Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
If you’ve read this site, you’ll know that the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) recently got rid of 80-odd volunteer docents, peremptorily firing them via email despite the fact that most of them had worked (for free) for many years and knew tons about the art. They were good guides and cost the AIC nothing. … Continue reading The lies of the Art Institute of Chicago
That’s right, folks, you can hear all the cultural/ideological news here well before the New York Times gets off its tuchas and decides, well, the uproar over firing and cancellation has reached a point where they’d look overly biased if they failed to cover it. And so, in today’s paper, you finally get to read … Continue reading At long last, the NYT covers the Art Institute of Chicago’s DocentGate
This is a story that, for obvious reasons, has gotten almost no airplay in Chicago, and none nationally, with no reporting in the major media. So let me tell you about it. The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), one of the world’s finest art museums, harbors (or rather, harbored) 122 highly skilled docents, 82 active … Continue reading The Art Institute of Chicago fires all 122 of its (unpaid and volunteer) docents because they aren’t sufficiently “diverse”
Here’s an example of the kind of comment I put in the trash. It was from a potential commenter named “Thunderstruck,” responding to another reader’s query about the diversity of the Art Institute of Chicago’s board, administrators, and curators: In reply to Richard Lemanczykafka. Diversity and multiculturalism are mostly Jewish-led efforts, I’m afraid. I recently watched … Continue reading A reader’s comment: The Jews are behind diversity and multiculturalism initiatives
For some reason my post about the firing of the Art Institute of Chicago’s docents for lack of ethnic diversity found a huge audience on the Internet. The likely source was Twitter, which prompted over 40,000 views. I didn’t bother to track it down, but I’m giving you yesterday’s viewing figures because many people tried … Continue reading Note to new readers: Read the posting rules before your first comment
Like all people who write a website, I like to know how many people are reading it, and what attracts them. But I’ve never written about issues that I thought would attract clicks, so I’m always surprised when a “throwaway post”, like the second one below, gets so many reads. Here’s a list of the … Continue reading The weirdness of our most popular posts
The article below at yahoo!news originally appeared USA Today. but I’m linking to the former site because the latter has all sorts of annoying ads, even with Adblock. And the headline made me laugh: of course diversity consultants would recommend that the Art Institute of Chicago should get rid of all its highly-trained volunteer docents, because … Continue reading USA Today defends firing of Chicago docents, and a new theory on why they were fired
A week ago I wrote a piece on the firing of the Art Institute of Chicago’s (AIC’s) 122 volunteer (unpaid) docents, who were let go because they were not sufficiently “diverse”. The Art Institute now plans to hire fewer docents who will be paid $25 per hour, with much less training, to guide people around … Continue reading The Wall Street Journal on the firing of the Art Institute’s docents; and a personal observation
James Gillray (1756 or 1757-1815) was an English artist, caricaturist and satirist who has been called “the father of the political cartoon”. (Hogarth is another candidate.) Gillray also seemed to be anti-science, as judging from the cartoon below, which expressed the public fear of Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccination. The proud owner of the original cartoon … Continue reading The original anti-vax poster
It’s that time of year again: the time when the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) nominates its ten worst colleges of the year for free speech. (Their list of the best colleges is here, with the University of Chicago back up to #1.) But today we get an honor roll of shame. Before … Continue reading FIRE’s choice of America’s ten worst colleges for free speech
