In the summer of 2022, the journal Nature Human Behavior put out a notice that it could reject articles that were “stigmatizing” or “harmful” to different groups, regardless of the scientific content. The problems with this stand, which were immediately called out by Steve Pinker, Michael Shermer, and others, is that what is seen as stigmatizing or harmful is pretty much a subjective matter, and, as Pinker tweeted:
I think the journal and its editor were taken aback by this and similar reactions to their statements, and on Day 2 of our USC conference on Science and Ideology in January, the Chief Editor of the journal, Stavroula Kousta, walked back their statement a bit in here 24-minute talk (go here to here her talk; it’s the first one on the video).
But the walking-back didn’t mean that Nature Human Behavior was becoming less woke. Indeed, it just published a ridiculously repetitive and trite paper about how science needs “allyship” to produce a “diverse, equitable, and inclusive academia.” It’s not that STEM isn’t seeking a diversity of groups and viewpoints—though, inevitably, “diversity” in their sense means “diversity of race or sex”—but that this article says absolutely nothing new about the issue. What the journal published now is a prime example of virtue-flaunting that, in the end accomplish nothing. You can read it by clicking on the screenshot below (it should be free with the legal Unpaywall app), and you can get the pdf here.
The piece begins with the usual claim of “harm”: the same issue that the same journal discussed before:
In academia, despite recent progress towards diversity, biases and microaggressions can still exclude and harm members of disadvantaged social groups.
The person who sent me this article wrote “No citations are given for this claim about bigotry and discrimination at the most liberal, open, welcoming institutions that have ever existed in human history. Amazing.”
The article then gives these figures, which are baffling because one would expect younger women to drop out more rather than less frequently. But they may be correct; I am just not sure that they reflect misogyny:
Such patterns of marginalization are not specific to students. Among US faculty members, for example, women are 6%, 10% and 19% more likely to leave each year than their men counterparts as assistant, associate and full professors, respectively.
I suspect that these departures have little to do with ongoing “structural bias” against women academics, not only because no instances of inbuilt structural bias are actually given, but also, at least for women, a big and recent review by Ceci et al. found either no bias against women’s achievements in academic science or a female advantage—save for teaching evaluations and a slight difference in salary, about 3.6% lower salary for women. However, the authors do not dismiss the possibility and importance of bias against women.
At any rate, if you haven’t heard come across this advice about “allyship” before, and are an academic, you must be blind and deaf. I’m not going to reprise the paper for you, as you’ve heard it all before.
I’m assuming that well-meaning people agree with me that marginalized scientists should be treated just like everyone else. But how many times do we need to hear that? At any rate, this paper rings the chimes again, singling out six areas where we’re told how to behave. These are direct quotes.
1.) Listen to and centre marginalized voices.
2.) Reflect on and challenge your own biases (I guess you determine them by taking an “implicit bias” test, a procedure that’s been severely criticized
3.) Speak up to include and support disadvantaged groups
4.) Speak out against bias when it happens
5.) Advocate for institutional initiatives to promote equity and inclusion
6.) Dismantle institutional policies and procedures of exclusion
#4 and #6 are no-brainers, though, speaking personally, I don’t know of any institutional policies and procedures of exclusion in biology. The rest are ideological statements assuming that everyone except for the marginalized is biased, and that the way to achieve inclusion is to promote “equity” (do they even know what “equity” means?) And, of course, the entire program reflects the tenets of DEI, which are on the chopping block in the U.S.
Now this article isn’t as bad as ones on feminist glaciology or ones maintaining that Einstein’s principle of covariance supports the view that minorities have an equal claim to objectivity.. No, it’s just superfluous, a farrago of what decent human beings already do, misleading assertions about bias, mixed with patronizing advice that we already follow. It accomplishes nothing save further erode the credibility of editor Kousta.
Here’s the conclusion:
For allyship to be effective in academia, it must be grounded in a deep commitment to DEI. This means recognizing that allyship is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process of learning, reflection and action. Moreover, it needs to go above and beyond symbolic or superficial acts (performative allyship) to demonstrate substantial and meaningful support that is recognized as beneficial by those it is meant to serve (substantive allyship). It is noteworthy to understand and accept that we will make mistakes along the way. No one is perfect, and as explained above, allyship requires a willingness to engage in humility and self-reflection. When mistakes are made, it is important to listen to feedback from disadvantaged groups, take responsibility for any harm caused, and commit to doing better in the future.
In conclusion, everyone can engage in allyship and work to challenge and dismantle systemic bias, creating a more just, equitable and inclusive academic community for all.
At least they used “equitable” properly, meaning “treating people fairly.” But couldn’t the whole article have consisted of just that sentence?
There is one big “structural” issues that is surely real and important, namely the effect of child rearing.
As people will know, academics have at least two and a half jobs (teaching and research being two, admin being the half). If you add to that the near-full-time task of bearing and rearing children, then something has to give. And a 5- or 7-yr hiatus would be a huge disadvantage to a research career.
I suspect that many women academics simply choose a family over their career (indeed I personally know of women who were entirely capable of having successful research careers, make this decision). I don’t know how to fix this.
Much of the problem is with the vague subjective interpretation of “structural bias.” It is one of many weasel terms used by social justice ideologues. These terms are created specifically because they’re vague enough to evade disconfirmation. Any outcome that does not favor the chosen identity group is assumed to be due to structural bias, and no evidence is presented to show the “structure,” or evidence of a link between the structural elements and the outcome. Structural bias is simply claimed as self-evident and always true. As an empiricist, you would avoid such circular reasoning and nonsense, but ideologues depend on them. Another example is “glass ceiling.” It is named glass precisely because you can’t see any evidence for it other than the outcome. How can it be disconfirmed if by definition it is invisible?
Hypothetically, you could structure academia to provide ample support for child bearing and rearing, and balance the work load between male and female parents. What we shouldn’t lose sight of is that extensive evidence from evolutionary psychology tells us that even under those ideal circumstances, a substantial proportion of women would still chose children over career. The social justice ideologue would still point to that difference and claim structural bias.
“glass ceiling”
Sorta like a prison – a Gnostic prison.
I’ve been teaching about ‘structural bias’ and related notions such as ‘institutional bias’ for a number of years in law school, so perhaps I can suggest that the concept is introduced as a contrast to ‘personal’ or ‘individual bias’. For example, laws that prohibited miscegenation may have been enacted by individuals for personal racist reasons, but once such a law is on the books, obeying and enforcing the law is not necessarily motivated by any personal or individual racism, but instead is institutionalized. It took a fairly brave couple to challenge it. Similarly, redlining, restrictive covenants in real estate transactions, and so on, may have been created for personal racist reasons, but once enacted as law or policy are not necessarily enforced of obeyed for racist reasons, but remain ‘structural’ or institutional racism.
Your ‘social justice’ strawman does not claim that the facts of reproduction and child-rearing are examples of ‘structural bias,’ as you suggest. Women have argued, instead, that institutions can create or adopt opportunities, policies, or systems that allow women to manage careers as well as child-rearing, and the failure or refusal to offer such possibilities is closer to the ‘structural bias’ you mention. My niece in France, for example, was able to take a year off after giving birth to her first child, and returned to her job with no significant loss of seniority, salary, etc. As the anthropologist Brigette Jordan pointed out in her classic study “Birth in Four Cultures,” societies that value children and reproductivity are more likely to create such opportunities, while the U.S., which was a world leader in the rate of hysterectomies performed, did not.
Happily, we are in a somewhat drawn-out period of change, in which many of those ‘structural’ impediments are giving way. The point I started with is that they are ‘structural’ because those barriers are not personal or individual: my dean is not personally opposed to women having both a career and children, but he has to follow the institutional rules and policies even he doesn’t like them.
“Your ‘social justice’ strawman does not claim that the facts of reproduction and child-rearing are examples of ‘structural bias,’ ”
I did not claim that facts of reproduction are examples of structural bias. I don’t know how you see me implying that.
“Women have argued, instead, that institutions can create or adopt opportunities, policies, or systems that allow women to manage careers as well as child-rearing, and the failure or refusal to offer such possibilities is closer to the ‘structural bias’ you mention.”
Yes women and men have correctly argued that “institutions can create or adopt opportunities, policies, or systems that allow women to manage careers as well as child-rearing.” That’s not relevant to my point. My point is that the concept of structural bias, even if it is known to exist, is vague and not falsifiable. The onus of proof should be on those making a claim of structural bias, yet there is rarely any evidence provided.
“failure or refusal to offer such possibilities is closer to the ‘structural bias’ you mention.”
Again, the onus of proof should be on those asserting structural bias in any given instance, not the skeptic. That structural bias exists does not mean it is always true or sufficient explanation. Having a different opinion is not “structural bias” and demanding evidence for an assertion is not “failure or refusal to offer such possibilities.”
Harold and Barbara, you both make some good points. I would just like to say that we are in the year 2025. We aren’t in 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s anymore. The idea that in the last 30 years academica has been discriminating against racial or ethnic minorities, what’s the evidence for this? I suspect that the issue of women and childbearing has not been fully solved yet. But aren’t there now whole fields of academia that are dominated by women?
Lawrence M. Krauss: Academia’s Missing Men. Quillette, Sept 11, 2023
Men are disappearing from science and academia. The public perception is, however, exactly the opposite.
https://archive.is/18k9n
Michael Shermer: Scientific American Goes Woke. Substack, Nov 17, 2021 – see the graphic Doctoral Degrees by Field & Gender
Stewart-Williams & Halsey: Men, women and STEM: Why the differences and what should be done? European Journal of Personality, 2021
Geary, D. C., & Stoet, G. (2020). Ideological blinders in the study of sex difference in participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. In D. Allen and B. Howell, editors, Groupthink in science: Greed, pathological altruism, ideology, competition, and culture (pp. 175-183). New York: Springer
“I did not claim that facts of reproduction are examples of structural bias. I don’t know how you see me implying that.”
You wrote that “social justice ideologues” would call that an example of structural bias: “The social justice ideologue would still point to that difference and claim structural bias.”
My comment was that these “social justice ideologues” you have conjured up are more likely to look to institutional policies rather than “extensive evidence from evolutionary psychology” to identify “structural bias”.
In the end I think the problem is, in part, that concepts such as “structural” and “institutional” are professional, technical terms, and within the professional discourses that use them they have specific meanings. I am not a biologist, so for me to claim that “DNA” is “vague and not falsifiable” is laughable, especially the “not falsifiable” part — technical concepts are often valuable interpretive frameworks, not scientific hypotheses that can falsified. I offered a couple of examples that are well established by historians, and it is worth noting, have consequences that extend well beyond the periods in which they were ‘institutionalized.’ For example, an economist recently estimated that something like 80% of the difference between the household wealth of White Americans and Black Americans in 2023 can be traced to the exclusion of Black veterans from the GI Bill mortgage program going back to the Second World War. That was an ‘institutional’ policy, an example of ‘structural bias’ that has consequences today.
Barbara, with respect, actual bias experienced by women can look quite different from what you describe.
My wife (PhD from a top-10 research department, Ivy League postdoc, tons of teaching experience) took that 7-year hiatus (Coel@1) to be home with our kids. By the usual means (extortion, based on getting myself a job offer elsewhere) I persuaded my university to put in motion their “opportunities, policies, or systems that allow women to manage careers as well as child-rearing” by offering her a part-time teaching faculty position. My department chair said yes; so did the VP Academic (both men). In public the dean said she favoured this, but in a private meeting with the department hiring committee she said that she couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t cost my department some other (research faculty) position in the future. Other female faculty members also opposed hiring my wife because she had followed the mommy track. Needless to say they voted against offering her that job.
Admittedly this wasn’t so much “oppos[ition] to women having both a career and children” and more opposition to women having children then a career. If you hadn’t put your babies straight into all-day daycare then you deserved to, as one of my female colleagues later helpfully suggested, pursue opportunities for sessional teaching jobs at the local junior colleges.
So, not exactly structural bias. Just straight-up rejection of mothers. Orchestrated by the women, not the men.
There are two issues here. I think that all sensible people agree that it should be possible to combine career and family. That is particularly difficult in academia where, at least in some fields, women rarely have a permanent job before they are too old to have children. (A similar problem exists for men, at least for those whose wives are not much younger, but is less severe.)
The other issue is getting a job for a spouse as a result of one’s own negotiation. In this case, one might see it as two wrongs making a right, but in general I see it as a big problem. What it boils down to is that someone who would otherwise not get the job (keep in mind that that happens even when no children are involved) gets it because, and only because, they are married to the “leading spouse”. (Yes, “leading spouse” and “trailing spouse” are the official terms.)
The excuses don’t convince me. “It’s not a permanent job, it’s just a fellowship to tide me over until I get a better job.” Well, many others without a leading spouse would also like to profit from such a fellowship. “I’m not taking a job from anyone, since it’s a special position created for me.” The money has to come from somewhere. Even in the case that the leading spouse negotiates, say, twice the going rate then says “pay me 120% and my spouse 80%”, though one can perhaps say that no extra money was involved, the trailing spouse can still put “job at prestigious institute” on their CV, giving them a huge advantage over people without a leading spouse. And it’s probably illegal to officially connect the two, so even in the case of divorce the trailing spouse keeps the job.
Yes, it’s a pain. Been there, done that. Commuted between Germany and England with two children at home, later between the Netherlands and Germany. What needs to be done is make academia more compatible with having children. But two wrongs rarely make a right, even if one can justify it for oneself in a particular situation. What about those who don’t have such an opportunity? In many cases, academia involves working in different countries. Some people have a spouse who could work in a different country only after several years. Their lot is much worse.
And, of course, trailing spouses must live with the accusation that, yes, they did take a job from someone else and, yes, that they would not have got it on their own qualifications. (If they were good enough to get it on their own qualifications, then no need to play the dual-career card.). If that happens often with women and/or people with children, then even those who DID get the job on their own merits might have to defend themselves against false accusations that that wasn’t the case.
In most countries, a postdoc salary is about the average FAMILY income. So it is possible to live off of one such salary even with children (been there, done that). In such a case, the trailing spouse could continue their research. Yes, unpaid, but also without the obligations of a normal job. Institutes should offer such a set up (essentially the rights and responsibilities of a student) which would allow the trailing spouse to continue research. Without distracting duties, that might even be a more efficient path to an eventual proper job (which, of course, could be at the same institute if awarded on the basis of merit).
Phillip, I take your point about fairness to other people who could have applied for the trailing spouse’s job. None of my colleagues who voted against hiring my wife raised that concern: they just didn’t want to hire someone who was a full-time mother for 7 years. That’s the version of structural bias I’m pointing to.
I definitely get that. Now, for a few years my (second—the children mentioned above were from the first marriage) wife has been working and I haven’t. I’ve made it to job interviews but no offers yet. Being out of the loop is a real disadvantage and it shouldn’t be (especially if people want to hire people who are REALLY diverse).
What prompted my response was the fact that without your “extortion, based on getting myself a job offer elsewhere”, your wife wouldn’t have even had a shot. Another woman with otherwise identical characteristics but without a husband who got a job offer elsewhere and was thus able to put pressure on the institute wouldn’t even have the hope that it might have a chance to work. It’s not that the door was closed on her, it’s that it was never open.
Thus, my feeling that, while institutes should help employees and their families as much as possible, and there should be no rules against couples working at the same institute (which do exist in some places), one has to draw the line at making someone an offer (or even considering it) when one wouldn’t if there were no leading spouse.
I won’t mention any names, but I know several people who NEVER would have got a job were it not for the leading spouse, and better qualified people who left academia because they had to support their family and the hope of getting the temporary job extended another two years was not good enough. (As I mentioned above, the salary itself is usually enough; the main problem is the job insecurity before one gets a permanent job, which in some fields is often in the late 30s or early 40s.)
Sure. But we’re talking about two different things: you’re concerned about a common and possibly unfair practice; I’m talking about a tangible bias against mothers. Your “other woman with otherwise identical characteristics” wouldn’t get a job either, not because she wasn’t married to me but because she was a mother out of work for 7 years.
The “extortion” was suggested by my department chair to persuade the university to spend money on a job for my wife to teach courses we needed taught. Every year since then my department has hired sessionals to teach the courses she would have taught, and has not hired a hypothetical “other woman with otherwise identical characteristics” either. Nobody won because it’s a less-than-zero-sum game. I think that’s “structural bias”.
Meanwhile the university hired hundreds of new administrative staff (diversity managers, marketing coordinators, communications specialists) instead of faculty members to teach courses.
[and sorry for overcommenting]
I was thinking as you have outlined! 👍
“marginalized”, “diverse” :
Exoteric/Motte : Inclusion of Women, LGBTQ+, disadvantaged, Black, etc.
Esoteric/Bailey : Inclusion of Marxist (Gnostic, critical) theory and praxis for transformation of an institution (entryism).
ally is also dialectically transforming in theory to produce accomplice and co-conspirator ; see for example (off the cuff):
http://www.education-leadership-ontario.ca/application/files/4416/6800/5373/The_Differences_Between_Allies_Accomplices__Co-Conspirators_May_Surprise_You_Tiffany_Jana.pdf
Other terms to search for might be “liberation psychology”, for starters. But one you see the literature your eyes glaze over.
… I think “conspirator” has come up before here, I definitely pointed this out. We’ll see if it materializes.
Addendum :
The reason it is important to name the political activism here – Marxist critical theory – is because of what its objective is :
Seizing and controlling the means of production – here, of knowledge – and ultimately, of the human species – including its thought. This is a distinction from other political activism with a difference.
Specifically Marxist political activism can be observed practically everywhere, and can be largely traced back to academic literature.
They want diversity, but not diversity of thought on whether human races exist nor diversity of opinion on whether sex is better described as a spectrum or a binary/bimodal distribution.
“Ally” is part of the terminology stemming from a conflict model. If you look at a Sociology textbook from 20-30 years ago you will see three or four paradigms, or broad conceptual models applied to social behavior. As example, Functionalism or Conflict Theory. What has happened over the last few decades is that conflict theory has completely captured the humanities and social sciences. Everything is viewed through this conflicting groups lens. This conceptual framework is highly seductive because we evolved as a tribal species, we tend to see types of people as “groups” and to see them in conflict, whether that is true or not. We further project agency to these hypothetical groups, so a classification of types of person, can have moral meaning. In other words, a type of person is responsible for the behavior of others in their group or identity. Resulting in a sort of guilt by identity group classification (original sin).
We need to reject the conflict terms that are being imposed on discussion. When my friends post that they are “allies” of LGBTQ+ I try to tell them that these groups are not at war, so it is nonsense to say you are an ally.
+1
One of the more obvious examples where this vague and seemingly benign concern about not stigmatizing or harming marginalized groups has stifled research and discussion is, of course, in certain approaches towards transgender issues. A study which deals with evidence or methods of resolving gender dysphoria by reconciling the mind to the sexed body would likely be condemned for valuing “cis” identities over transgender ones.
It’s a quick assessment using an easy test case. I think that if we read the highlighted passages and apply them to any bit of science which emphasizes sex instead of gender, the glittering generalities of DEI turn into the golden hammer of censorship.
I really admire it when public intellectuals like PCC(E) and Pinker take a big public swing at ideological nonsense. Keep up the good work. Onwards truth heroes.
D.A.
NYC
I guess doing actual science is very hard, and often overlooked, and this dross is much easier, but often praised? Perhaps that is a bigger factor than we realize in explaining papers like this and the general reduction of rigor in many disciplines…
It should not be a bigger factor than we realize. It is obviously a major factor, perhaps the dominant motivation, underlying the entire DEIshchina. Speaking of which, is there no office to complain to when I am triggered by “centre marginalized voices” and other such microaggressions against the English language ?
Yes this is the new academic currency. Laura Simone Lewis led the mob that lynched Carole Hooven from her job at Harvard. I assume that Lewis was proud of that achievement, and it doesn’t seem to have held her back: she has a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at Berkeley, and will soon move to a faculty job at UC Santa Barbara. Of course one can’t know whether Lewis’ success is down to her social justice street cred, or to having a Harvard PhD (I wouldn’t know not having those qualifications myself). One clue can be had by clicking here (www.laurasimonelewis.com) to be underwhelmed by her CV.
Three refereed-journal publications which have actually been published. Even though it’s not my field, that seems a bit few for a faculty job, even if those are the top journals in the field (which I don’t know).
At least in my field, it is not common to list publications in preparation on a CV or publication list (though they can be mentioned—but not cited per se—in a paper if relevant).
Not a judgement, just an observation: all the publications are first author.
The ratio of actual publications (three) to “in prep” (seven) and conference talks (lots and lots) is indeed notable.
It will be interesting in say, five years from now, how much (if not all) of this academic discussion will seem dated or even slightly embarrassing. It was so much easier when the moral barometer was whether ”negroes” or women were eligible for certain sports or academic acceptance in higher education. Are we still, at heart, tribal? No, and as an optimist by nature, I think in five years time, we will welcome a new age of reason because we can’t descend much lower in dissecting each turtle layer to borrow Sapolsky’s analogy.
Jerry wrote that the exhortations from Nature Human Behavior’s Chief Editor to “Speak out against bias when it happens” and to “Dismantle institutional policies and procedures of exclusion” are (in Jerry’s words) “no-brainers.”
But these exhortations do not mean what Jerry thinks they mean.
What about the biased treatment that Carole Hooven was subjected to by her Harvard colleagues and the Harvard University administration (after she dared to say that sex is binary and cannot be changed)? Is the Chief Editor saying that such treatment should not happen? If you believe this, then I have a bridge to sell to you.
The Chief Editor wrote that “For allyship to be effective in academia, it must be grounded in a deep commitment to DEI.” But what is DEI? Well, it’s not what it says it is.
E stands for equity and means hiring quotas by ethnicity, sex, gender identity, and maybe sexual orientation and disability status. Such hiring quotas are illegal in the USA. Hence DEI. DEI was explicitly invented in California to circumvent California and US law.
The D stands for diversity and the I stands for Inclusion – but DEI proponents care for diversity and inclusion only if it does not interfere with creating a leftist ideological monoculture.
You can be a female professor, but if you don’t have the right ideology and dare to speak your mind, some of your colleagues and university administrators will come after you and try to create such a miserable workplace experience for you that you will want to quit academia.
Some examples for this: anthropologist Kathleen Lowrey (University of Alberta, Edmonton), biological anthropologist Carole Hooven (Harvard University, USA), criminologist Jo (Joanna) Phoenix (Open University, Milton Keynes, England), sociologist Laura Favaro (City, University of London, England), philosopher Kathleen Stock (University of Sussex, England), sociologist Christy Hammer (University of Southern Maine), philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith (University of Melbourne).
The Chief Editor talks in a coded language that does not mean what you might think it means.
Most readers of this website will know that the female academics I mentioned in my comment # 9 here as examples of people who have run afoul of DEI are all casualties of the “gender war.” If you say that a woman is an adult human female, and that nobody can change their sex, you will become a persona non grata, radioactive, an outcast in academia, and Nature Human Behavior’s Chief Editor will not come to your help, never mind her seemingly laudatory exhortations to be nice.
To see how out of step North American academia is on this question (what is a woman) with its host societies, consider this:
In September 2023, the pollster SurveyUSA conducted a national poll of 1,262 registered US voters on behalf of WDI USA, the U.S. chapter of Women’s Declaration International [the largest global organization advocating for the rights of women and girls as a sex class].
One of the questions asked:
79% of respondents answered 1), 16% chose answer option 2), 3% were not sure, 2% answered “Other.”
These results are from Question 14 on page 21 of the results report.
For a write-up of the results including a weblink to the results report:
Kara Dansky: Democrats Should Defend Sex-Based Rights for Women and Girls. Nov 12, 2023
New national poll of 1,262 registered voters shows strong consensus in favor of female-only spaces and services.
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/democrats-should-defend-sex-based
Could I please add to your list, tenured Prof. Frances Widdowson, fired from Mount Royal University, Canada.
Thanks Leslie. I had heard of her, but had no schecked recently what her current situation was.
Her Wikipedia entry states:
“coded language”
+1
And language that is designed to terminate free thought, replacing it with thought aligned with (Gnostic) Leftism :
Thought-terminating clichés and loading the language :
[begin quote]
Totalist language, then, is repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon, prematurely abstract, highly categorical, relentlessly judging, and to anyone but its most devoted advocate, deadly dull: in Lionel Trilling’s phrase, “the language of nonthought.”
[ end quote]
p.429,
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism — A Study of “Brainwashing” in China
Robert J. Lifton
W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., New York
1961