true, but having freedom of speech doesn’t mean people have to give you a platform if they think you will use it for speaking about unscholarly unscientific matter. So yes, one has the right to spout any old nonsense one fancies, but that doesn’t mean you’re automatically entitled to a platform.

I think crying academic freedom in this case is not only misguided, it is also irresponsible. To do so is to conflate science with social policy. Supporting Watson’s unscientific comments while attempting to distance onesself from the sentiment they express does nothing to highlight the fact that his statements were not based in science. Basically, the message is “his comments are valid even if I don’t like them”. But Watson’s comments are not valid — they are prejudice masqerading as science. We should be criticising the lack of scientific rigour in his conclusions and the prejudice that led him to his conclusions. That’s not an attack on academic freedom – it’s upholding scientific standards.
–IP

*Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved October 27, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/controversial and http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/unscientific.