The video of Day 1 of our “Censorship in the Sciences” conference is up (and down below), and this baby is nearly seven hours long. Few people have the patience to listen to the first day’s sessions all at 0ne go, but I want to single out a few talks. The first is by Jonathan Rauch, author of The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, an excellent book. His talk begins at 12:01, outlines how knowledge acquisition should work, and is quite eloquent.
Later, the four-member panel on “Examples of Censorship” gives a good account of how ideology has led to suppression of science. Luana introduces it at 2:43:26 and Lawrence Krauss kicks it off at 2:44:45 via Zoom. His examples are numerous and disturbing—and not just from physics. He pulls no punches, and even calls out America’s National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the most prestigious honorary organization of scientists in the U.S. It so happened that the NAS President (Marcia McNutt) was in the audience, and heard Krauss call out her organization for identity-based choosing of candidates for a supposedly meritocratic society (see 2:55:45). As Krauss shows, the NAS even admitted this explicitly in a quote from an executive of the organization, and it’s widely admitted by Academy members themselves. (Note that at the end of her later talk, at 4:39:30, President McNutt denies this. accusing Krauss implicitly of ignorance, but her own organization’s stated policies belie her words.) Finally, Krauss gives evidence that both the NSF and DOE have likewise been captured by ideology in their funding of grants.
If you want to hear about how indigenous peoples are preventing anthropologists and forensic scientists from studying relics likes bones and objects used by Native Americans, Elizabeth Weiss’s short talk in that panel, beginning at 3:23:43, gives a good idea. She has a new book about these issues.
I heard all the talks, and some of the others engaged me as well, but I’ve just mentioned the ones I enjoyed the most.
Here is the first day’s schedule (from here)
And here’s some of the press as detailed by Heterodox at USC:
Press Coverage
Censorship in the Sciences conference speakers call on peers to organize, defend free speech, writes Jennifer Kabbany in The College Fix.
Rauch’s opening speech highlighted surveys which found that almost half of Americans think that colleges have a negative effect on the country.
“It really is a crisis,” he said, adding a combination of factors are to blame, including students’ emotional fragility, the politicization of hiring, tenure and funding based on ideology, and a newer trend of academic journals refusing to publish findings that allegedly harm some communities.
Kabbany also covered Musa al-Gharbi’s presentation at the conference. Read that article here.
Alice Dreger, managing editor at the Heterodox Academy, wrote a recap on HxA’s Free the Inquiry Substack:
On the issue of censorship of research publication, many speakers at the conference objected to the idea that claims about potential harm to vulnerable populations should be used as a reason to stop, force changes to, or retract research reports. Some raised the question of the harms that arise from alleged-harm-reduction censorship–that is, the harms that arise from stopping valuable research out of fear of harm
In response to a Saturday morning presentation by Nature editor Stavroula Kousta, journalist Jesse Singal, also a speaker at our event, published a critique of some the ideas presented.
Conference organizer and panelist Lee Jussim wrote about the conference (and whether we should just burn academia down).
Panelist Jerry Coyne wrote several dispatches about the conference on his blog Why Evolution is True (which reaches nearly 75,000 readers).
Attendee Zvi Shalem wrote up his take-ways from the conference here.
Panelist Michael Bowen of Free Black Thought reflected on attending conference on his Substack.
Natalya Murakhver wrote about her experience debuting her documentary 15 Days at the conference.
Panel chair Abhishek Saha wrote up excellent Twitter threads (in real time!) detailing conference proceedings. Here is one on the first day of conference.
The Steve Novella and Jerry Coyne talks are also up on CFI from the Las Vegas conference.
https://youtube.com/@centerforinquiry?si=Lj9Mek0NOXUEtF_7
Will watch the ones you recommend. Thank you for providing the timings.
Thanks to Lee, Anna, and the usc technical crew for this very rapid turn-around! And thank you Jerry for the WEIT access and recommended sessions. I seem to have a lot of free time to fill for four years starting in just 30 minutes at 1201 this afternoon.
I hope it’s welcomed “free time” and that all is well. Maybe you spoke about this elsewhere…
It’s the Inauguration, Jake, and I don’t think Bat welcomes it!
I would never intentionally insult our host, but now I’m Jake?
No Debi, just a line Jerry often uses in a take off on jack nicholson in the movie “Chinatown”: “it’s chinatown, jake”.
The phrase is the last sentence from Chinatown. I use it all the time with Jake in it. Not an insult, but a phrase!
Thanks Jerry. Sorry to be confusing with a maybe overly dry or cynical sense of humor. But I feel totally unempowered to impact this administration…first time ever for me to feel that way…so I simply do not want the frustration. Hence I plan on using what of my shelf life is left over the next four years for self-learning. Just reading and understanding what is on this site can keep me busy much of any day. So the free time is welcome in that sense, but certainly I would rather be positively impacting policy. Thanks for checking, Debi.
Thanks for posting. What a great conference and I look forward to watching again.
Happy MLK Day to all! I guess now rechristened Liberation Day. I heard it from Trump this morning.
If da Roolz will allow just one more comment here toward the end of my day: i just watched jonathan rauch and an audience question from the end about involving politicians to course correct on the U of M regents? In VA, we have boards of visitors at public unis, appointed by the governor. This a real source of political and cultural direction as the visitors appoint and evaluate the president…pretty important. So I agree with jonathan that putting together the academic freedom alliance and other grass roots faculty orgs is critical, but it does not hurt to have the prez in your corner also….and that comes from the governor-appointed board of visitors. So politically, the Governor matters big time.
My university also has a board of governors most of whom are appointed by the provincial government (more or less equivalent to the UVA visitors). Unfortunately much depends on the qualities of those appointees. Our current board chair, when asked last year what she saw as her role in chairing the board, replied that she thought her most important role was to support the president of the university. Not much oversight there 🙁
Oy. We had a superintendent of schools who had the city council-appointed school board convinced that their job was to support anything he proposed, no questions asked. The world turned upside down. The thing is that all these boards speak through their selection of the chief executive after a search for the right person to fit their (the board’s) position description. That pd sets it all up…it is the board’s signature and sets the tone for the organization.
Just how heavy were these “heavy hors d’oeuvres” at the reception?
HEAVY, i.e. real food like tacos and stuff.