Well, I don’t mean the entire journal Nature, but one strongly-written op-ed (Nature 639, 548), though I have absolutely no doubt that Nature adheres to its view. And the view of the author, bioethicist Arthur Caplan, is that despite Trump’s threats to withhold federal money from universities that maintain DEI programs, we have to push back hard on this initiative, for DEI is simply wonderful: a boon to science and society. All of that, of course, is debatable, and, sadly, Caplan makes a number of assertions about DEI without a single reference to support them.
Click below to read his short piece (I hope you can see it):
Caplan strives to be clever by beginning with the hypothesis that had social media and grants been around in the days of Galileo, he would have been censored and lost government money. I laughed so loud! (Not!) At any rate, here’s Caplan’s view of what we must do with DEI, which he never defines:
More scholars must push back. The idea that scientists can keep doing what they know must be done to incorporate DEI into their work while adjusting terms to fit the demands of bigoted autocrats bent on hobbling science is to whistle loudly past a graveyard of avoidable error, continued financial cuts and censorship. That diversity matters to science is a truth — albeit one that has only recently begun to be accepted and applied.
But the “DEI” that many universities use, and which many of us object to, is much more than the statement, “All people, regardless of identity, religion, sex, able-ness, and so on, will be treated equally.” Who could object to that?
No, the DEI that Trump is trying to weed out is the ideological form of DEI. It is the assumption that there are different truths for different groups that are more or less equal; that adjudicating these truths is done by seeing which groups are more powerful; that there is a certain “progressive” ideology around sex and gender; that society (and science) is to be framed as a battle between the oppressor and the oppressed; and that “equity”–the representation of identity groups in proportion to their occurrence in society–is a goal we all must strive for, because inequities surely reflect ongoing bigotry.
Yet Caplan conceives of “DEI” in other ways, some of them bing okay. Here are two:
First, clinical and social-science research requires diversity to be valid. Genomics has established that different groups of people respond differently to drugs and vaccines. The individuals recruited to and participating in clinical trials must be representative of those who will use those treatments in real life. Attention to DEI allows researchers to identify differences in safety and efficacy between groups early on in the testing process.
Likewise, social scientists are well aware that understanding behaviour and implementing desired change requires studying populations besides white, Western, university psychology students — the group from which psychologists have mainly sourced participants for decades. This is the case whether researchers seek to overcome vaccine hesitancy, prevent self-harm, improve reading skills, change recycling habits or prevent obesity.
And I’m prepared to believe this one, though again no references are given, as it makes some sense and there are arguments that support it (one here). But the evidence seems thin:
. . . . diversity in the scientific workforce brings a multitude of ideas, approaches, perspectives and values to the table. Thinking outside the box matters in tackling all manner of problems in artificial intelligence, engineering, mathematics, economics and astrophysics. Diverse minds can find connections and patterns, provide perspectives and draw conclusions that might not occur to a group of less-inclusive researchers.
To me, the above aren’t problematic, but we all know that the “D” in “DEI” refers to race or sex, not viewpoint or studying different groups in anthropology. And then Caplan treats on more problematic ground:
Second, research has shown again and again that DEI matters when it comes to providing health care. A diverse and representative health-care workforce improves people’s satisfaction with the care that they receive and health outcomes, especially for individuals of colour. When Black people are treated by Black doctors, they are more likely to receive the preventive care that they need and more likely to agree to recommended interventions, such as blood tests and flu shots.
There are no references given here, and I’d like to see them. Remember the widely-publicized report that black newborns have higher mortality when treated by white doctors than black ones? It was attributed to racism, but later discovered that the effect was entirely due to white doctors having to deal with infants of the lowest birth weights, and hence having higher mortalities (see here and here). People are simply too quick to impute all disparities to racism, and this is another of the big weaknesses of DEI.
Finally, there are two other contestable reasons why Caplan sees DEI as admirable:
Second, research has shown again and again that DEI matters when it comes to providing health care. A diverse and representative health-care workforce improves people’s satisfaction with the care that they receive and health outcomes, especially for individuals of colour. When Black people are treated by Black doctors, they are more likely to receive the preventive care that they need and more likely to agree to recommended interventions, such as blood tests and flu shots.
A DEI-oriented workforce improves learning and outcomes for all. Many veterans seeking mental-health care or rehabilitation after trauma specifically request a psychologist who is a veteran. Attention to DEI helps to ensure that health-care providers’ opportunities to learn are not missed, and that problems facing rural communities, minority ethnic groups and those with rare diseases are not neglected.
Again, I’d like to see the references. Maybe there is some literature out that that I just don’t know about. But I will say this: satisfaction with health care is one thing, but health outcomes are another. Does DEI improve healthcare, degrade it because it erodes merit, or have no effect? But really, these two scenarios have little to do with DEI save that people like to be treated by people who look like them. That’s a form of tribalism, and isn’t so bad; but the ultimate arbiter of DEI here is whether choosing doctors or psychologists by identity rather than merit gives better outcomes than prioritizing (or at least giving heavy weight) to identity. After all, there are plenty of psychologists who are already veterans, so is there a need to prioritize “veteran status” when admitting someone to training as a psychologist?
In the end, Caplan goes back to DEI as it is actually used in universities: the version that derives from postmodernism with all the new trimmings. He bawls that we have to support it, implying that now that Trump is in power, it’s especially important to defend DEI:
Scientists, their funders and their professional societies must follow in Galileo’s perhaps apocryphal footsteps and speak up about DEI’s crucial role in science. They must urge patient-advocacy organizations, environmentalists and other citizen groups to declare that they don’t want their or their children’s health and well-being jeopardized by the bad science that a lack of attention to DEI will produce. They must emphasize DEI in their publications whenever the denial of its relevance to a scientific issue is demanded by political inquisitors.
These are dangerous times. Scientists globally must stand together for sound science and resist bigotry, bias and hate. If science is to honour one of its core values — a commitment to the truth wherever it might lead — scientists must stand up when DEI matters. Galileo’s story should remind us all: the only way forward is speaking truth to power.
Back to Galileo again! I stand for good science and against bigotry, bias, and unwarranted hate. But when does DEI matter? Show me some cases and some data, and I’ll decide whether or not to stand up. To me, the only kind of DEI I now support at the university level is the principle that “all people must be treated equally despite their immutable identities.”
DEI has come to mean quotas for underrepresented minorities (I.e., not Asians). It means accepting Blacks and Hispanics with lower scores on any type of standardized test — the ACT, SAT, LSAT, GRE, MCAT —than Whites and Asians. It means diversity of race but not thought or viewpoint (even though race is a construct allegedly not rooted in anything real). It means getting rid of standardized tests because once again Blacks and Hispanics do much more poorly on them than Whites and especially Asians. It means denying IQ is real and can be measured. It means opposing Gifted and Talented schools and programs that admit applicants based on testing, especially mathematics testing. It means dumbing down curricula to the lowest common understandable level. It doesn’t mean what Nature claims it means at all. Not in practice. Not in the real world. That’s why it sucks.
+1
Yup – to quote the title of John McWhorter’s book, it’s “woke racism”.
I agree with your last sentence, but think that the sentence could have ended after the word “equally.”
It seems that Caplan’s position is a mixture of the good and the not-so-good (although I didn’t have access to the original article). That may be one of the problems. Most agree that medical research needs to take into account the variations that exist among populations—race, sex, age, etc. And who would deny that psychology research would be better by including research subjects from beyond the academy? But DEI also includes “equity,” which has many detractors (including me). Since DEI is so protean, it’s hard to be for it or against it. But to the extent that “equity” (an equality of outcomes based on identity) is one of its components, I’m against it.
Caplan’s article is fundamentally dishonest. He’s pretending that he doesn’t know what “DEI” means or what “equity” is all about today, and he’s pretending that the Republicans are opposed to all sorts of things that they are not opposed to.
100% agree. I also agree with Adrienne (comment # 1). It is not true that DEI “is so protean” (as Norman wrote in comment # 2).
DEI = wokeness.The E in DEI stands for equity which means illegal hiring quotas by race/ethnicity, sex, etc. The D stands for discrimination, and the I stands for intolerance vis-à-vis anybody how dares to disagree with woke ideology.
As one contributor to Compact magazine wrote a few months ago:
But to say that DEI is entirely build around optical diversity is only partly true. You can be the wrong kind of black, like, for instance, John McWhorter or Glenn Loury. You can be the wrong kind of woman like, for instance, Carole Hooven (wrong because she’s a sex realist). And if you are the wrong kind of black or the wrong kind of woman, then you will not be hired (or attempts will be made to make your life in academia so miserable that you will want to quit). In other words, viewpoint discrimination and intolerance are integral parts of DEI as it has been practiced the last 15 years.
DEI means illegal hiring quota + enforcement of intellectual homogeneity around wokeness. Now they are trying to put new lipstick on this pig. Like with Critical Race Theory. When it came under attack, it’s defenders claimed that CRT was only about teaching the history of slavery in North America. I wish that were true. (Also, apropos what DEI really means, remember, that the true Islam is a feminist religion, and a religion of peace?)
Now, defenders of DEI act as if the assault on academia by the Trump admin is coming out of the blue. No, it is a reaction to the politicization of academia by extreme leftists. Their current dilemma has recently been well-described by English professor Michael Clune:
Now we see that Clune was wrong when he wrote “We have nothing to say to the half of America who doesn’t share our politics.” As Caplan does (and Claudine Gay did before him), you can always lie about what you have been doing.
I’ve linked to this post by the social psychologist Lee Jussim before. Similar to Clune, more broad-ranging and longer time line. Both are worth reading.
https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/we-tried-to-warn-you
Clune’s article is really good. He sounds so sane which, sadly, is becoming a rare trait in today’s college professors. Thanks for sharing the link.
DEI and its intersectionality are used at Harvard to justify terrorism by social justice advocates. I have written leaders of Harvard about this. We will lose our funding if Harvard double downs like Caplan, who should retire.
Can you help me with “intersectionality”? I remember back about 50 years ago I worked two summers while in grad school at Chicago for a social research firm that did a lot of market research, and one of the standard statistical tools we used was factor analysis. We might find, for example, that African-Americans smokers were more likely than White smokers to prefer menthol cigarettes, and digging a little deeper, we would find that African-American men were even more likely to prefer menthol cigarettes, and pushing even further, African-American young men were most likely to prefer menthol cigarettes. The combination of those three variables had much more predictive power than any of the single variables.
I worked on numerous studies that used this kind “intersectionality” and it never occurred to me that it was problematic at all. Is there some other notion of “intersectionality” that fails to offer the same insights?
These days “intersectionality” means awarding people points for all of the “oppressed” category boxes that they can tick (black, trans, queer, disabled, indigenous et cetera).
One then adds up all the oppression points, and those further down the scale may not disagree with and must always defer to anyone who scores higher.
There’s also intersectional political activism. If your activism isn’t intersectional, than it’s no good. To give an example, you can’t be just a feminists. No, to be a true, a real feminists, you must also be for Hamas. It doesn’t make sense. But that’s what they say. For instance, Linda Sarsour.
Perhaps, but that is not a critique of “intersectionality,” just a critique of how it can get misused, isn’t it?
If intersectionality were simply an unnecessary word for multivariate analysis, I don’t think anyone would disagree with you. It is the oppression Olympics that Coel mentions above, along with the baked-in assumptions, that are the problems. If the misuse has become the norm among younger scholars who will soon enough displace the old, then perhaps the drowned child needs to go with the bath water. But who will be around to bury it?
Intersectionality also means that if you support women’s rights, you must spend more than half your time supporting men who say they are women in their quest to be housed in women’s shelters and prisons and to compete as women in sports, because to do otherwise is exclusionary, which is not intersectional, which is bad. Being un-intersectional makes you not-a-real-feminist, and also racist, for some reason.
/s
As I just noted to Peter, that sounds like a misuse of “intersectionality,” perhaps throwing out the baby with the bath water.
I think I discussed this with you before – so I think you know this – but I’ll put the Crenshaw quotes below anyhow for general background, from one page of the source article :
“… identity continues to be a site of resistance”
…
” “I am Black” becomes not simply a statement of resistance but also a positive discourse of self-identification”
[Bryan note : this is very close to bell hooks’ tweet about knowing authentic Blackness – i.e. – IMHO –gnosis )
…
“I am a person who happens to be Black,” on the other hand, achieves self-identification by straining for a certain universality (in effect, “I am first a person”) and for a concommitant [sic] dismissal of the imposed category (“Black”) as contingent, circumstantial, nondeterminant. ”
…
“the most critical resistance strategy for disempowered groups is to occupy and defend a politics of social location rather than to vacate and destroy it.”
-Kimberlé Crenshaw
Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color
Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6 (Jul., 1991), pp. 1241-1299
( pdf readily obtained)
“I think I discussed this with you before ….”
Not to my recollection. I am not the only Barbara posting here……
I think what you are describing is subset analysis, Barbara. The categories of smokers you allude to are all progressively nested subsets, like Russian dolls. The intersection set of a set and its subset is just the subset, so I think it is incorrect to call your market research example intersectional.
What would be intersectional would be if you knew from one piece of market research that black smokers preferred menthol over regular by some small amount (I know the preference is in fact large; I’m just stage-setting.) And you also knew from other research that softball players who smoke preferred menthol by some other small amount. (Both amounts are let’s say too small to justify advertising targeted at either large group.). But suppose an intersectional analysis found that black lesbian softball players preferred menthol by a 100:1 margin over regular, completely explaining the small menthol preferences in each group before intersection. Then all you have to do is find a softball tournament that draws a lot of black lesbian players and fans… and sponsor it! KOOL!
Yes, but as I recall from that research experience years ago, the point was not to identify nested subsets but to identify variables that were not merely additive, but increased explanatory power exponentially, if I can use that term somewhat loosely — I’m an attorney, not a statistician. I was struggling to find a way to express this as clearly as your Black lesbian softball players example does, so thanks for the useful illustration. The point for us, way back when, was precisely how to develop marketing strategies that maximized various forms of impact at the lowest cost: sponsoring that softball tourney would be perfect! (BTW, I could have used as an example one of our actual studies, of laxative use, but the details might not have been suitable here…..)
I do agree with the general direction that DEI points to, in that I think there is a net societal value for both men and women and under-represented minorities to be visible as faculty in universities, in labs, and in medicine. But the priorities in DEI are many bridges too far, as we see here, with the emphasis on claims that are not evidenced. People know when they are being gas-lighted, and this sort of op-ed only adds to the distrust of the elite left.
What I think is important is for all under-represented people to see people who look like them in these positions. That is a big reason why I’d like to see support for diversity in some forms, so long as it does not undermine the meritocracy that is also needed. Gaining entry into these fields is also a big wide highway into the middle class, and economic gains tend to be generational. This should apply to all economically disadvantaged people, not just to those of particular races. But one rarely sees these practical arguments being raised by the DEI proponents.
Mark one cannot wish away the trade-off between meritocracy and equity. I mean, one can try, but it won’t work.
Robert J. Morris: It May Not Be Possible to Achieve Racial Equity in American Scientific Research
https://quillette.com/2022/03/11/it-may-not-be-possible-to-achieve-racial-equity-in-american-scientific-research/
Excerpt:
See also here:
Princeton’s President makes bogus arguments that diversity and academic excellence are compatible
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/02/14/princetons-president-makes-bogus-arguments-that-diversity-and-academic-excellence-are-compatible/
All that is said above, and in addition, guilty of the cliché “speak truth to power.”
Oh I am so tired of that trope being used by folks who wouldn’t notice truth if it fell on them from a great height. I propose the following more-real alternatives:
• Speak arrogance to arrogance
• Speak ignorance to ignorance
• Speak stupidity to stupidity
• Speak truth to those who know and care about the difference
Bah, humbug.
…tired of that trope being used by folks who wouldn’t notice truth if it fell on them from a great height.
Really liked that… and your final “Speak truth to to those who know and care about the difference.”
I am no intellectual scholar or political analyst. But I have watched Dei destroy education from k to 12 in my childrens school district and my husbands University, that he is a professor at.
Dei to me is like communism it is great on paper but due to humans it’s a disaster in practice and has failed. It has became like communism and has set up structures for different forms of constant unnecessary policing , As an ex south African who lived under apartheid have watched this country th destroy itself through DEI and actually become very similar to apartheid. Nelson Mandela dream for us humans was that rainbow colored children would live and play with each other and learn to embrace our differences and prejudices. The polar opposite has happened with DeI , from safe spaces , calling out white males in elementary school and telling them they are the cause of the world’s problems and ( by the way side note these very children who heard that statement year after year that men are bad were the first time voters in this election that Trump won in. ) To black only dormitories and graduations and office Christmas parties. All of this has led us back to more racism, dumbing down our schools and universities and creating unnecessary tension .
Nelson Mandela was not the only one to dream this dream. Martin Luther King also had very different ideas 62 years ago, as you can see from his famous speech “I Have a Dream”.
“And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!”
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm
The wokeness in the public and private school systems has been oppressive. Book after book after book in their classes focussed on woke themes. I have no doubt that large numbers of youth were pushed towards Trump by it.
James Lindsay recently made the point on eXtwitter – very clear, IMHO – that DEI is in essence an opposition to anything that is not DEI:
[quote]
DEI is anti-{whoever is opposed to DEI}. It scapegoats whites by using Stalin’s strategy of “resisting great-power chauvinism” and characterizing whites/whiteness as the “great power” in Western cultures. Treating it as “anti-white” misses the key part.
In Stalin’s Soviet Union, the great power was the “Great Russian.” In Mao’s CCP and PRC, it was the Han race. This is a Communist power play that uses selective “reverse racism” to achieve dialectical conflict that benefits the Communists. Thinking it’s “anti-white” traps you.
[end quote]
There’s some context to that but one can find it if desired.
My University and Department (Sociology) are strong supporters of DEI, and in my opinion has considerably improved them. I’m long retired but when I visit I’m amazed at the increase in the diversity, among students and faculty. And as well, a significant increase in the diversity of the topics under study. My Department has always had a strong methodological component, and peer review helps to ensure the quality of reported results. I would agree excesses exist, especially when teaching and research become ideological. I believe we need to work on that instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
And do you have independent evidence that the quality of the work being done has either stayed the same or improved, or is that just your personal opinion. I ask this becuse peer review in an age of declining standards does not mean that quality stays the same. .
What I’m describing is cooperation among the faculty, where new faculty interact with the senior faculty who have extensive experience with the methods our department is well known for. Peer review here is really more about people working together to make their work better, and maintain the reputation of the Department.
You have not answered my question, which was how do you KNOW that the quality of the department has been at least as good as it was before DEI. All you are saying is that people keep working together to maintain the reputation of the department. That is not an answer, or evidence of continuing high quality. I suspect that you are just giving your opinion without data. If you have data, please adduce it, otherwise we are arguing about nothing but possibilities. But I do not want threads dominated by just two people, so this will have to come to an end–UNLESS you have data you can put here.
“How do you KNOW that the quality of the department has been at least as good as it was before DEI”?
Jerry, I’m getting ready to run a pilot study to answer this question. In Canadian scientific research “before DEI” means before 2017 when the three national grant-funding agencies adopted mandates for grant proposals to include training plans that would improve inclusion, increase equity, and lead to greater diversity among trainees. I’m going to survey grant holders to ask them about their trainees before and after that mandate, and ask how increases (or decreases) in diversity are correlated with increases (or decreases) in research excellence. So stand by!
Generally speaking, is there any valid reason that diversity should trump merit? That it is a strength? That other cultures practice it?
I have no problem with diversity, but not at the expense of merit.
A merit-based system cannot be racist, sexist, whatever, for it is based on results.
I hold that diversity hurts those groups intended to benefit from it, for it indicates that they are incapable of performing adequately, it holds them to lower standards, and it makes those from such groups who are deserving of a place subject to scrutiny (is my surgeon/pilot/accountant, et al., a DEI hire?).
If there is a lack of diversity, it is not the White Man’s Burden to remedy that – that is best achieved by those allegedly underserved performing at the same level as the “oppressor”.
Sounds too reasonable to be acceptable. And note that using “merit hire” as a slur just wouldn’t work (I hope!).
Colin Wright notes that where research has been conducted, the evidence shows that DEI has serious negative effects, increasing division, hostility, coercion, and authoritarianism. He also notes that such studies are censored by MSM.
https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/why-was-this-groundbreaking-study
My admittedly quick scan of the work you mention indicates that it is “DEI pedagogy” that it being critiqued, not DEI itself. I am quite sympathetic to this position, having had to sit through seemingly endless hours of “training” on DEI every year, required not only by my university but by the state as well.
When I read “diversity in science”, all I see is a reduction in the rigor of science.
That is because standards must be lowered in order to meet these diversity goals, as it is not the case that every ethnic or racial group produces the same proportion of people qualified to engage in rigorous science.
And why would we expect that to be the case anyway? Different groups often have very different values. Looky here at this article on the recent spelling bee winners:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/31/us/2019-indian-americans-spelling-bee-trnd/index.html
Also, notice how when “people of color” dominate something, we do not wring our hands together about the lack of representation of other groups and start searching for the hidden racism that is suppressing them. There is no DEI initiative in the Spelling Bee to make sure white kids are no longer underrepresented.
To wit, the article manages to identify the reason for South Asian dominance of spelling bees, and it is not racism:
“Parents invest a lot of their time with their kids,” she said. “They prioritize education and have the economic means to have a parent stay at home. It’s much more a socio-economic factor than a gene.”
I have been both a math tutor and a youth coach for three different sports intermittently over the past 25 years. The kids that come to sports, which to me have become far too overstated in their importance in recent years, are almost entirely black, hispanic, and white. The kids who come to do extra math work are mostly asian, and it is often the most talented ones that do the most extra work, as excellence is the goal and not just basic competence. Usually, the only time other groups come is when they are failing or are trying to cram for the SAT…a white parent will typically not make their child do extra math work if they are decent at it. But they would gladly drop 5K a year to get on that travel baseball team.
” . . . Galileo’s perhaps apocryphal footsteps . . . .”
Is that to say follow in Galileo’s footsteps to house arrest for not conforming to some cultural-socio-psychological-religioso ideology?
What can’t one say by uttering “perhaps”? “Perhaps” 2 + 2 = 5.
AI tells me that “Following in Galileo’s footsteps means embracing the scientific method, relying on observation, experimentation, and logic to understand the world, as championed by the Italian polymath.”
The gentleman should please provide evidence in support of his apocryphal conjecture.
Caplan is just playing “motte and bailey” games with his audience. Equal opportunity is the motte. What he really advocates is racial (and sexual) quotas. DEI is PC for racism and hate. Now that DEI is being attacked, lots of DEI advocates are retreating to the motte. See the debate between Gail Collins and Bret Stephens in the NYT on this very issue. The ‘E’ in DEI stands for equity, not equality.
🎯
Nicholas Shackel
“The Vacuity of Postmodern Methodology.”
Metaphilosophy
36
295-320
2005
(Bold added):
Abstract: Many of the philosophical doctrines purveyed by postmodernists have been roundly refuted, yet people continue to be taken in by the dishonest devices used in proselytizing for postmodernism. I exhibit, name, and analyse five favourite rhetorical manoeuvres: Troll’s Truisms, Motte and Bailey Doctrines, Equivocating Fulcra, the Postmodernist Fox Trot, and Rankly Relativising Fields. Anyone familiar with postmodernist writing will recognise their pervasive hold on the dialectic of postmodernism and come to judge that dialectic as it ought to be judged.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9973.2005.00370.x
Perhaps a friendly correction?: “Many of the philosophical doctrines purveyed by postmodernist philosophers…..”
I continue to admire the work of the first and most authentic postmodernists: architects.
Aww-kee-teks!
/Monty Python
(Just happened to see that (again) too!)
Like Jane Fonda, he’s using the bait-and-switch definition of DEI.
I like her emphasis on empathy. IMO it’s an emotion that the world is rather desperately short of. But of course somehow equating that with DEI racist bullying is not on. She has also been an activist for US universal healthcare, with which I strongly agree (despite the various problems in Canada and Europe).
Let’s agree that her activist career has been a mixed bag.
Caplan also denies the reality of the biological-sex binary:
https://www.newsday.com/opinion/commentary/guest-essays/donald-trump-gender-sexual-identity-transgender-executive-order-trans-athletes-yte5q4zn
Dear Jerry,
Is the time not ripe for a journal that promotes objective truth over all else? I feel it is something needed and whilst you don’t have the history of nature or science to add prestige, you do have thinkers like yourself, Richard Dawkins, and Steve Pinker.
That’s all you publish, evidenced articles. That have been through a robust review process that focuses on honesty and truth.
I’m not sure what the peer review process looks like, and the three of you are “tainted” (wrongly) with bias. But surely this is all stuff you can address.
A robust science journal, peer reviewed, that isn’t politically/ideologically captured.
I’d suggest sending this to Jerry’s email if you want to be assured that he’ll see it.