This is one of the twenty-odd interviews that Lawrence Krauss conducted to support the new book he edited, The War on Science, comprising essays about the pollution of academia by ideology. (Nearly all of us indict ideology from the Left, though many of us, including me, admit that the Right is currently a bigger threat to science—but perhaps only temporarily.) As you know, I am not a fan of podcasts and long videos, but I’m trying to listen to as many of my cowriters as I can (Luana Maroja and I have an essay in the volume, but didn’t do an interview).
Here’s an interview with Carole Hooven, whom you’ve surely heard of as an evolutionary biologist specializing in testosterone and the evolutionary basis of sex differences. (Her book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us, is excellent.) When teaching at Harvard, she made the mistake of saying that there were only two sexes, and that statement snowballed into a huge fracas. Hooven’s colleagues in human evolutionary biology wouldn’t support her for emphasizing the biological facts about biological sex, for that’s a minefield that demonizes those who enter it as “transphobes”. As Carole recounts in her Free Press piece, “Why I left Harvard,” she got in trouble for simply speaking the truth. If you know Carole, you’ll know the she’s eminently civil and polite. She just wasn’t ideologically correct. Here’s an excerpt of the FP piece, which she reprinted as the essay in The War on Science.
In the brief segment on Fox, my troubles began when I described how biologists define male and female, and argued that these are invaluable terms that science educators in particular should not relinquish in response to pressure from ideologues. I emphasized that “understanding the facts about biology doesn’t prevent us from treating people with respect.” We can, I said, “respect their gender identities and use their preferred pronouns.”
I also mentioned that educators are increasingly self-censoring, for fear that using the “wrong” language can result in being shunned or even fired.
The failure of her colleagues to defend her for speaking the truth is reprehensible, and eventually the pressure forced her to leave her department. The rest you can hear in this video (the interview starts at 4:04). There’s a lot more than the Harvard-cancellation story: Carole’s had an interesting life, starting as a primatologist working in Africa, and you’ll learn something about that, too. Have a listen.
[ Deleted Gnosticism stuff ]
OK OK – got carried away, too much for this – this will suffice :
Woke Right are the radical counterpart to Woke Left.
Thanks for highlighting these interviews.
Whatever.
I thought this article by Jonathan Rauch was interesting on the woke right/left issue.
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-woke-right-stands-at-the-door?utm_campaign=post&triedRedirect=true
Thanks for that – I have his book Kindly Inquisitors – it’s really good.
I think the Right is for science when they can profit from it. Better machine. More productive and so on. The new woke Left and gender facism are more dangerous to science. They make me think of the USSR and Pol Pot’s Khmer rouge. Science must agree with their ideologies or it’s “bourgeois” or “white” science. Welcome to 1984.
Not so different. IIRC, there’s a prohibition on collecting certain statistics about gun homicides. Science depends on data.
Edit: And, the recent firing of the BLS head.
I read Hooven’s (rather good) book. She tells some very interesting stories about doing research in Africa. One of the folks who didn’t support her (at Harvard) was none other than Claudine Gay.
I believe that Gay was actually central in bringing Dr. Hooven down.
Disappointed! I got my copy of the book in today’s post and immediately went to read Abby Thompson’s essay: “Two Universities Redux” to reinforce her excellent and infotmative video interview with Krauss which I watched two days ago. I searched at the end of the page, at the end of her essay, at the end of the section for the footnotes or endnotes. Finally from the table of contents, I was sent to the back of the book, where I was referred to a url to access the notes. Jeebus, prof krauss, can’t you write a self-contained volume? Certainly some notes require access to web references, but often a short note can give the reader what he needs to know right there. So rather than enjoy my hard copy book wherever I am, I must have, along with the book, both a device and internet connectivity….annoying at least…you kids get off my lawn!
I am sorry but the 50 or so pages of Footnotes and regencies would have made the book too large and expensive to publish. My publishers required us to put them in a url.
I appreciate your explanation Prof Krauss. But as with many publishers’ excuses, it rings hollow in even a linear cost to length world, a tenish per cent increase in length would mean a fourish dollar increase in price. I would be happy to pay such a minimal premium to have simple and immediate access to footnotes.
Thank you for herding the cats into such an excellent, needed, and accessible compendium!
I’m afraid that the decision not to include footnotes etc. has cemented my decision not to buy the book. I do realise that it is old-fashioned to expect a book to be self-contained, but I am old, and not impressed by new trends.
Thank you Steven. Glad I am not alone. Also being old and of old habits, I like hard copy because I tend to write notations around certain ideas, including the material in footnotes. It is also why, since luckily I can afford it, I buy my own hard copy rather than borrow from a library.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. The UK version isn’t released until 25 September (only £14.99 for the Kindle edition). I appreciate that others prefer reading paper books, but the ability to bookmark and highlight digital versions and search within a book – and to look up unfamiliar words (or indeed access supplementary footnote material!) via the internet – makes reading non-fiction works in the digital edition a better experience for me.
Thanks for pointing us again to Dr. Hooven’s story. This person
https://www.laurasimonelewis.com
was a Harvard grad student at the time, and she advanced her own academic career by leading the effort to demonize Dr. Hooven for saying true things.
At the time, Dr. Hooven was careful not to name this person because of perceived “power” differences (although events proved who was powerful and who was not). Now that this person is a professor at the University of California it seems good to link her name to that shameful episode. Not having the book, IDK whether any names are named in it.
She limits herself to using only the first name, “laura” in the essay. I do not know if the reference (21) to laura’s tweet has the full name or not, because as I indicated in my comment 4 above, a check requires going to a separate url of notes and references…an extra step that I am not willing to take right now as I am trying to read through the book itself…great essays!
Question: You will often hear, especially from blank-slaters, but as a general rule, “Society teaches………”.
Is anyone familiar with any instances in which these individuals has attempted to answer the question: So who or what taught society?
Consensus, popular opinion, etc. Sometimes pooling of ignorance.
I found an ASCII art Ouroboros, but maybe next time it comes up – pointing out as I think you did circular reasoning.
Loved that interview with C.Hooven. Of the several I’ve watched (from the book) on Origins/youtube I enjoyed Amy Wax and her partner’s the most. And Niall Ferguson. (sp)
Still working through them. The guests are top notch and Kraus is an excellent interviewer. He’s chatty, which people criticize him for in the comments, but what he has to say is useful and insightful.
D.A.
NYC
I listened to his interview with Richard Dawkins and he brought up some really interesting parallels between Christianity and the transgender movement. He discussed the transubstantiation business of the Eucharist and the “man becomes woman” thing (my wording, obviously, not his). I found it fascinating. Dawkins is such a likable fellow, to me anyway.
And what about that interview with you and Luana, PCC(E)… Will there be one?
No, we decided not to be interviewed.