On Saturday, October 8, 2022 at 12:46:18 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
"Administrators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are trying to restore the academic liberty that made the school a world leader and a crown jewel of American science. Let’s hope that MIT faculty are ready to turn the page on the school’
s shameful 2021 cancellation of a geophysicist with politically incorrect views.
...
Professor Abbot was planning to talk about his research on planetary habitability, but he was canceled for other reasons. On Oct. 29, 2021, he explained in the Journal the opinions that enraged the cancel crowd:
I believe that every human being should be treated as
an individual worthy of dignity and respect. In an academic
context, that means evaluating people for positions based
on their individual qualities, not on membership in favored
or disfavored groups. It also means allowing them to present
their ideas and perspectives freely, even when we disagree
with them.
I care for all of my students equally. None of them are
overrepresented or underrepresented to me: They represent
themselves. Their grades are based on a process that I define
at the beginning of the quarter. That process treats each
student fairly and equally. I hold office hours for students
who would like extra help so that everyone has the opportunity
to improve his or her grade through hard work and discipline.
Similarly, I believe that admissions and faculty hiring at
universities are best focused on academic merit, with the goal
of producing intellectual excellence. We should not penalize
hard-working students and faculty applicants simply because
they have been classified as belonging to the wrong group. It is
true that not everyone has had the same educational opport-
unities. The solution is improving K-12 education, not introducing discrimination at late stages.
The hopeful news is that after last year’s canceled lecture, many members of the MIT community were not about to give up on free expression. A working group created by the school’s leadership has recently released a report on the subject..."
What went wrong?
One side of the dispute describes the situation of Cancel Culture or Wokeness. Professor Abbot's talk was cancelled because of the Cancel Culture.
The other side blames systemic racism. Professor Abbot repeated the mantra while selectively blind to the inherent systemic inequality.
Of course, Professor Abbot was not wrong in believing
"admissions and faculty hiring at universities are best focused on academic merit, with the goal of producing intellectual excellence." He was also right in
saying "the solution is improving K-12 education, not introducing discrimination
at late stages. " But then liberal democracy HAS CONSISTENTLY FAILED to deliver both.
However one chooses to describe the problem, it reflects the bankruptcy of liberal democracy.
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