This is important work. Even a casual observer can anecdotally confirm this. As a long time reader of Scientific American, and comparing 2020s era articles to 1970s era articles (with which I am very familiar) Scientific American is now entirely and shamelessly political. Its disgusting and an utter embarrassment.
Cool. I recall that about 1984 I was gifted a set of late 1970s SAs and I devoured them. I was in junior college, pre-engineering, and they both interested me and intimidated me. I remember two specific articles to this day, one about the statistical limitations of the potential for new original pop songs of fixed duration and one about the unsung background engineering principles employed by the Wright Brothers in developing the 1903 flyer. THAT was real genuine science and applied science, genuine value-added to the reader. All the articles were more less like that, the kind of stuff you could imagine that Sagan or Feynman might appreciate. SA is now just total pseudo-science political shit gobbledygook, its a genuine embarrassment to both its legacy and the US of A itself.
Interesting analysis though I’m a bit uncomfortable with all articles dealing with EDI matters being labelled as ‘identity politics’. That’s certainly part of the debate surrounding EDI, and a contentious one at that, but i wonder would social justice have been a better label? Of course such choices are themselves political.
Such choices are indeed political. Others could view 'social justice' as being more politicised as a term - 'social justice warrior' is a common epithet. Many of the things that come under identity in our categorisation are things 95-99% of people in western countries would agree, whilst others like the need to have 'anti-racist botanical gardens' would not look out of place on The Onion. But those articles are all ultimately still political in the sense they are dealing with something other than basic facts and require subjective interpretation that will differ between people, and therefore become politics. We should have quantified which 'identity' ones are advocating a niche/controversial viewpoint - my estimate from memory is its at least 50% and probably more. One thing I notice when talking to my academic friends is how common it is for people to not really realise the views they are espousing would be viewed as quite controversial outside the academy, which suggests to me there are information silos forming quite strongly. For example, pushback on EDI is framed as some kind of right wing culture war thing, when the polling is actually very clear in US and UK that large majority of public is opposed to even one of the more mild and core parts of the EDI agenda - affirmative action (remember affirmative action has lost every referendum on it even in California, including in 2021 after BLM). Not even a majority of democrats in the US are in favour of affirmative action.
I'm not seeing the debate around EDI you mention occurring in any scientific venue, at least not prominent ones. Certainly its a very brave academic who speaks out publicly on this. The words 'equality', 'diversity', and 'inclusion' can mean very different things to different people. In extremis, the French Revolution/US constitution and the Soviet Union both could be seen as championing those words. But the process, actual goals, and outcomes are all extremely different between those two broad approaches.
The issue as I see it is that EDI has in practice become a way for quite specific, often very fringe ('decolonisation'), ideologies, values, and perspectives to be imposed on groups without democratic input or genuinely free debate, using three words that make it seem like some kind of universal doctrine. Part of the reason for this is that people who take EDI jobs are highly likely to be quite activist. Its a similar problem in some ways to having Tory/Labour members chose the leader of their parties - those who get involved in such processes tend to be more at the extremes/die hard end of the spectrum, hence recent UK politics..... Same with EDI where, combined with the lack of pushback/counterforce, you have this drift toward extremism.
Thanks for writing such a full reply. I agree with much of what you say. ‘Justice’ might have been a more neutral term than ‘social justice’, but either way these are inherently political issues.
Thought I would position myself left of centre, I also agree we need to hear more diverse voices in debates on EDI issues and that that remains a challenge- both for scientific journals and universities. (I wonder will Nature or Science react to your analysis?) That said I was pleased to host Kenan Malik at Imperial College very recently (where I was the academic lead on EDI for 6 years). Malik is openly critical of the identity politics that drives much activist discussion on issues to do with EDI and bemoans the resulting loss of social solidarity that previous drove justice movements. He gave a very thoughtful & provocative lecture.
One last thing, in the university setting in the U.K. at least, my experience is that those who lead on EDI are mostly not activists in the sense that I think you mean. Committed, yes, but also open to engagement and discussion with critical voices. I would say the same of colleagues in Europe I’ve interacted with.
This is important work. Even a casual observer can anecdotally confirm this. As a long time reader of Scientific American, and comparing 2020s era articles to 1970s era articles (with which I am very familiar) Scientific American is now entirely and shamelessly political. Its disgusting and an utter embarrassment.
Thanks :) agree. It’s dreadful for science, I explore this in the final section of my ‘HT5 vignettes’ blog (the most recent one).
Cool. I recall that about 1984 I was gifted a set of late 1970s SAs and I devoured them. I was in junior college, pre-engineering, and they both interested me and intimidated me. I remember two specific articles to this day, one about the statistical limitations of the potential for new original pop songs of fixed duration and one about the unsung background engineering principles employed by the Wright Brothers in developing the 1903 flyer. THAT was real genuine science and applied science, genuine value-added to the reader. All the articles were more less like that, the kind of stuff you could imagine that Sagan or Feynman might appreciate. SA is now just total pseudo-science political shit gobbledygook, its a genuine embarrassment to both its legacy and the US of A itself.
Interesting analysis though I’m a bit uncomfortable with all articles dealing with EDI matters being labelled as ‘identity politics’. That’s certainly part of the debate surrounding EDI, and a contentious one at that, but i wonder would social justice have been a better label? Of course such choices are themselves political.
Such choices are indeed political. Others could view 'social justice' as being more politicised as a term - 'social justice warrior' is a common epithet. Many of the things that come under identity in our categorisation are things 95-99% of people in western countries would agree, whilst others like the need to have 'anti-racist botanical gardens' would not look out of place on The Onion. But those articles are all ultimately still political in the sense they are dealing with something other than basic facts and require subjective interpretation that will differ between people, and therefore become politics. We should have quantified which 'identity' ones are advocating a niche/controversial viewpoint - my estimate from memory is its at least 50% and probably more. One thing I notice when talking to my academic friends is how common it is for people to not really realise the views they are espousing would be viewed as quite controversial outside the academy, which suggests to me there are information silos forming quite strongly. For example, pushback on EDI is framed as some kind of right wing culture war thing, when the polling is actually very clear in US and UK that large majority of public is opposed to even one of the more mild and core parts of the EDI agenda - affirmative action (remember affirmative action has lost every referendum on it even in California, including in 2021 after BLM). Not even a majority of democrats in the US are in favour of affirmative action.
I'm not seeing the debate around EDI you mention occurring in any scientific venue, at least not prominent ones. Certainly its a very brave academic who speaks out publicly on this. The words 'equality', 'diversity', and 'inclusion' can mean very different things to different people. In extremis, the French Revolution/US constitution and the Soviet Union both could be seen as championing those words. But the process, actual goals, and outcomes are all extremely different between those two broad approaches.
The issue as I see it is that EDI has in practice become a way for quite specific, often very fringe ('decolonisation'), ideologies, values, and perspectives to be imposed on groups without democratic input or genuinely free debate, using three words that make it seem like some kind of universal doctrine. Part of the reason for this is that people who take EDI jobs are highly likely to be quite activist. Its a similar problem in some ways to having Tory/Labour members chose the leader of their parties - those who get involved in such processes tend to be more at the extremes/die hard end of the spectrum, hence recent UK politics..... Same with EDI where, combined with the lack of pushback/counterforce, you have this drift toward extremism.
Thanks for writing such a full reply. I agree with much of what you say. ‘Justice’ might have been a more neutral term than ‘social justice’, but either way these are inherently political issues.
Thought I would position myself left of centre, I also agree we need to hear more diverse voices in debates on EDI issues and that that remains a challenge- both for scientific journals and universities. (I wonder will Nature or Science react to your analysis?) That said I was pleased to host Kenan Malik at Imperial College very recently (where I was the academic lead on EDI for 6 years). Malik is openly critical of the identity politics that drives much activist discussion on issues to do with EDI and bemoans the resulting loss of social solidarity that previous drove justice movements. He gave a very thoughtful & provocative lecture.
One last thing, in the university setting in the U.K. at least, my experience is that those who lead on EDI are mostly not activists in the sense that I think you mean. Committed, yes, but also open to engagement and discussion with critical voices. I would say the same of colleagues in Europe I’ve interacted with.