Category: meetings

Why do academics in the humanities read their papers aloud?

August 11, 2025 • 9:30 am

One of the big differences between academics in the humanities and in the sciences is that, at professional meetings or during lectures, humanities scholars read aloud from a paper they are holding, while science people usually speak extemporaneously, though of course they surely outlined what they were going to say beforehand—or practiced their talk.  But you almost never hear a scientist read a paper.

A colleague was complaining to me about this recently, and she had a point.  Here the scientists clearly have an advantage, and for three reasons:

1.) If you’re just going to read your paper, why not just hand it out to the attendees, or put it online? What is to be gained by reading aloud what’s already written? This practice turns the speeches into what could be edited volumes, saving people a lot of time.

2.) Hearing a paper read out is, let’s face it, DEADLY BORING.  Rarely is there any attempt to enliven the reading by changing pace, intonation, or other elements of speech.  A science talk in which the speaker more or less talks to you as if talking to a friend or colleague is simply more interesting. Plus extemporaneous speech affords a chance for off-the-cuff remarks, humor, or other forms of rhetoric that characterize normal conversation.

3.) Let’s face it: written English is not the same as spoken English. This is particularly true in the humanities when papers are written in academic language, which is often deadly dull. Reading a paper uses a different form of speech than speaking extemporaneously, even if you use an outline.

Some caveats: the humanities scholar may say that it’s absolutely important to get the words right, ergo one has to have every word down on paper lest the audience misconstrue your ideas. But this exculpatory claim is unconvincing, for, after all, don’t scientists need to get the data right even more?  To get around that need, we usually use Powerpoint (or 35 mm slides in the old days).  But if you’ve listened to scientists who don’t use slides, they don’t read their talks either, and they’re more interesting. Further, can’t humanities people use Powerpoint? (If they did, they’d probably put the entire text of their talk on the slides!).  They could simply put a few words on each slide to prompt them and to show the audience their main points, and then speak extemporaneously.

I realize that there are exceptions to this rule: humanities scholars who give good talks without reading (Dan Dennett is one) and scientists who simply read the text on their slides (names redacted), which is nearly as boring as hearing a paper.  Still, this divide between humanities and sciences is something that irks me—and other people, too. I really do think that humanities people can pep up their talks by simply practicing them and/or using an outline that they can refer to from time to time.

Now I’m not trying to denigrate the humanities as a whole compared to science, but simply criticizing one difference between these areas that, I think, benefits internecine communication (and interest) more in the sciences than in the humanities.

If you can justify this difference, please do so below. But then you must explain to me why humanities people who read papers can’t simply make their papers available to the audience, either on dead-tree paper or online.

Gametic oppression?

August 5, 2025 • 10:40 am

This link goes to a “call for papers” for an upcoming conference at Yale in April of next year (or click on title below).  The announcement appears on a webpage by Rene Almeling, who appears to be one of the two organizers of the conference:

Rene Almeling
Professor of Sociology, Public Health, History of Medicine, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Yale University

Sarah S. Richardson
Aramont Professor of the History of Science and Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality
Harvard University

The conference is designed to lead to the publication scientific papers dealing (probably not kindly) with “gametocentric sex”.

Here’s the gist of the announcement (bolding is mine)

Inspired by rapidly emerging developments in the science and politics of fertility and by the rise of gametocentric definitions of sex, as well as a decades-long tradition of gender scholarship about gametes in relation to sex, race, sexuality, and health, we invite contributions to a workshop for early-career researchers in the social sciences and humanities who are developing the next generation of scholarship about eggs and sperm. Our aim is to provide mentorship for further development of works-in-progress, either in the form of dissertation chapters or publishable articles.

We invite proposals from early-career researchers – e.g. graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, assistant professors – in the social sciences and humanities as well as interdisciplinary scholars in the health and life sciences who are studying any aspect of eggs and sperm. We are especially interested in creative and innovative theoretical and/or methodological approaches, and we intend for the topic of “gametic politics” to be understood broadly. Potential topics might include (but are definitely not limited to):

  • analyses of how gametes have figured into historical and contemporary definitions of sex;

  • the politicization of gametes across multiple domains, such as medicine, education, sports, and law;

  • the intersection of gametic politics with myriad forms of inequality, such as those associated with gender, race, class, and sexuality;

  • how various scientific approaches to gametes are mobilized in political discourse;

  • individual experiences of and beliefs about gametes, including in relation to one’s gender identity;

  • the emergence of gametic metaphors and their implications for science and society.

As the first bit notes, the whole affair was inspired by “gametocentric definitions of sex,” which of course are not definitions but actually “concepts”, in the same way that the “biological species concept” (BSC) is not an a priori definition of species, but a recognition and encapsulation in words of a biologically observed near-universal.  The BSC arose because it has been recognized forever that nature is not a “spectrum of animals and plants”:  there’s no continuum between blackbirds, parrots and falcons. Or between clover, white oak trees, and poison ivy. Rather, nature is “lumpy”, with different nearly discrete groups that we call “species”. To understand how a continuous evolutionary process leads to a nature that is “lumpy,” the BSC arose to recognize that the “lumps” are maintained by reproductive isolating barriers that impede gene flow between nature’s “lumps.”. As Allen Orr and I wrote in the first chapter of our book Speciation, the BSC immediately gives us a research program for understanding the origing of species (those “lumps”): find out how the reproductive isolating barriers arise.  The BSC arose because it not only recognized a near-universal in biology (such near-universals are rare), but also was utilitarian, explaining the origin of the lumps.  This is why Darwin, who didn’t have a good definition of species, was unable to understand the origin of species, despite the title of his great 1859 book. It should have been called The Origin of Adaptations instead.

Likewise, it was recognized over a century ago that all animals and vascular plants (with a few exceptions caused by developmental anomalies) come in two flavors, male and female, and these differ because the former have small mobile gametes and the latter large immobile ones. I’d prefer saying “the gametocentric CONCEPT of sex,” for the gamete-size concept holds in all these organisms, and no other concept of sex holds across all those species. So again we have a concept to deal with something nearly universal in nature that, as a bonus, helps us understand evolution.

Of course I know little about the genesis of this seminar, nor read the papers of the organizers, but the stuff in bold leads me to believe that this symposium seeks to overturn the “gametocentric definition of sex” because it is seen as oppressive to those who feel that they are not really members of the sex recognized by their gametes.

Unfortunately, holding any other view of biological sex not only makes the recognized binary not universal, but also effaces our ability to understand evolutionarily important phenomena like sexual selection. Like the BSC, the gametocentric species concept is utilitarian as well as nearly universal. To those benighted individuals who say that biological sex is really a complex mixture of various traits, including “lived experience” and “one’s psychological self concept”, I’d ask, “Well, how many biological sexes are there in humans? An infinite number?”  Is that true of foxes, ducks, and iguanas, too?”  Remember that three biological societies declared that sex was a spectrum in all species, but then took down that declaration because a lot of biologists opposed it. In fact, in later correspondence the three societies admitted that their initial declaration was misleading–and conceded a lot of our points.

As I’ve said repeatedly, the binary concept of biological sex is the only one that makes sense, but it says nothing about people’s feelings about what gender they really are, doesn’t justify our mistreating people who feel neither male nor female (or feel they’re not members of their natal sex), and is certainly not transphobic. Recognizing that helps explain why, over and over again—probably a dozen times—natural selection has led to the evolution of two sexes—and each time the same gametic distinction is the result.  Understanding why there are only two sexes coming from these independent origins is another question answered only by recognizing the sex binary.  As Ronald Fisher wrote in his magesterial The Gentical Theory of Natural Selection:

No practical biologist interested in sexual reproduction would be led to work out the detailed consequences experienced by organisms having three or more sexes, yet what else should he do if he wishes to understand why the sexes are, in fact, always two?   (pp. ix of 1958 Dover edition)

Now I may be defending something that this conference actually accepts, but I’m guessing from the announcement that the purpose is to show that the sex binary is oppressive because not everybody feels “male” or “female”. And if that’s the case, we have another example of ideology trying to erode scientific knowledge in the name of social justice.

We shall see next year. In the meantime, I’ll continue to defend the binary concept of sex based on gamete size and mobility.

A report on the HxA meetings

June 27, 2025 • 11:15 am

I didn’t take many photos of the Heterodox Academy meetings, as there was a lot going on and food was more of less an afterthought. It’s the tenth anniversary of the organization, so there was a bit of celebration.  So let these snaps give you a small flavor of the meetings.

They were held in the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge, where we all stayed. It was where the meeting was held as well as where we stayed. Given the debilitating heat, there was almost no need to go outside (it was, I’m told 104° F one day, and that’s without the humidity factor.)

What is the Heterodox Academy? (Its acronym is HxA). Here’s what it says about itself:

Heterodox Academy’s mission is to advance open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement across higher education – the foundations of our universities as truth-seeking, knowledge-generating institutions. HxA empowers members to organize on their campus and within their disciplines, educates academics on the importance of our principles, and advocates for policies to protect open inquiry across higher education.

. . . . Our vision is an academy in which a vibrant community of inquirers investigate a broad range of questions about the world by bringing diverse perspectives to bear, thereby enlivening the pursuit of truth, knowledge, and progress.

And yes, all kinds of dissenting views were presented: by no means did all the speakers agree with each other. (I, for example, took some flak for maintaining that some of the humanities, like art, music, and literature, are not really in the business of “seeking the truth”; their considerable virtues lie elsewhere.) And there was one fellow, draped in a keffiyeh, who gave a 25-minute talk why institutional neutrality was bogus, and that universities should speak out, as institutions, when there is palpable evil in the world—not just when those issues affect the university itself. I think his keffiyeh carried what he saw as palpable evil, but the only example he gave involved a university funding the experiments of Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz. There were no examples from the present, and I wanted to ask what other issues universities should speak out against.

There was an ample “light breakfast” buffet the first morning, complete with fruit, yogurt, all kinds of Danish, and bagels with cream cheese. And, of course, coffee and tea. As I’d eaten little the night before, I managed to make it into a heavy breakfast. I had a bagel with cream cheese and chives, a muffin, a fruit Danish, a banana, and coffee.

Two of the bigwigs in the organization.  First, Jon Haidt, whose efforts (with others) led to the foundation of HxA in 2025:

In 2011, Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, gave a talk at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in which he argued that American conservatives were underrepresented in social psychology and that this hinders research and damages the field’s credibility. In 2014, along with political psychologist Philip Tetlock, social psychologist Lee Jussim and others, Haidt published the paper “Political diversity will improve social psychological science”. In 2015, Haidt was contacted by Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, a Georgetown University law professor, who had given a talk to the Federalist Society discussing a similar lack of conservatives in law and similarly argued that this undermines the quality of research and teaching. Haidt says he was also contacted by Chris Martin, a sociology graduate student who had published a similar paper about a lack of ideological diversity in sociology. Haidt, Martin, and Rosenkranz formed “Heterodox Academy” to address this issue.

Here’s Jon, all duded up in a tuxedo, about to give the introductory talk. The theme was that HxA is needed more than ever now that universities face attacks from many sides, including the government,

John Tomasi, the current President of the HxA, also in a tux.

I took very few pictures of the speakers, but since Luana was on a panel, I took a photo of the whole panel, called “STEM Strikes Back: How Elevating STEM Voices Can Restore the Academy’s Reputation – and How to Get Them in the Room”. Left to right:  Moderator Wayne Stargard of the MIT Free Speech Alliance, Ian Hutchinson, (a physicist at MIT), Luana Maroja (evolutionary biologist at Williams College), and Frank Laukian (Bruker Corporation and Harvard Univerity).  There were many panels like this with free discussion (I was on one the last day), other panels in which each member gave a 25-minute talk followed by audience Q&A, and individual talks. All events were followed by audience Q&A: after all, this is the Heterodox Academy.

I believe the panels and talks were taped, and will appear later on the Heterodox Academy YouTube channel. As Jim Batterson points out below, John Tomasi’s plenary talk is already online,

John McWhorter, who was on my panel, photographed at a dinner for speakers held at Henry’s End, a small restaurant not far from the hotel.

The menu for the speakers’ dinner. It was fancy. I ordered the corn crab cakes with tartar sauce, the blackened New York strip steak, and Persian lime pie (see below), washed down with rosé.

The corn crab cakes, filled with lump crabmeat and kernels of corn. Dipped in tartar sauce, they were excellent.

I sent my steak back because I asked for it rare and it came out medium. By the time I got a new one (still not rare, but better), I had forgotten to photograph it. Since it was blackened, though, it wasn’t very photogenic, resembling a slice of a tire.

The Persian lime pie, which was really a pudding. It was toothsome:

I walked home from Henry’s End when it was about a hundred degrees, and of course got lost following the directions on my phone. It took me 25 minutes to get back to the Marriott on a purported 10-minute walk, and I was drenched when I arrived. Oy, did a shower feel good!

Finally, a hot chicken sandwich with fries (mildly spicy), which I had for the one lunch not provided by the venue. Of course I had sweetened ice tea to wash it down.

Dave’s Hot Chicken was only half a block away from the Marriott, so was not much of a slog in the horrible heat.

Besides that one mishap, though, I had a good time at the meetings and made some new friends, including Alice Dreger, whose work I much admire (read Galileo’s Middle Finger). Alice is also heterodox, and has gotten a lot of flak.

If I had time I’d tell you how I got into it with the four other members of our panel, all of whom took umbrage at my contention that although the HxA’s mission is to foster the emergence of truth from a clash of diverse viewpoints, “truth” as defined by the OED as “Something that conforms with fact or reality,” could be apprehended only using evidence, which limits its apprehension to “science construed broadly”: those areas where questions can be addressed with empirical evidence. Much of humanities, I maintained, cannot find truth, for that’s not really the mission of areas like music, literature, or art.  What is the “truth” of a painting by Jackson Pollack.  You can imagine the hackles that rose when I said such things.  More hackles rose when I argued that, at bottom, all views and systems of morality are based on preference. But that latter contention happens to be true.

What can I say? I was being heterodox, which is our mission.  Here’s the panel:

Evolution meetings include an ideologically-based symposium on “teaching sex and gender”. It’s a spectrum, Jake!

June 20, 2025 • 11:00 am

A while back, the Presidents of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB) posted this letter on the SSE website (click title to see archived version):

The letter was a response to Trump’s Executive order on sex, which gave the biological definition of sex: a binary based on the physiological apparatus for producing gametes of different size, of which there are two forms.  This is how the “Tri-Societies Letter” (henceforth “TSL”) started:

As scientists, we write to express our concerns about the Executive Order “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government”. That Order states first, that “there are two sexes…[which] are not changeable”. The Order goes on to state that sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce. These statements are contradicted by extensive scientific evidence.

The TSL, posted on the SSE webpage, asserts that sex is a multivariate trait, is not binary but a spectrum, and that this spectrum occurs in all biological species. It adds this (bolding is mine):

Scientific consensus defines sex in humans as a biological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. There is variation in all these biological attributes that make up sex. Accordingly, sex (and gendered expression) is not a binary trait. While some aspects of sex are bimodal, variation along the continuum of male to female is well documented in humans through hundreds of scientific articles. Such variation is observed at both the genetic level and at the individual level (including hormone levels, secondary sexual characteristics, as well as genital morphology). Beyond the incorrect claim that science backs up a simple binary definition of sex, the lived experience of people clearly demonstrates that the genetic composition at conception does not define one’s identity. Rather, sex and gender result from the interplay of genetics and environment. Such diversity is a hallmark of biological species, including humans.

Note that it gives no way to determine whether an organism, including a human, is male or female! And how many sexes are there? This gives us no clue.

The letter went on to imply that all the members of the society, or at least nearly all of them, agreed with the Presidents’ views in the TSL:

Our three scientific societies represent over 3500 scientists, many of whom are experts on the variability that is found in sexual expression throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. More information explaining why sex lies along a continuum can be found here. If you wish to speak to one of our scientists, please contact any of the societies listed below.

It turned out that this was a distortion: the Societies had never polled their membership to see how many people agreed with their letter.

The result was considerable pushback against the TSL from scientists, 125 of whom wrote a letter to the Societies saying they didn’t agree with the TSL’s characterization of sex. Luana Maroja was the driving force behind this pushback, and the letter included this (I signed it, of course):

However, we do not see sex as a “construct” and we do not see other mentioned human-specific characteristics, such as “lived experiences” or “[phenotypic] variation along the continuum of male to female”, as having anything to do with the biological definition of sex. While we humans might be unique in having gender identities and certain types of sexual dimorphism, sex applies to us just as it applies to dragonflies, butterflies, or fish – there is no human exceptionalism.   Yes, there are developmental pathologies that cause sterility and there are variations in phenotypic traits related to sexual dimorphism. However, the existence of this variation does not make sex any less binary or more complex, because what defines sex is not a combination of chromosomes or hormonal balances or external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. The universal biological definition of sex is gamete size.

You can see my other posts about this kerfuffle here.

The response from the Societies can’t be posted as we were refused permission to do so, but I characterized it this way:

. . . . this time we asked for a response and got one, signed by all three Presidents.  I can’t reprint it because we didn’t ask for permission [we later did but were refused], but some of its gist is in the response below from Luana [Maroja]. I will say that they admitted that they think they’re in close agreement with us (I am not so sure!), that their letter wasn’t properly phrased, that some of our differences come from different semantic interpretations of words like “binary” and “continuum”(nope), and that they didn’t send the letter anyway because a federal judge changed the Executive Order on sex (this didn’t affect our criticisms). At any rate, the tri-societies letter is on hold because the organizations are now concerned with more serious threats from the Trump Administration, like science funding.

The upshot was that the Societies eventually decided to remove the letter from the SSE website. What remains on the the original page is this, “This letter was originally posted on February 5th. A revised version is in progress and will be posted shortly.”

We are still waiting. I’m betting that no revision will ever appear. And it shouldn’t, for it’s not good for the premier evolution societies to pretend that biologists see sex as a spectrum.

What I’m leading up to is that, at the SSE’s annual conference taking place this month, the Society is sponsoring a three-hour symposium with four lecturers, a symposium that seems designed to reiterate the premises of the now-vanished letter. You can see the summary of this symposium by clicking on the link below to see synopses of the four lectures; then click on the bottom symposium, which looks like this:

If you go through the written summaries of the talks, you will see two themes reiterated:

1.) Biological sex is not binary but multifaceted, a “complex suite of traits across multiple organizational levels”.  No definition of biological sex appears to be given.

2.) Teaching that sex is binary harms those people who feel they’re not part of the binary, presumably nonbinary people, genderfluid people, some trans people, and the like. An important goal of teaching about sex and gender is to avoid harming people, and this form of teaching must be designed to avoid that harm.

The first point simply reiterates what was in the now-disappeared letter.  It makes the argument that many “progressive” biologists make: sex involves a combination of different traits.  This of course neglects the universality of the gametic definition, for no other definition holds for all animals and vascular plants. That’s why the definition (really a post facto observation) is used. In fact, many of those who hold to the “multifactoral” definition never even give a definition of sex, so I don’t know how they can tell that, say, a rabbit is male or female.

The second point turns biology teaching into a form of social engineering or propaganda: we must teach about sex in a way that does not harm people (i.e., offend them). I see this as distortion of biological truth in the interests of social justice, something that Luana and I discussed in our paper “The Ideological Subversion of Biology.” In fact, of course, teaching that biological sex is binary should not make anybody feel worthless or demeaned, for the dignity and rights of people depend not on biology but on morality, which is a social construct.  I have made this point endlessly and won’t repeat it here; see the end of the paper linked just above.

Some quotes from the summary and the abstracts:

Symposium summary at the beginning:

This symposium will explore the current science behind sex and gender, explore how educators can move their instruction beyond simple binary XX/XY paradigms, and provide educational materials for teaching this nuanced and difficult subject.

The non-binary nature of sex:

However, “biological sex” can describe a complex suite of traits across multiple organizational levels, including chromosomal inheritance, physiology, morphology, behavior, etc. To capture the full range of sex variability and diversity, we must critically assess our research approaches for studying sex associated traits. In this talk, I will provide practical guidance for conceptual frameworks, experimental designs, and analytical methods for studying and teaching the biology of sex. I invite fellow scientists and educators to conscientiously apply these inclusive approaches, to advance our biological understanding of sex and to encourage academically and socially responsible outcomes of our research.

. . . . Biology is the study of the diversity of life, which includes diversity in sex, gender, sexual behavior, and sexual and romantic orientations. However, the few existing studies of biology textbooks and classrooms suggest that many textbook authors and classroom instructors represent only a narrow swath of this diversity which can lead to an over emphasis on binary sex, conflation of sex and gender, and reinforcement of essentialisms.

Biological sex is a complex and highly variable trait; however, overly simplistic explanations are common in undergraduate biology classrooms. Here we test the impact of an accurate approach to teaching about the diversity of biological sex in organismal biology (‘treatment’ lecture) and compare this approach to a ‘traditional’ lecture section of the same introductory biology course.

The harm of teaching sex “wrongly”.

Although science is thought to be objective and free of emotion, many people are uncomfortable talking about the biology of sex. That discomfort and fear leaves room for hostile attacks on the science of sex to easily propagate through political and social channels. This creates unique challenges for educators in this area. In this presentation, I will discuss the biological basis of sex and sexual diversity from the perspective of a developmental biologist. The hierarchical nature of development connects genetics to phenotypes. Development dictates how sexual diversity emerges within species. The evolution of development dictates how sexual diversity arises among species. I will use development to demonstrate how biologists can distill complexity down into understandable chunks to address the most pervasive misconceptions about sex, especially those actively being used to take away
people’s rights.

. . . To more fully characterize the current range of narratives about sex, gender, sexual behavior, and orientation (SGBO narratives) present in undergraduate biology courses, we interviewed a national sample of 53 biology majors whose genders do not align with the sex they were assigned at birth (i.e., trans-spectrum students) about the SGBO narratives they encountered in biology courses.

We analyzed interviews using reflexive thematic analysis with the goal of identifying SGBO narrative in biology content and how these narratives supported or harmed these students’ sense of belonging in biology classrooms.  We found five SGBO narratives that harmed trans-spectrum students’ sense of belonging.  We also found three narratives that supported trans-spectrum students’ belonging.  These narratives could manifest in the classroom in multiple ways ranging from short disclaimers to elaborate case studies. The ways the narratives manifested influenced their impact on at least some students. These narratives and how they manifest provide potential teaching suggestions to both support trans-spectrum in STEM classrooms and more accurately teach the diversity of biology of sex, gender, sexual behavior, and orientation.

(Continuing the last quote in the section just above):

. . . We show that (1) the treatment lecture has a positive impact on feelings of inclusion for LGBTQIA+ students, (2) the treatment lecture had a positive impact on LGBTQIA+ and TGNC (transgender and gender nonconforming) student experiences in the course compared to other students. . .

This is not a huge deal, but I don’t think that one should distort the most widely accepted definition of sex to avoid offending people who don’t think they adhere to it.  I can’t see any other reason for this symposium. And yes, sex is binary, and that’s universal: there are only two types of gametes, and this holds across all animals and vascular plants. It’s not only universal but useful, for the binary enables us to understand one of the most important phenomena in biology: sexual selection, a form of selection that leads to differences between males and females. Of course teachers should be sensitive to their audience and not denigrate those who feel non-binary, but they should also teach the conventional wisdom about sex, which is apparently not going to happen at this symposium.

Does free speech create a “marketplace of ideas” that leads to emergence of the truth?

May 20, 2025 • 9:45 am

I’m participating in the Heterodox Academy meeting in NYC on June 23-25, and its theme is “Truth, Power, and Responsibility.” The program for the entire meeting is here.

I’m on a rather daunting plenary panel on the 25th (below).  The description:

The Duties and Responsibilities of Scholars | Wednesday, June 25 at 12:30-1:50pm
What does it mean to be a scholar today—and who gets to decide? In an era marked by rising polarization, increasing public scrutiny of higher education, and shifting institutional expectations, the role of the scholar is more contested than ever. This plenary session brings together leading thinkers from across the academic spectrum to examine whether there are universal norms of scholarship that transcend disciplines, and what obligations scholars have not just to their fields, but to academia at large. This panel, featuring Jerry Coyne (University of Chicago), Jennifer Frey (University of Tulsa), Louis Menand (Harvard University), and John McWhorter (Columbia University), and moderated by Colleen Eren (William Paterson University), will explore where today’s academics derive their sense of duty, how those understandings are evolving, and what responsibilities come with the title of professor.

I suppose I could just let the bigwigs do all the talking, but I do want to make a contribution.  To do that, I’ve been reading quite a bit about academic freedom and free speech. I’ve discovered that they are two separate things, and that, if achieving truth is one’s aim, academic freedom is at least as important as free speech. In These are nascent ideas, so feel free to comment on them below.

First, let’s look briefly at free speech, which most scholars define this way:

Freedom of speech (according to America’s First Amendment): the prohibition of the government to suppress speech in public square. (There are of course exceptions, like harassment, false advertising, defamation, or creating imminent and predictable violence.)

There are three parts of the courts’ interpretation of First Amendment free speech:

a. There can be no content discrimination [A content-based law discriminates against speech based on the substance of what is communicated].

b. There are no true or false opinions for the purpose of the First Amendment. That is, everybody is entitled to their own opinion in all matters, both political and epistemic. This means that the ideas are given equal political consideration, but this doesn’t mean that all opinions are equally valid.

c.  The state cannot compel you to speak. (This is outlined in Robert Posts’s engaging speech).

There are two reasons for a rational democracy to adopt freedom of speech.  First, because a democracy is really government based on public opinion, as it’s ultimately based on votes. And, as we have learned, voters can sometimes have false or even harmful ideas. Second—and this is the philosophical underpinning of all freedom of speech laws—the freedom is supposed to create a “marketplace of ideas”, whose clash through public discussion and expression is supposed to be an essential route to finding TRUTH.  But does it? My view is no: the truth is ultimately determined through academic freedom, which I construe broadly to encompass quasi-scientific investigation using evidence, but investigation not necessarily done by academics.  I’ll discuss this in part 2 of the post, which I may or may not put up today.

The “marketplace of ideas” trope is based largely on the pronouncements of two men: John Stuart Mill and Oliver Wendell Holmes. I’ll give some of their quotes below about the value of the marketplace of ideas:

John Stuart Mill from on “On Liberty”

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

. . . . There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.

The beliefs  which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us: if the lists are kept open, we may hope that if there be a better truth, it will be found when the human mind is capable of receiving it; and in the meantime we may rely on having attained such approach to truth, as is possible in our own day. This is the amount of certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this the sole way of attaining it.

However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.

I have long touted Mill’s tract as of supreme importance in justifying freedom of speech in a democracy. And I still think that, but I no longer agree that the clash of ideas among the public promotes or guarantees emergence of the truth. Something more is needed, and that something, as we’ll see, is evidence.  Note that evidence is not mentioned by Mill.

From Oliver Wendell Holmes as quoted in the Annenberg Classroom:

In his dissent from the majority opinion in Abrams v. United States (upholding the Espionage Act convictions of a group of antiwar activists), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes coins his famous “marketplace of ideas” phrase to explain the value of freedom of speech.

The full quote:

“[W]hen men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.”

And from an article in Wikipedia: [In] the dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in United States v. Schwimmer. Holmes wrote that “if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.’

Note that he doesn’t mention freedom of speech, but freedom of thought. Freedom of thought is not protected under the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

But does the clash of ideas in the public square produce truth (defined roughly as “something that conforms to fact or reality”) or knowledge (defined as “justified true belief”)? Again, the clash of ideas is necessary in a democracy so that the public can consider all sides of an issue before making decisions on who runs the government. We can argue later about whether certain non-elected parts of the government, like the Supreme Court, operate according to the First Amendment. They certainly don’t, as there is compelled speech—lawyers forced to answer questions—and not all ideas are considered equal.

Well, surely the clash of ideas is necessary to produce truth, but it’s not sufficient.  Let’s take some examples.

One that immediately comes to mind is the clash between creationism and evolution. Everyone is entitled, via free speech, to espouse publicly one or another view in the public square (but not in the classroom).  This is the vaunted clash of ideas.  But did this clash produce truth per se? No, what eventually allowed evolution to overcome creationism is evidence,  and that evidence doesn’t come from opinions, but from epistemic considerations.  What empirical evidence do we have on the side of evolution (ahem, Why Evolution is True), and what evidence on the side of a supernatural hand in creationism? The evidence comes from scholars (or nonscholars employing scientific methods) gathering evidence under the principle of academic freedom: studying, thinking, and publishing what they want, using norms of scholarship and without outside interference.  The finding of “truth” depends not only on a clash of ideas, but on the adducing of evidence by the opposing sides, along with the presumption that the public is rational and thoughtful enough to evaluate that evidence. (It apparently isn’t as judging by the most recent Gallup poll, which shows that 71% of Americans think that God had some had in evolution.)

Second, consider whether everyone is entitled to free government-provided health care, as in the UK and many other countries. Here we have an ongoing clash of ideas, which so far has resulted in an answer of “no” in America, though that could change.  Which “truth” has resulted from this clash? Does the UK have the truth, or the US? The “truth” is that perhaps one of these is better for society than the other, but the clash of ideas itself won’t settle the issue, and even so there would be unresolvable disagreement about what “better” means. What we need is what we don’t have: a comparative experiment (or data) showing the effects of each choice in each society, AND a public that has a widely shared idea of what a “better society” means.

The second question in fact involves not just facts but values: what kind of society do we want?  And while those values might be informed by a clash of ideas, they are based largely on unchangeable personal preferences. Often the clash of ideas rests heavily on morality, and, as I believe, there is no absolute morality and no “moral truth” (let’s put Biblical morality to the side here, since it’s not even clear that there is such a thing). Rather, morality is based on personal preferences, and in many cases (viz., the trolley problem), there is no truth: one simply adheres to one preference over another.

Here’s a third example: should society allow abortion? If some people have views on abortion that hinge on empirical facts, like whether a fetus has a heartbeat, can feel pain, or be viable if removed from the mother, then yes, those views can be informed by empirical investigation, also called “science”.

But there are many who favor an absolute prohibition of abortion because they consider it murder, murder of a potentially viable human being.  Such people feel they are right, but morally right. Other people, like me, favor almost unrestricted abortion up to birth, simply because I believe that a society in which women have that choice is a better society than one in which abortion is forbidden or given time limits.  But is the “truth” here? There is no truth: there is only people deciding what is morally permissible.  Yes, we have a clash of ideas, and yes, it’s resolved in various ways in various states, but the resolution is a political one: a consensus of opinion and not a determination of “truth.”  Again, I don’t see how that clash itself leads to the “truth”. It can lead to a political decision, but since this is largely an issue of preference, there is no truth to be had, no “conforming to what is reality.”

I maintain that most of the clashes of ideas we see in society deal with political or moral issues, hinging on preferences that cannot be adjudicated by argument alone. Some can be adjudicated by empirical investigation, but that is a minority.

In the end, while I believe that a clash of ideas is essential in a democracy simply to have a working democracy, the clash alone does not guarantee homing in on truths about the universe, and in many cases it can’t.  In the cases where it can, the clash involves differing opinions about empirical issues. And it is the resolution of those issues by empirical data that will guide us toward the truth. Absent empirical evidence, which can result only from academic freedom (construed widely as the freedom to think, teach, and research), a mere clash of ideas cannot guide us to the truth.

Day 3: USC Conference on Censorship in the Sciences

January 31, 2025 • 9:30 am

To finish up my reportage on the USC conference on Censorship in STEM, I present a video Day 3 for your delectation.  It’s 6½ hours long, but below I’ll give the time marks for three items of interest, one of which is of interest only because it includes ME.

First the whole day; I’ve put the written schedule at the bottom so you can find the other talks.

The first talk is by heterodox black political scientist Wilfred Reilly, speaking about ten taboo topics; it begins at the beginning. I won’t list the taboos, so you’ll have to listen to the talk to see them.

The second talk, involving Julia Schaletzky, Luana Maroja, and me, begins at 4:29:51; its topic is “Censorship, sciences, and the life sciences”.  I can’t bear to listen to myself again. But I advanced the video 5:26:00, where some guy asks me about filling the “god-shaped hole” in humanity, and by eliminating religion the hole is filled by solipsism, some undefined “meta-narrative”. I got as heated as I ever do in a meeting, which is not very heated, but did stand my ground.

But below a talk you must hear. It’s from Greg Lukianoff, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). I think it was the best talk of the conference, and was also the last one. Fortunately, you can avoid scrolling around above because the talk is also posted as a standalone video (below). It’s a bit over 52 minutes long, and the topic is “How cancel culture destroys trust in expertise.”  Lukianoff is a passionate and eloquent speaker.

It’s a very good talk packed with information and slides, beginning with what happened to professors during the Red Scare in America the 40s and 50s, and then going on to the increase in cancellation happening today: how many professors get fired, how many deplatforming attempts are happening and how fast they’re increasing, and how schools rate on free speech. (Lukianoff really doesn’t like Harvard or Columbia; see 28:00, at 44:30, and at 51:44, when he says that Columbia should declare itself a “technical school.”)

Lukianoff also gives a number of examples of demonization or cancellation, all of which bear on how speech is chilled (note his comment on the Nature Human Behavior policy), and describes some ongoing FIRE lawsuits to promote free speech.

There are a full twenty minutes of good questions, the first by Jonathan Rauch (“What about the ACLU, the AAUP, and other organizations like yours?”). All of the questions get thorough and thoughtful answers.

 

Finally, here’s the schedule for day 3:

Video: Day 1 of the USC “Censorship in the Sciences” conference

January 20, 2025 • 9:45 am

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.