Holly Dunsworth is a biological anthropologist at the University of Rhode Island, and appears to be somewhat of a biological ideologue—at least as far as male-female differences are concerned. For instance, she’s questioned my claim, supported by substantial evidence, that sexual selection (probably involving male-male competition) was likely responsible for human sex differences in size and upper-body strength (see here and here). The second link discusses her bizarre “alternative” theory for these differences, which is simply wrong, and she’s never responded to my critique.

Now Dunsworth has moved on, and is pushing social justice on the website of The Evolution Institute, David Sloan Wilson’s think tank funded in part by the Templeton Foundation. Her new article (click on the screenshot below) argues that all teachers of evolution must come to grips with both the dark past and supposedly dark present of evolutionary biology: namely, that it has been used to buttress eugenics and social Darwinism in the past, and is now used, via genetic determinism, “to justify civil rights restrictions, human rights violations, white supremacy, and the patriarchy.” She also mentions “anti-theism” as one of the bad outcomes of evolutionary biology. Really?

Dunsworth’s thesis is that this connection between human evolution and immoral and harmful programs has turned people away from human evolution, and that we have to “reclaim” it by producing and teaching a “sprawling, heart-thumping, face-melting epic, inspiring its routine telling and retelling.” She adds, “It’s time for a human evolution that’s fit for all humankind.” Unfortunately, Dunsworth’s version of evolution “fit for all humankind” seems to involve “evolution that comports with my ideology”, with “my” being “Dunsworth.”

Now there’s no doubt that evolution was historically misused to justify various forms of oppression (racial hierarchies come to mind), and there’s no doubt that Dr. Dunsworth means well in her effort to use introductory evolution courses as a form of social engineering. I am not questioning her motives but her program.

I differ with three claims she makes in her articles.

1.) People are turned off by human evolution, and in fact reject it, because it was historically misused. This appears to be the main claim buttressing her article, and I don’t see much evidence for it. Here’s what she says:

Human origins should be universally cherished but it’s not even universally known. It just doesn’t appeal to most people. This goes far beyond religion. Human evolution hasn’t caught on despite it being over 150 years old.  Where it has, it’s subversive or offensive. We have a problem. How could my life be subversive or offensive? How could yours?

Leaving aside the non sequitur of the last sentence, I’d say that human evolution (or evolution in general) hasn’t caught on because it has implications that bother people, especially religious ones—not because evolution is connected with racism, the patriarchy, and so on. Sure, creationists will bring up these connections (Nazi eugenics is a favorite one) to denigrate Darwinism, but, as Steve Stewart-Wiilliams shows in his excellent book Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew (recommended reading), the bulk of opposition to evolution comes from its attack on human exceptionalism. And human exceptionalism is the bulwark of Abrahamic religion.

That is why many people who accept evolution bridle at the idea that humans have evolved. (Remember that the Butler Act whose violation led to Tennessee’s Scopes Trial prohibited the teaching not of evolution, but of human evolution.) It’s religion, Jake, and there’s ample evidence that rejection of evolution is deeply connected with acceptance of religion. Not so much evidence that rejection of human evolution comes because it’s connected with propping up racism and the patriarchy.

If Dunsworth wants human evolution to catch on in America, she’d be better off loosening the grip of religion than instantiating her human-centered social justice course on evolution.

2.) Evolutionary biology is still being pervasively misused in America to justify oppression. The evidence for this claim is thin, though there are of course a few white supremacists around who might do this. But Dunsworth indicts more mainstream figures:

Genetic and biological determinism have a stranglehold on the popular imagination, where evolution is frequently invoked to excuse inequity, like in the notorious Google Memo. Public intellectuals like David Brooks and Jon Haidt root what seems like every single observation of 2018 in tropes from Descent of Man. And there’s the White House memo that unscientifically defines biological sex. Evolution is all wrapped up in white supremacy and a genetically-destined patriarchy.  This is not evolution. And this is not my evolution. I know you’re nodding your head along with me.

No, I’m not nodding, at least in agreement. The fact is that genetic determinism deserves a hearing, and the stuff that Dunsworth suggested might not be so wrong after all. Dunsworth seems to be a big opponent of evolutionary psychology in attacking Brooks, Haidt, and even James Damore, who all raise the possibility that there are evolved/genetic differences in behavior and cognition between men and women. The fact is that none of these people use that viable possibility to excuse inequity. They may use it to explain inequity, as did Damore, but his explanation, as he said repeatedly, was not to stamp women as innately inferior in tech skills. Rather, it was to explain why there’s not gender parity at Google. As more recent work has shown, the inequities in tech and other fields may represent hard-wired average differences between the sexes in preference and interest.

Society has moved past the point where genetic determinism is widely used to excuse inequities or to oppress people. You won’t find that in Brooks, Haidt, or Damore. You might find it in some marginalized and odious white supremacists, and in some evolutionary psychologists who go well beyond the realm of evidence in their genetic determinism. But too many people have gone the other way, as Steve Pinker showed in The Blank Slate. In my view we need more discussion of genetic determinism, not less.

3. We should spend a lot of time in evolution class teaching about the ways evolution has been used to promote bad social consequences. This is what Dunsworth wants (the caps are hers):

Evolution educators—even if sticking to E. coli, fruit flies, or sticklebacks—must confront the ways that evolutionary science has implicitly undergirded and explicitly promoted or has naively inspired so many racist, sexist, and otherwise harmful beliefs and actions. We can no longer arm students with the ideas that have had harmful sociocultural consequences without addressing them explicitly because our failure to do so effectively is the primary reason these horrible consequences exist. The worst of all being a human origins that refuses humanity.

I’m sorry, but there’s too little time in evolution class as it is to promote the misuses of Darwinism the way Dunsworth prescribes. By all means, teach this history in a class about biology and society, or in a class about the history of science. But evolution class is about science, not about the social consequences of science. When I taught half of the introductory ecology and evolution class required for biology majors here, I had exactly thirteen lectures to teach all of evolution, and I didn’t even get a lecture on human evolution. I was equally pressed when I taught a full semester of evolution at the University of Maryland.

Further, just teaching straight evolution has never—at least not as far as I can see—turned any of my students into raging misogynists or racists. In fact, most were pre-meds who regarded evolutionary biology as an annoyance that had no relevance to medicine (though it does).

This is not to say that there isn’t a place for evolutionists to decry any current misuses of evolutionary biology. We do that in popular writings and lectures, and on this site in posts. But if you’re going to co-opt evolution class for Dunsworth’s platform, an even better place to do that would be genetics classes, and not just introductory genetics. After all, her beef is genetic determinism, not just evolution. And why not co-opt chemistry and physics classes to teach about the misuses of chemistry (Zyklon-B, mustard gas) and physics (atomic bombs)? There is a time and a place for all that, but straight science classes are not the place. Our job is to teach science, not engage in social engineering.

And that brings me to exactly what kind of social engineering Dunsworth wants. Many of us can agree on the perfidies of racism and sexism, but Dunsworth apparently wants more: she wants us to condemn the evolutionary-psychology speculations of people like Haidt and Damore as well as genetic determinism in general. What it seems to come down to, as always with these things, is that Dunsworth wants us to teach her particular ideology in a way that will reform society along the lines that she wants. She wants us to condemn Damore, Haidt, and Brooks as those who misuse evolutionary biology at present (the rest is unsavory and unrepeated history). She apparently wants us to denigrate genetic determinism—but whose? Pinker’s? David Buss’s? All of evolutionary psychology?

Sorry, no can do. I do what I can, but I’m not getting on Dunsworth’s social-justice train.

At the end, Dunsworth offers a list of suggested alterations of evolution courses. I’ll let you see them yourself; some are okay, others not so okay. And I’ll note, just because I appreciate good writing, that Dunsworth’s article isn’t a shining specimen of that genre, as in this introduction to her list of suggestions:

Here I offer some general suggestions for how to do that and I’m speaking to all of us, whether we teach  a course dedicated to human origins and evolution, whether we teach a course dedicated to evolution and only cover humans for part of it, whether we teach a course dedicated to evolution but exclude humans entirely… because we all have to actively fix this. Learners will apply evolutionary thinking to humans, whether or not your focal organisms are human. Making rules in one domain and transferring them to new ones is humanity’s jam. Eugenics is proof that our jam can go rancid.

And while we’re actively disassociating the reality of evolution (which is just a synonym for ‘nature’ and for ‘biology’) from all the terrible things humans do in its name, we can help make it more personal as we all deserve our origins story to be. We deserve a human origins we can embrace.

Eugenics simply isn’t a big problem these days, though it may revive in a narrow way with the possibility of altering embryos with CRISPR. But nobody wants to go back to the days of Galton and the Kallikak Family. As Pinker has emphasized, the arc of morality has bent upwards. And, by the way “evolution” is not “just a synonym for ‘nature’ and for ‘biology.”

I’ll confront racism and sexism in my own way, and not in evolution class. And I reject out of hand Dunsworth’s indictment that I’m “unethical” in not using class time to push her social agenda. That’s about as authoritarian as an Authoritarian Leftist can get.

h/t: Grania