E-Pluribus | February 16, 2024

The politics of astrophysics; Texas continues to roll back DEI; and an insider's view of corporate wokeism.

A round-up of the latest and best musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Jonathan Kay: Intersectionality’s Cosmic Inquisitor

Biologist Colin Wright and other level-headed academics often find themselves on the “wrong” side of political and cultural debates in their fields. They courageously face down their colleagues at the other end of the spectrum, who have made it their mission to inject critical social justice into science. In a detailed piece at Quillette, Jonathan Kay writes about one such crusader in the field of astrophysics.

Over time, [University of New Hampshire (UNH) particle physicist… Chanda Prescod-Weinstein] has escalated her grievances into increasingly dubious accusations of scholarly misconduct, misogyny, and homophobia, as well as entirely unsubstantiated remarks about sexual harassment.

This week, Oluseyi sent UNH officials a 61-page complaint regarding Prescod-Weinstein’s behaviour, a copy of which has been obtained by Quillette. The document provides a detailed chronological record of Prescod-Weinstein’s alleged “harassment, bullying, and discrimination”—behaviour that Oluseyi believes runs afoul of the university’s policies.

While Quillette has already reported on the dispute between these two scientists, Oluseyi’s correspondence provides abundant new details concerning Prescod-Weinstein’s online behaviour that have not yet been publicly reported. In one case, Oluseyi alleges, Prescod-Weinstein successfully pressured a well-known author to rescind his offer to provide a promotional blurb for Oluseyi’s then-forthcoming book. Oluseyi also alleges that Prescod-Weinstein prevented him from being hired for at least one lucrative university speaking engagement by falsely suggesting he had sexually harassed women.

Additionally, Quillette has obtained copies of complaints against Prescod-Weinstein recently submitted to UNH by three other scholars. Among these materials is a database cataloguing over 50,000 of the tweets that Prescod-Weinstein posted during the five-year period ending in September 2023.

Taken together, the sources reviewed by Quillette cover dozens of vilification campaigns waged by Prescod-Weinstein, beginning in 2015 and continuing to the present day. In some cases, these attacks were rooted in contentious social-justice issues playing out in the fields of astronomy and physics. But others seem to have been sparked by nothing more than glancing social-media disagreements, jokes, minor rebukes, or a targeted individual’s failure to take what Prescod-Weinstein deemed to be suitable notice of her accomplishments.

While most of Prescod-Weinstein’s documented targets are scientists, others include a reporter, an art-history researcher, an early childhood educator, and the collective fan base of Taylor Swift, which Prescod-Weinstein has publicly suggested shares common features with white supremacists. She calls The New York Times “trash,” the Wall Street Journal “racist,” and the United States “christofascist.” Indeed, a scan of her tweets indicates that she views almost every major institution in American society as being governed by “fascists.” That includes X itself, despite the fact that Prescod-Weinstein tweets, on average, more than 50 times per day.

[. . .]

Prescod-Weinstein’s strongest claim to our sympathy doesn’t lie with her identity. Rather, it lies with the fact that she came of academic age at a moment when oppression became a mark of status and power. The sort of person who succeeds at getting into Harvard University and becoming a theoretical physicist is the sort of massively intelligent, obsessively ambitious high achiever who constantly measures herself against others. In this context, it’s easy to see the appeal of intersectionality—a doctrine that allows young scholars to tally up their traumas as if they were standardized test scores.

Unfortunately, intersectionality often comes with an embedded requirement of self-pity, since the conceit of multi-dimensional oppression requires an outwardly projected attitude of misery to match. All professional fields are flecked with narcissists who noisily project their problems and anxieties on external actors. But intersectionally programmed academic subcultures are unique to such extent as they reward individuals for this kind of behaviour—behaviour that any otherwise-situated emotionally functional adult would regard as unsettling, or even pathological.

Prescod-Weinstein’s ideologically mandated sense of persecution has clearly taken a toll on her as much as her online targets. A constant theme in her writing is how utterly depressed and angry she’s become. Humor is completely alien to her world, except when she’s complaining about it. When she describes her adult life, moments of happiness are introduced only as brief cut scenes, almost immediately interrupted by some newly awakened horror.

Read the whole thing.

Scott Yenor: Texas’s War on DEI

Texas is making progress against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in public institutions, though it’s not all smooth sailing. At City Journal, Scott Yenor examines some of the ways DEI advocates and insiders are attempting to maintain the status quo.

Texas… banned DEI offices and functions at public universities in 2023. To ensure compliance, the state requires public universities to submit annual reports to the legislature and makes similar demands of each school’s governing board. Colleges or universities defying the ban must either correct their violations or face financial penalties.

Initially, many Texas universities recognized they were out of compliance and closed their DEI offices. As I document in a report for the Claremont Institute, Texas A&M, once an outspoken DEI proponent, dissolved its Office of Diversity, and removed its website’s extensive list of diversity initiatives, directors, and committees. The school’s former lead diversity officer now teaches business classes; her chief assistants have been relocated to academic departments. Former DEI deans in dentistry, education, law, and medicine now either teach or have retired. While the school has retained some deans with ambiguous titles such as “associate dean for programmatic success” and “assistant dean for community wellness and engagement,” A&M president Mark Welsh deserves credit for broadly complying with the law.

The University of Texas, Austin, on the other hand, has responded to Texas’s DEI ban with a mixture of paper compliance, strategic obfuscation, and open defiance. UT rebranded its “Division of Diversity and Community Engagement” as the Division of Campus and Community Engagement while keeping many of the same personnel. One of the division’s programs is called the Center for Access and Restorative Engagement, with “access” as the new word for “equity” and “restorative engagement” a euphemism for “inclusion.”

[. . .]

UT’s defiance extends beyond the Austin campus. In 2023, ten of UT’s 15 affiliated colleges had publicly available DEI plans or included DEI in their strategic plans. All but two had a DEI committee listed on their websites, and all but two had at least one college-level DEI director or dean.

Texas’s flagship public university has made some changes in response to the new legislation, but those changes have mostly constituted strategic obfuscation. The DEI committee in the Cockrell School of Engineering has amended its name from the “Standing Committee on Diversity and Inclusion” to “Broadening Participation in Engineering.” The College of Pharmacy Diversity, Equity, Accessibility & Inclusion Committee has been rechristened the Opportunity and Belonging Committee.

Read it all.

Malia Lazu: From the Front Lines to the Corporate World: My DEI Journey

Speaking of DEI insiders, Malia Lazu writes at The Nation about her experience with DEI over two decades. Lazu is a DEI true believer, but acknowledges the problems companies and public institutions face when trying to implement their good intentions. Understanding the thinking and methodology of DEI activists is useful, especially for those who take the other side.

Over 20-plus years spent in many different positions, I have worked to level the playing field and build power within communities. Through my work, I have had the honor of getting to know some of the most ignored groups in America. What I see again and again—whether in the Mississippi Delta or on the corporate headquarters on the 40th floor—is that until America, including companies, learns how to value the talent and contributions of people of color, racial equity will not be achievable.

Over the last 10 years, I have brought these observations and experiences into my work with corporations and government institutions. I have seen what it takes to ensure that DEI intentions have an actual impact.

Systems change is most vital when systems are failing. That’s why now is the right time to create systems that can respond to a 21st-century context as new lines are being drawn to confine the modern civil rights era, including corporate America efforts into DEI. Not surprisingly, those lines are also demarcations of political affiliation, as evidenced by the majority-conservative Supreme Court and its 2023 ruling against affirmative action on college campuses. That opened the door for more than 20 states to reverse the course on DEI. In what it called a “backlash against ‘wokeism,’” The New York Times observed that “the eradication of D.E.I. programs has become both a cause and message suffusing the American right.” Explicitly, this century is a time of generational realignment and acknowledgment of systems failure.

[. . .]

. . .DEI work seems hard on the best day and impossible on the worst—because moving from intention to impact means changing the traditions and culture that normalize whiteness. Like anything else that’s done unconsciously, white-centric actions feel natural in corporate America. But this blindness to bias makes changing whiteness almost impossible.

Many people may assume that DEI work means checking boxes, lowering standards, or, to be really blunt, playing favorites with women and people of color—all the while ignoring the plethora of data highlighting the overall benefits to company profitability from increasing diversity. Without question, centering whiteness carries a heavy economic cost.

[. . .]

Engaging in DEI efforts means taking on the uncomfortable work of anti-racism, including taking reparative actions for black employees, such as addressing racial pay gaps and making commitments to advancement and succession planning that include people of color. Meaningful policy changes can level the playing field for highly qualified people of color and other underrepresented employees. Unearthing and eliminating conscious and unconscious biases goes a long way toward opening the gateway for significant change. DEI won’t look like a marketing campaign but rather will feel like a relationship-building exercise. Instead of becoming transactional, it will be transformational. This will foster more natural friendships within the workplace and encourage the community to speak up about what they need.

Serious and honest DEI work may very well make corporate managers nervous, and that’s OK. (Believe me, my company, the Lazu Group, hears it all the time.) Directly and indirectly, these business leaders voice the fear that they will lose their power as other communities make gains. Why wouldn’t they feel this way? When the system is rigged in their favor and it barely feels like privilege, it’s hard not to feel as though you’re giving something up. It’s a point I raise because it deserves emphasis: So much of the failure of early DEI work was because it underestimated the scarcity mentality that plagues so many people. Theirs is the untrue belief that if others win, they will lose.

That’s why one of the best pieces of advice for corporate leaders is to understand and anticipate the reactions to the work. DEI work challenges an individual narrative of where they sit in society, a scary thing for most humans to do. When it comes to changing ingrained tradition, you need to expect and plan for the pushback that will naturally happen. Any leader working to incorporate DEI work needs to know how to navigate these waters and understand the ramifications.

Read it all here.

Around Twitter (X)

Via Free Black Thought, here’s writer Khadija La Musa's thoughts on loosing the “black card.”

Via The Free Press, economist Roland Fryer on when the data doesn’t show what academics want it to show. Claire Lehmann comments. (Click for video.)

And finally, everyone loves an award show (OK, not me, but a lot of people)! In any case, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression rolls out the red carpet for censorship stars! (Click for video.)