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.
This is a perennial topic among those of us who consider wokeism a serious threat to the Left, to science, and to rationality. Is the present tsumani of wokeness inundating politics, businesses, universities, and general discourse a passing fad, or is it here to stay—at least during our lifetime? I go back and forth on this, and my prognostications aren’t reliable. (Remember, I predicted that Biden would repudiate wokeness among Democrats, but he’s furthered it!)
At any rate, this article at Compact Magazine suggests that wokeism (or “Woke-ism”) is making a slow exeunt left. I’ve seen the piece described by a bunch of people as an excellent article. And yes, it’s pretty good, but hasn’t convinced me that al-Gharbi is right. Click on the screenshot to read, or see it archived here.
al-Gharbi, identified as “a Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in Sociology at Columbia University and a Daniel Bell Research Fellow at Heterodox Academy,” thinks that the turnaround began in the last few years. He cites a number of anecdotes and surveys to show pushback against wokeism. Many of these are apparently in his upcoming book, We Have Never Been Woke, by Princeton University Press.
Here are seven, with quotes indented:
a.) White liberals are no longer so eager to take strong stands on racial issues and are less likely to identify themselves with labels like “feminist.”
b.) There has been a drop in the frequency of attempts to censor or shut down speech on campus considered “uncomfortable.”
c.) Re politics:
Within the Democratic Party, following anemic 2020 results and recalls of progressive politicians in blue states, there have been efforts to “course correct,” to avoid further alienating normie voters. The Democratic base has moved in a similar direction, broadly rejecting progressive candidates during the 2022 primaries. These countermeasures likely helped the party stave off the anticipated “red wave,” preventing extreme Republican candidates from facing Democratic challengers who were also perceived to be far out of step with mainstream America. Running moderate Democratic candidates against GOP extremists proved to be a winning move throughout the country in 2022.
d.) What al-Gharbi calls “the vibes”:
According to some accounts, there is a growing appetite among Generation Z for humor and subversion, for a slackening of constraints and an expansion of horizons. The heavy moralizing around identity issues, the constant and intense surveillance and management of self and others, the incessant calls for revolution and reform—these elements of woke culture are running up against a growing sense of nihilism and ironic detachment among young adults.
There is growing discussion of a “vibe shift” among Millennials as well. Many are coming to find the culture wars both unsatisfying and rote. They are exhausted by the relentless cynicism, fear, doomsaying, and impression management that have governed much of their lives—and for what? They recognize the revolution isn’t coming anytime soon. So they are looking instead to have fun, relax, and cut loose a bit. Or, at the very least, to stop having to be so neurotic, guarded, and paranoid.
Of course this is just discussion and not data like that you could check in b.) (go see FIRE’s “campus disinvitation database to check; I haven’t looked but see the tweet below).
e.) Companies are said to be less likely to terminate employees solely on the word of accusers, while others are cutting DEI-related positions. That’s not happening on college campuses, though.
f.) Some companies refuse to cave in to social-media pressure to cancel the Offensive, like Dave Chappelle’s shows on Netflix or Disney’s new CEO taking a milder tone in the culture wars after Florida threatened to revoke the company’s tax-exempt status in the state. That, however, is DeSantis acting, and Disney had little choice.
g.) Social media-companies have allowed Twitter to reinstate the accounts of Trump and other noxious right-wingers (I always thought no account should be canceled unless it violates the First Amendment). But that’s Elon Musk, not a sea change in society.
So, yes, there are hopeful signs, but, living on campus, the epicenter of wokeness, I see little signs of its waning—and I’m on a fairly unwoke campus. Even al-Gharbi hedges his bets in the last sentence:
Whether any of these developments are “good” or “bad” will ultimately be a matter of perspective. The matter of fact is that, for better or worse (or more likely, a bit of both), the post-2011 “Great Awokening” seems like it might be winding down. What its legacy will be is yet to be determined.
“Might be” winding down! Well, it’s early days yet, and I could speculate about what legacy wokeness would leave if it disappeared (perhaps a greater division between races, for instance, as activist minorities became disaffected after the changes they wanted to make get stymied).
But Paul Graham, in this tweet I found, does support the reduction in canceled speech at colleges using four measures from FIRE of woke attack.
So perhaps something’s happening here, though what it is ain’t exactly clear.
Musa al-Gharbi recently published an article saying that wokism had peaked. So I asked @TheFIREorg, which among other things tracks cancellation attempts at universities, and sure enough all 4 of the measures they track are down. Maybe we've turned the corner! pic.twitter.com/Zz60zObccS
Although I’ve always said I’m in favor of some affirmative action in college admissions and hiring (but haven’t figured out exactly it should be implemented), I’ve never been in favor of mandatory DEI (“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”) statements as required parts applications for admission to colleges, graduate schools, or especially academic jobs.
It should not be part of a job application to show how you can engage in social engineering. Further, DEI statements constitute compelled speech, similar to the loyalty oaths that California academics used to take, and thus is unconstitutional.
These mandatory statements also change the purpose of a university—normally to teach, to learn, to learn to think, and to do research—into a form of social activism that must adhere to specific tenets of DEI. The statements are judged on how closely they adhere to a school’s construal of Critical Race Theory, and are often read and rated before one’s academic credentials are assessed. If you don’t meet the right “rubric” for your statement, your application can be trashed. Woe unto the applicant who says they “will treat all students equally” or “will adhere to Dr. King’s view that people should be judged by the content of their character [in this case, their academic achievement] and not the color of their skin”. Such candidates are considered unenlightened, and accrue the lowest ratings.
And if you don’t have a philosophy of DEI, a history of past DEI efforts, and a plan about how you can implement DEI in your university, then you stand little chance of getting a job. (There are usually three aspects to a DEI statement.)
Now not all schools require such statements. The University of Chicago, for instance, explicitly forbids them as per our Shils Report (full document here), which mandates that the criteria for academic appointments and promotion must comprise only research, teaching and training (grad students), contributions to the intellectual community, and service (this includes service to the University and your academic field, like giving seminars, editing academic journals, and so on.) The U of C has mandated that DEI statements are not included in this, and it’s forbidden for academic departments to require them for hiring and promoting faculty. I know of no other school that has such a prohibition, although there may be some.
In contrast, many schools not only require DEI statements, which can be and are used in race-based hiring—an attempt to secure equity among faculty—but even designate certain jobs only for candidates of certain ethnicities. Like DEI statements, hiring on the basis of ethnicity is against the law. But as the article below notes, schools know about this illegality but flout it anyway, because nobody ever penalizes them for doing so. Lawsuits against such discrimination are nonexistent for three reasons:
a.) They’re bloody expensive.
b.) You have to have “standing” to sue: to prove that discriminatory hiring based on race injured you. It’s hard to prove that.
c.) As the article below notes, if you sue a school because you were not hired or not considered because, say, you were Asian or white, you become academically radioactive: no liberal school (i.e. nearly all schools) will want to hire such a notorious person.
This is not a conservative point of view but a liberal one, as it is anti-discrimination and anti-compelled speech. The push to get rid of DEI statements is supported by all academic freedom organizations I can think of, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). FIRE notes that while the Constitutional prohibition applies only at public schools and colleges, it should apply more widely than that. As they say:
The First Amendment prohibits public universities from compelling faculty to assent to specific ideological views or to embed those views in academic activities. While private universities are not bound by the First Amendment, they generally make commitments to free speech and academic freedom that similarly preclude enforcement of any political, moral, or ideological dogma. Such colleges and universities educate and employ the overwhelming majority of America’s students and faculty members, and this document is intended to address DEI policies at those institutions.
But one person—Richard Lowery, an associate professor of business and finance at the University of Texas—has filed such a lawsuit against Texas A&M University. In his case, the “injury” consisted of the fact that (although he apparently has no interest in a job at Texas A&M, which isn’t as good as UT in his field), Lowery wouldn’t even be considered for a job because it was advertised as being open only to members of underrepresented minorities. Texas A&M is a public school, and thus violated the law by advertising a job open only to candidates of certain ethnic backgrounds.
Lowery’s gambit is a clever way to get standing, and apparently it’s worked so far (it also allowed other people to join in on a class action suit). Several law faculty at other schools are quoted as saying this is a pretty solid suit with a good chance of winning.
Click below to read:
Here’s the basis of the case as described above (remember, as a state school, Texas A&M must adhere to the First Amendment):
. . . the law may finally be coming for the overt employment discrimination practiced on most campuses today. The form of the destructor may be a test case filed on September 10: Lowery v. Texas A&M University System.
8. The Texas A&M University System, along with nearly every university in the United States, discriminates on account of race and sex when hiring its faculty, by giving discriminatory preferences to female or non-Asian minorities at the expense of white and Asian men. This practice, popularly known as “affirmative action,” has led universities to hire and promote inferior faculty candidates over individuals with better scholarship, better credentials, and better teaching ability.
9. These race and sex preferences are patently illegal under Title VI and Title IX, which prohibit all forms of race and sex discrimination at universities that receive federal funds. But university administrators think they can flout these federal statutes with impunity because no one ever sues them over their discriminatory faculty-hiring practices and the Department of Education looks the other way.
10. These discriminatory, illegal, and anti-meritocratic practices have been egged on by woke ideologues who populate the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at public and private universities throughout the United States. The existence of these offices is subverting meritocracy and encouraging wholesale violations of civil-rights laws throughout our nation’s university system.
Specifically, the complaint avers that in July 2022, Texas A&M’s “office for diversity” announced a program for hiring professors that was limited to members of “underrepresented groups,” which it defined as “African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Native Hawaiians.” In other words, like many DEI initiatives that pervade most university campuses today, white and Asian men need not apply for this program. Texas A&M justified the program with the goal of establishing a faculty whose racial composition attains “parity with that of the State of Texas”—despite the fact that even Grutter recognized that such racial balancing was “patently unconstitutional.”
Part of Texas A&M’s efforts to achieve such racial balancing has also been to establish faculty hiring lines open only to members of “underrepresented groups.” One such hiring line was in the Department of Finance, where the head of the recruiting committee confirmed in writing that the position was indeed “reserved” for non-white, non-Asian candidates.
Richard Lowery is a finance professor at the University of Texas and is a vocal critic of DEI programs. (Disclosure: I know Rich and have written about him in the past, but I am not involved in his case and did not know of it until after it was filed.) There should be no serious question that he would be qualified for a teaching position in the finance department at Texas A&M; indeed, his qualifications easily exceed those of many current Texas A&M finance professors. Yet despite being “able and ready” to apply for the position, Texas A&M’s “reserving” the position for non-white, non-Asian candidates means that he is ineligible for it.
Lowery’s lawsuit sues Texas A&M and various officials for violations of Title VI and Title IX, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief prohibiting the university from discriminating on the basis of race and sex in hiring decisions. It also seeks redress for violations of 42 U.S.C. § 1981(a), which guarantees individuals the same right to make and enforce contracts without regard to race, and for violation of the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The lawsuit also has another twist: it seeks certification as a class action, for the benefit of all white and Asian candidates who have been discriminated against by Texas A&M’s DEI employment initiatives.
Lowery is of course an opponent of DEI initiatives; why else would he put himself through the trouble of this lawsuit?
Given that the job was limited only to certain ethnic groups, it seems palpably unconstitutional, and I suspect Lowery’s suit will win—unless he is found not to have standing. But, to be sure, any Asian and white person who could have or would have applied for the job could in principle claim injury. Whether that’s upheld or dismissed solely on the grounds of standing, it’s only a matter of time before some brave soul brings a lawsuit on civil rights grounds and does have standing; and that person will win. That will bring the whole DEI-statement mishigas crashing down, and that’s to the good.
The article quotes three law professors who say Lowery’s case is strong. They may be conservatives (I don’t know), but they’re also at good schools: UC Berkeley, Cornell, and UC San Diego. I’ll give two of the statements, one from someone on the US Commission on Civil rights.
How does the case shape up legally? Asked for comment, University of California, Berkeley law professor John Yoo says:
This seems like a strong case. The Supreme Court’s diversity rationale for the use of race in university admissions for students is a limited exception to the general rule that the Constitution prohibits government from using skin color in its decisions and policies. Here, Texas A&M is flatly using race in considering the hiring and compensation of faculty. It is flatly unconstitutional and the university should lose in court.
. . . University of San Diego law professor Gail Heriot, who is also a commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights, observes:
For a long time, faculty members and aspiring faculty members who have been discriminated against have been reluctant to sue—mainly out of fear that they will be ostracized. As a result, college and universities have gotten bolder and bolder in the ways they flout the law. But the tide appears to be turning. There will likely be more lawsuits of this type in the near future.”
I’m sure there will be. It’s only a matter of time.
I will beg no more: we have about four days’ worth of photos left, and when they run out, the feature will end—until readers send more pictures.
Today’s batch, as we circle the drain, comes from Paul Edelman of Vanderbilt University. Paul’s notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
Here is the second part of my Florida birding trip [JAC: Part 1 is here] which focuses on marsh birds. Our first stop was Ocala Wetland Recharge Park where we saw this Sora (Porzana Carolina) Sora are usually quite shy, but this one was rather cooperative. We also saw a flock of Hooded Mergansers there (Lophodytes cucullatus).
Even shyer than the Sora is the American Bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus). I had seen one only once before, and that was a fly-over while in a boat and the only way I knew it was a bittern was my guide’s identification. But this bittern, which we saw at Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary plopped itself down right in front of us. He was so close, less than 10 feet, that I couldn’t get his whole body into the picture.
The rest of the photos are from Harns Marsh. It is common for us to see Sandhill Cranes (Antigone canadensis) here as they are year-round residents. Year-round residents also include Limpkins (Aramus guarauna) and Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus).
Less common to see are the Roseate Spoonbills (Platalea ajaja). The water was quite low at the marsh, which I think is what led to our seeing less common birds, the Greater Yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca), Least Sandpiper (Calidris minutillaand Wilson’s Snipe (Gallinago delicata). The first two identifications are tentative—it is difficult to tell the difference between the Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, this one has a bit of up-turned beak which I think is a good sign for my guess. Sandpipers are a nightmare for me to identify, but most things point to it being a Least. But, if another reader has a better idea, I am certainly open to It!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the February 13 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
* Last night I watched the first half of the Superbowl (the one football game I watch each year), but turned it off at halftime, when I believe the score was tied at 14 all. I see from the NYT today that Kansas City wrapped up the game in the second half. It was an exciting game with lots of touchdowns.
On Thursday night, Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs won his second N.F.L. Most Valuable Player Award, cementing him as the most accomplished passer of a new crop of young quarterbacks dominating the league. Three days later, he added the second Super Bowl victory of his career, throwing for 182 yards and three touchdowns to beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 38-35.
Ye know in America, and all ye need to know. Oh, and there were lots of commercials about Jesus, part of the “Jesus gets us” campaign, fostering mass delusion on an audience that is largely “nones”, and also includes Jews and Muslims who don’t “get” Jesus. Here’s a summary of the commercial’s purpose, along with part of one:
*It’s happened AGAIN: another unidentified object was shot down over the U.S., this time over Lake Huron. A short report from the Washington Post:
The U.S. military shot down a fourth aerial “object,” this time over Lake Huron on Sunday, according to two members of Congress who said they were briefed by Defense Department officials on the military action.
Rep. Jack Bergman (D-Mich.) said in a tweet that he had been in contact with Defense Department officials “regarding operations across the Great Lakes region” on Sunday.
“I appreciate the decisive action by our fighter pilots,” he wrote. “The American people deserve far more answers than we have.”
Separately, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said the object was “downed” by pilots from the U.S. Air Force and National Guard. Slotkin learned about the latest object from the Defense Department and said in a tweet, “be assured that all parties have been laser-focused on it from the moment it traversed our waters.”
A Defense Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The announcement of the takedown of a fourth mysterious airborne object came as members of Congress on Sunday pressed for more information from the Biden administration about the objects shot down over North America in recent days.
I can’t wait to hear what these objects are; the one shot down on Alaskan sea ice should be recovered soon. Both Democrats and Republicans are starting to grouse about the lack of information from the administration, although it’s hard to recover these things and they have to be analyzed. The article above suggests that the Alaska and Canada objects were both balloons:
When asked on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday characterized the two objects shot over Alaska and Canada as “balloons.” U.S. and Canadian officials said the latest objects were much smaller than the Chinese airship that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4 after traversing the continental United States.
*The death toll from last week’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria has now exceeded 33,000, and the evil Syrian President (you remember Assad using chemical weapons against his own people) is actively hindering rescue and relief efforts:
. . . . It took workers hours to reach the man in question, cutting rebar away from his large body frame.
Then they rolled him into a black body bag.
It was a scene repeated across southern Turkey and northwestern Syria on Sunday, where the death toll from the quakes eclipsed 33,000 people, as hopes waned that more survivors might be pulled from the rubble and the United Nations said aid efforts had “failed” the people of northwest Syria.
Nearly a week after the Feb. 6 temblors, rescue efforts in several areas shifted to recovery missions. More than 1.1 million people were displaced in Turkey. An untold number lay buried under the rubble. In Syria, a scarcity of excavators left people desperately digging for loved ones on their own.
Across quake-destroyed areas, the enormity of the needs was hard to comprehend.
“We have not seen suffering and devastation of this scale in over a decade,” Johan Mooij, the response director for World Vision Syria, said in a statement. “The impact is so enormous … it could take a generation for survivors to recover.”
More than 29,600 people in Turkey and 3,400 in Syria have been killed in the quakes, officials in the countries said. The numbers, they warned, would almost certainly rise.
. . .Amid the devastation, anger continued to mount over the gulf in aid between Turkey, where tons of relief has poured in, and rebel-held northwest Syria, where the response has lagged and people — many already displaced by a brutal civil war — have been mostly left to manage the crisis alone.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has restricted access to the northwest, which is under the control of armed opposition groups. With the backing of allies such as Russia and China at the U.N. Security Council, he has periodically blocked the delivery of humanitarian aid there in the past.
This man needs to go. And, by the way, so does Turkish President Erdogan, who, I hope, will be defeated in the upcoming election. He is to Turkey what Modi is to India.
*The NYT’s editorial board has a joint op-ed called “India’s proud tradition of a free press is at risk.” Not surprising given that India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is somewhat of an autocrat as well as a Hinducentric theocrat, and is cracking down on protests.
Since Mr. Modi took office in 2014, journalists have increasingly risked their careers, and their lives, to report what the government doesn’t want them to.
India ranks 11th in the “global impunity index” of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a tally of reporters whose deaths remain unsolved, and in the annual press freedom index published by the organization Reporters Without Borders, India fell to 150 in 2022, its lowest-ever rank out of 180 countries. The United States is 42; Russia is just below India at 155, China 175.
As a result, self-censorship has spread, along with a shrill Hindu nationalism in news reports that echoes the government line.
The latest manifestation of the government intolerance for critical reporting was its invocation of emergency laws last month to block a BBC documentary titled “The Modi Question.” The documentary revived damning questions about Mr. Modi’s role, when he led the government of the Indian state of Gujarat, in a horrific episode of violence in 2002, in which more than 1,000 people — most of them Muslims — were slaughtered over several weeks.
The BBC held Modi responsible for the environment that led to the slaughter, just like Trump bears responsibility for the political climate that led to January 6 (fortunately, with far less violence and death). His censorship of criticism of his behavior created a “Streisand effect”:
The two-part BBC documentary challenged all that. Though there had been no plans to air it in India, key portions promptly began circulating on social media. The government reacted with what has become its signature fury. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting blocked videos and links sharing the documentary, calling it “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage,” with a “colonial mind-set.” It added that YouTube and Twitter had complied with the order.
BBC said in a statement that the documentary was “rigorously researched according to highest editorial standards.”
Preventing circulation of even snippets of the film had the predictable effect of creating far more interest in it than there had been.
. . . As Mr. Modi’s own party knows firsthand — the B.J.P. [Modi’s party] was suppressed and many of its leaders jailed in the dark days of emergency rule from 1975 to 1977 — when populist leaders invoke emergency laws to block dissent, democracy is in peril.
On my last visit to India, I’d already noticed that the newspapers, even the liberal ones, had become less critical of Modi, and was told that they were fearful of criticizing the government. Poor India—the world’s largest democracy, run like an autocracy.
Dozens of students walked out of their New Hampshire school after the district banned urinals in a compromise to a proposal that would have blocked children from using facilities based on their gender identity.
The school board decided a few days before the Friday walkout to prohibit students at Milford Middle School and Milford High School from using urinals or shared spaces in locker rooms.
The ban in a town of about 15,000 people roughly 35 miles (56 kilometers) from Concord, New Hampshire’s capital, was the culmination of a long debate about district rules about bathroom use and gender identity. District procedures say students can access the bathroom that “corresponds to their gender identity consistently asserted at school.”
That procedure still applies. But a proposal that came before the school board called for no longer allowing students to use school bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity. Board member Noah Boudreault said he proposed new restrictions on bathroom use as part of a compromise.
. . . Under the new policy, the maximum occupancy for each bathroom and locker room will be capped at the number of stalls it contains. It also prevents students from using shared changing areas.
I’m not sure what’s going on here. Students can now use bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity (I presume this means that self-declared transsexual students can use the bathroom of the sex to which they’ve transitioned, because otherwise there’s no need for a “proposal”.) The men’s restroom will now allow trans men, who are biological women, most of them (since this is secondary school) having to sit down to pee.
But if they use a stall, why can’t they tolerate biological men using the urinal? (This isn’t necessary for trans women, since they will use the women’s restroom and those have only stalls.) Changing rooms are of course a more fraught issue, but I’m still not quite clear why boys are banned from using urinals in the boy’s room. That would just create a huge line at breaks between classes. (Every woman knows why there are long lines outside women’s rooms and no lines outside men’s rooms.) Will there be urinal police to ensure no standing, or will they simply remove or somehow block the urinals. I’m deeply confused.
*Yes, it’s the New York Post, but I’ve read about North Korean defector Yeonmi Park before, and her comparison of indoctrination by North Korean government vs by the woke wouldn’t be palatable to the MSM. new book coming out on Valentine’s Day, While Time Remains (h/t Luana)
The 29-year-old defected from North Korea as a young teen, only to be human-trafficked in China. In 2014, she became one of just 200 North Koreans to live in the United States — and, as of last year, is an American citizen.
Now, three years after she graduated from Columbia with a degree in human rights, Park is raising alarm bells about America’s cancel culture and woke ideology.
In her book “While Time Remains,” out February 14, Park writes how she made it all the way to the United States only to find some of the same encroachments on freedom that she thought she left behind in North Korea — from identity politics and victim mentality to elite hypocrisy.
Park went to Columbia University, and while you may think it’s a stretch to compare it to North Korea, but she doesn’t:
In an interview this week with The Post, Park recalled what it was like to be a North Korean defector who escaped tyranny and oppression only to meet college students intent on claiming victim status and earning oppression points. She dubbed her alma mater a “pure indoctrination camp” and said many of her classmates at New York City’s most elite school were “brainwashed like North Korean students are.
“I never understood that not having a problem can be a problem,” Park said. “They need to make injustice out of thin air or a problem out of nowhere, because they haven’t experienced anything like what other people are facing in the world.”
Park is an activist publicizing the dangers of North Korea and has a Youtube channel called “Voice of North Korea“. Here’s one of her productions, explaining the five things North Koreans must do to survive (it’s pretty grim, especially the part about everyone having a feces quote to give up as fertilizer):
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s hungry again (that’s not news):
Well, God has apparently stopped posting on Mastodon, which might be a sign of the End Times. The good news is that Titania has started posting again, perhaps because Andrew Doyle (her puppeteer) has issued his book, The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World. (It’s worth a read.)
As a tireless advocate for equity and inclusion, I am much blacker than Martin Luther King.
Why is she much blacker than King? Because she accepts the CRT view that you MUST judge people by the color of their skin. An excerpt from her Critic Magazine piece:
Again and again, I find that so many of the heroes of the civil rights movements fail to live up to my standards. Consider Martin Luther King and his famous “dream” that future generations would be judged not “by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”. Here’s what he should have said:
I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the content of their character, but the colour of their skin — in order to fulfil diversity quotas and deconstruct the inherent toxicity of whiteness.
I have also surpassed Mahatma Gandhi. He might have brought the British empire to its knees, but did he ever chuck a tin of soup over a Van Gogh in the National Gallery? No, he was too busy mincing around in flip-flops and collecting salt.
She’s calling for similar behavior now when the Foreign Minister speaks at the end of February. Sound up:
مردم عزیز ایران!
اکنون وقت آن است که همه ما از نمایندگان کشورهای غربی بخواهیم، در هنگام حضور امیر عبداللهیان، نماینده ضدزن ترین حکومت جهان در ۲۷ فوریه ۲۰۲۳، همگی سالن را ترک کنند و پای سخنرانی کسانی که چهار دهه است زنان ایران را به بردگی گرفتهاند ننشینند.
Now is the time for all of us to ask the representatives of Western countries to leave the hall during the presence of Amir Abdullahian, the representative of the most anti-women government in the world on February 27, 2023, and not sit at the speeches of those who have enslaved Iranian women for four decades
As they did at the United Nations Conference on Racism, during the speech of Mohammad Ahmadinejad on April 10, 2009, and the representatives of the countries that believe in democracy left the hall en masse.
The message of protest against the Islamic Republic by countries that believe in women’s rights should be sent everywhere and firmly and consistently.
From Barry. A cat on a diet is not a pleasant thing to watch:
A scorpion with a doubled metasoma (the posterior part of arthropods whose bodies comprise three parts). Two stings in one! (This is, of course, an accident of development.) It’s a female, and there’s a video in the second tweet:
Japanese translation of below: “Last night, I gave Pink-necked Kirigisu ‘Kusadango’. After all, it seems that solids cannot be swallowed, and only the juice is sucked. Maybe next time I’ll give him something like “high protein jelly”. “Kusadango” is a dumpling made of mugwort, a Japanese sweet. I think this is a mutant pink katydid, which are not all that rare in Japan.
Every day it seems the world, and especially the U.S., goes more nuts. Some of the craziness in America comes from Republicans who, feeling their oats after the demise of Roe v. Wade, and buttressed by a hyper-conservative Supreme Court, are passing state law after state law about guns, abortion, gender rights, and education. This legislative effort, reported by Bess Levin in Vanity Fair, is especially bonkers, for it shows that Missouri Republicans want to have children in their state open-carry weapons without adult supervision. Click to read:
An excerpt:
In a turn of events that absolutely defies logic, the Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to reject an amendment that would have banned minors from being allowed to openly carry guns on public land without adult supervision. Which, thanks to a 2017 law, they are currently free to do. (That law, which was vetoed by then governor Jay Nixon and overridden by the Missouri House, also allows Missouri residents to carry a concealed weapon without a permit, safety training, or criminal-background check. As Sgt. Charles Wall, spokesman for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “under current state law, there is no minimum age to lawfully possess a firearm.”) To be clear: The proposal rejected this week was not seeking to ban minors from openly carrying weapons on public land, period, but simply from doing so without an adult supervising them. But apparently even that was too much for the state’s conservatives, who quite literally believe it’s fine for actual kids to walk down the street carrying guns. The proposal was defeated by 104-39, with just a single Republican voting in favor of the ban.
Note that, contrary to many laws even in conservative states, Missouri allows anyone to carry a concealed weapon without a permit, safety training, or background check. Note too that a kid of any age can openly carry a gun. A ten-year-old could walk into the candy store, without an adult around, with a Glock holstered around his waist. Finally, note that there is no specified age limit, and that the Republicans voted en masse to allow unsupervised kids to “open carry”. Finally, although the open-carry-for-kids-without-supervision isn’t yet a state law, there are at least enough votes in the House to override a governor’s veto.
The Democrats tried to stop the madness, but they were overcome by Republican stupidity. By no stretch of the imagination could one interpret the Second Amendment to mean that the Founders envisioned children running around with guns and rifles. Look again at what’s in the Constitution:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Did the Founders want children in that “well regulated militia”? Unsupervised children? One would think that the use of guns in any militia would require some kind of adult in charge.
Yes, the Democrats tried, and at least in some parts of the state, the cops backed them. From the AP:
Democratic Rep. Donna Baringer said police in her district asked for the change to stop “14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St. Louis carrying AR-15s.”
“Now they have been emboldened, and they are walking around with them,” Baringer said. “Until they actually brandish them, and brandish them with intent, our police officers’ hands are handcuffed.”
And here’s how the Republicans defended allowing kids to run around with guns:
Republicans decried the effort as an unneeded infringement on gun rights.
“While it may be intuitive that a 14-year-old has no legitimate purpose, it doesn’t actually mean that they’re going to harm someone. We don’t know that yet,” said Rep. Tony Lovasco, a Republican from the St. Louis suburb of O’Fallon. “Generally speaking, we don’t charge people with crimes because we think they’re going to hurt someone.”
We don’t know they’re going to harm someone? What kind of craziness is that? Its KIDS WITH GUNS! It was just last month that a six year old in Virginia shot and seriously wounded a teacher, and it was not accidental but deliberate. Everyone know that kids haven’t been socialized into adult behavior and they’re often uninhibited. Give them a gun and then say, “we don’t know that they’re going to harm someone”? Seriously? Imagine the carnage of teachers alone that would ensue!
Only one Republican even had the sense to see this obvious point (bolding is from the magazine):
Representative Lane Roberts, apparently the only Republican with any sense in the Missouri House of Representatives, had said prior to the vote: “This is about people who don’t have the life experience to make a decision about the consequences of having that gun in their possession. Why is an 8-year-old carrying a sidearm in the street?”
A great question! And one that his fellow GOP lawmakers obviously did not have any good answers for because if you’re a sane person, there is none. In a ridiculous attempt to justify that scenario, Republican state representative Bill Hardwickargued that he “just [has] a different approach for addressing public safety that doesn’t deprive people, who have done nothing to any other person, who will commit no violence, from their freedom.” As a reminder the people Hardwick is arguing must have the freedom to carry firearms on their person, are children, some of whom cannot even buy a ticket for a PG-13 movie.
Do Republicans not have kids? Of course they do, but have they learned how kids are? I got this news from Matthew Cobb, who sent me the link with his comment, “Some parts of your country are insane.” And I can’t deny it. The worst part is imagining that somebody’s going to get killed by a toddler with a handgun, and that will lead to a lawsuit that goes all the way up to the Supreme Court, and the Court would then uphold the Missouri law because, after all, it’s the Second Amendment, Jake!
It must have been at least two years ago when a group of young but eager filmmakers came to my lab in Chicago to spend several hours filming my lucubrations about free will for a movie they were making. I didn’t hear much about the project after that, and assumed that it had died, but no: I just heard that the movie, “Free Will? A Documentary” was out. It’s two hours long, very absorbing for those of us interested in this question, but you’ll have to pay to see it. (As an interviewee, I got a free viewing.)
You can watch the short trailer on YouTube by clicking below; the notes say this:
Free Will? A Documentary is an in-depth investigation featuring world renowned philosophers and scientists into the most profound philosophical debate of all time: Do we have free will?
Featuring physicist Sean Carroll, philosopher Daniel Dennett, writer Coleman Hughes, neuroscientist Heather Berlin, and many more.
The website for the film is here; it was directed by Mike Walsh, produced by Jeremy Levy and Mitch Joseph, and the cinematography is by Matteo Ballatta. They did an extremely professional job, complete with animations, movies, photos of the relevant scientific papers, and so on. You can rent it from either Vimeo or Amazon for only $2.99 (“rentals include 30 days to start watching this video and 48 hours to finish once started”), or buy it to watch permanently for ten bucks. I enjoyed the hell out of it, and if you want to watch it via rental, three bucks is a pittance, especially because it’s as long as and as well produced as any documentary you can see in theaters. And it has a lot of food for thought. I put a few notes below.
The trailer:
The movie is largely a series of talking heads: nearly everyone who’s ever weighed in on free will is here (a notable exception is Robert Sapolsky). You can see physicist Sean Carroll, Massimo Pigliucci, Trick Slattery, Gregg Caruso, Derk Pereboom, Coleman Hughes (new to me on this topic, but very good), and neuroscientist Heather Berlin (also new to me, and also very good). And of course there’s Dan Dennett, who gets more airtime than anyone else, perhaps because he’s the most well known philosopher to deal with free will (he’s written two big books about it), but also because he speaks with vigor, eloquence, and his trademarked confidence. I appear in a few scenes, but the concentration is on philosophers.
On the whole, the film accepts naturalism, giving little time to libertarian “you could have done otherwise” free will. There are two libertarians shown, though: psychologist Edwin Locke (an atheist) and Rick Messing (an observant Jew and, I think, a rabbi). I don’t find them convincing, for, as Carroll points out, the laws of physics have no room for an immaterial “agency” that interacts with matter (our brains and bodies). I would have liked to see a full-on religious libertarian, some fundamentalist who insists that we all have free will because God gave it to us. (Remember, most people are libertarians.)
But everyone else interviewed is a naturalist, all believing that at any one moment you have only one course of action. Whether that can be made compatible with some conception of free will, as do “compatibilists” like Dennett, is a subject of some discussion in the film. But there are also hard determinists like Caruso and me who spurn compatibilism. In fact, at the end of the film several people, including Dennett, suggest that the free will “controversy” between naturalists one hand (i.e., “hard determinists” who accept quantum indeterminacy as well) and compatibilists on the other is a purely semantic issue, and perhaps we should jettison the idea of free will altogether. With naturalism settled as true and libertarianism held only by a few philosophers and a lot of religious people, getting rid of the term would make the debate purely philosophical. That’s fine with me, for once you accept naturalism, one can begin dealing with the important social consequences, including how to judge other people in both life and the legal system.
There’s a good discussion of the science, including the Libet and more recent Libet-like experiments (I find them fascinating, and a good argument for naturalism, but libertarians try to find ways around them). The filmmakers do neglect a wealth of information and neurological phenomena that also support naturalism (e.g., confabulation explaining actions caused by brain operations on conscious subjects, the fact that we can remove and restore consciousness, or trick people into thinking they are exercising agency when they aren’t, and vice versa). That’s one of only three quibbles I have with the film. Another is the failure to connect libertarian free will to Abrahamic religions, of which it’s an essential part—a connection that accounts for why more than half of people surveyed in four countries accept libertarian free will. Finally, the philosophers talk a lot about “desert”, which means that, in a retrospective view of your actions, you deserve praise or blame, but the film never defines the term (if they did, I missed it).
But I think they’ve done as good a summary of the issues involved as is possible in two hours, and have neatly woven together in “chapters” the conflicting ideas of people from all camps, letting the academics do all the talking. (There’s a wee bit of necessary narration.) I would recommend that those of you who like to talk about free will on this site ante up the measly three bucks and rent the movie. (The site for renting or buying it from Amazon or Vimeo is here.)
There are eleven “chapters” of the film, which I’ll list to whet your appetite:
What is free will?
The problem of free will
Libertarian free will
Compatibilism
Free will skepticism (includes “hard determinism”)
The great debate: responsibility
Neuroscience
Physics
The “morality club” (i.e., do we need free will be to morally responsible?)
Free will and the law (I think this section should have been longer, but I do get some say in the movie about this issue)
Should we stop using the term “free will”?
Now if you go to the movies for escapism or to see happy endings, this isn’t the film for you. It’s aimed at people who want to see a serious but eloquent intellectual discussion that involves philosophy, physics, ethics, and neuroscience. And the filmmakers did a terrific job, amply fulfilling their goals. Remember, you can’t even get a latte at Starbucks for three dollars, but for that price you can have a heaping plate of brain food!
John van Wyhe is a historian of science at the University of Singapore, specializing in Darwin and Wallace. Beside his many books he’s known for creating the ultimate Darwin source: Darwin Online, with all of CD’s manuscripts, publications, biographical data—everything but his correspondence, which you can find at Cambridge’s Darwin Correspondence Project. van Wyhe is also known for research that dispelled two persistent myths about Darwin: that he delayed publishing On the Origin of Species because of his fear of public reaction, and that he delayed telling people about A. R. Wallace’s 1858 letter detailing Wallace’s independent discovery of evolution via natural selection—supposedly because Darwin wanted to withhold credit from Wallace (van Wyhe debunked this by tracing the mailboats on which the letter would have traveled.) Both of those claims are bunk but are still repeated, especially by creationists and Darwin-bashers.
van Wyhe’s own bio is online at the site; and about two days ago, just in time for Darwin Day, he announced the creation of a page that brings together in one place every known photograph of Darwin (there aren’t many, but there are some I hadn’t seen). Here’s van Wyhe’s announcement on FB:
If you click on the headline below, you’ll go to the page, and take a few minutes to peruse the Great Man’s visage on his birthday. John’s site is a goldmine for teachers preparing lectures on Darwin and evolution, an the captions of the photos (which I’ve truncated) and all the variants show meticulous scholarship.
I’ll put up a few photos from the page in chronological order; indented captions are by van Wyhe. A few bits from the introductory section:
This is by far the most complete and accurate catalogue of photographs of Darwin ever published. It includes a dozen discovered during the many years of research for this study. The list includes more details about each photograph than previously published, such as dates, prices, the photographers and comments by Darwin or others on how the photographs were originally received. And, unprecedentedly, it includes details of all known variants produced to the early 20th century—more than 300. This is how Darwin’s appearance become so well known to the public during the 19th century and after.
It is well known that Darwin declined a request to be photographed with A.R. Wallace to illustrate a German translation of the 1858 Linnean papers (F365). (A.B. Meyer to Darwin 24 Nov. 1869 CCD17:497.) Darwin replied that Meyer was welcome to include a photograph “But I am not willing to sit on purpose; it is what I hate doing & wastes a whole day owing to my weak health; and to sit with another person would cause still more trouble & delay …
Despite Darwin’s oft-expressed aversion to sitting for photographs, this catalogue reveals that from 1865 he would be photographed every year or alternate year for the remainder of his life except for perhaps 1875-77. It was common practice at the time to sit for a more up-to-date photograph to send to friends and correspondents. In comparison, Emma Darwin was photographed much less. A list of all known photographs and portraits of her are listed in a separate iconography in Darwin: A Companion, 2021.
. . . His personal appearance was also very consistent after the 1860s with a mostly bald head and full, bushy white beard. A 30 May 1935 letter from his son Leonard Darwin in the Robert M. Stecher Collection at Case Western Reserve University accompanying an autographed copy of Rejlander 1871d.1 states: “I think [the photo] was taken somewhere about 1870; but this is a mere guess. He always looked old for his age. It might be rather later.” Louisa A’hmuty Nash, a neighbour (1873-9) and friend of the Darwins at Down, recalled: “Those eyebrows used to trouble his wife when his photograph was taken: she used to say the photographers gave him no eyes at all.” (A223) Some of the dates adopted here might be further revised in future. And there are probably further exposures from sittings already known.
The photos (captions excerpted from site:
1842 Aug. 23 Seated half-length three-quarter right profile daguerreotype with first child William Erasmus on his lap by Antoine-François-Jean Claudet (1797-1867), 18 King William Street, Strand and Coliseum, called The Royal Adelaide Gallery. Only known daguerreotype of Darwin and the only ‘photographic’ image of him with another person.
It’s curious that this is the only photograph of Darwin with anybody else; there are no “family photos” besides this, nor any photos of Darwin with his wife Emma.
1855 Seated half-length, full face in embroidered waistcoat, by Maull & Polyblank for the Literary and Scientific Portrait Club. The Club was “instituted for the purpose of attaining a uniform set of portraits of the literary and scientific men of the present age at a moderate cost.”
[Same photo] Photogravure (slightly cropped on all sides) image considerably ‘cleaned up’ and edited, looking very fine.
1857 Almost full-length seated left profile, checked trousers, waistcoat and cravat, by Maull & Polyblank whose partnership was 1854-65.
Maull & Polyblank 1857. (Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia)
1864 Three photographs by William Erasmus Darwin. The first photographs with beard.
Three-quarter left profile.
He’d aged considerably in seven years; this was around the time The Origin was published.
1865 Nov. Three photographs by Ernest Edwards. Taken in London. There was presumably a fourth. The first photograph was extremely widely reproduced. Darwin paid £1 for “E. Edwards Photo” on 2 Mar. 1866.
c.1866 Darwin on his cob Tommy in front of Down House, by Leonard Darwin. Sometimes dated to 1866 (when Tommy was acquired) or 1867 and very often to 1868, based on the annotation on the verso of the copy in CUL.
I hadn’t seen this photo of Darwin on a horse!
1866 Apr. 24 [One of] Four photographs by Ernest Edwards. Taken in London. Darwin paid Edwards £3 8s. 6d. on 5 Sept. 1866. Classed account book, Down House. Janet Browne, Power of place, 2002, p. 363, noted that during 1866 Darwin “paid out a total of £14 in small sums for photographs, nearly doubling his overall costs for “Science” that year”.
1868 Jul.-Aug. Four photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron; taken at Freshwater, Isle of Wight in two sittings.
1871a-b Two photographs by Oscar Gustav Rejlander. 1 Albert Mansions, Victoria Street, London. These two have almost never been reproduced.
1878a Three-quarter right profile, seated in a Down House chair (according to some sources), by Leonard Darwin. W.E. Darwin wrote in 1909 that the photograph was taken in Basset, Southampton, which is where he, W.E. Darwin, lived. Darwin stayed there from Apr. 27-May 13 1878.
1878b Full-length left profile, seated in a basket chair on the verandah at Down House by Leonard Darwin.
c.1880 Two photographs by Elliott & Fry. Some modern works claim 1879, 1880 or 1881 or that these are the last photographs of Darwin. No contemporary datings have been found.
1881 Four photographs by Elliott & Fry. This well-known sitting includes the only known photographs of Darwin standing. The BMNH exhibition of 1909 included all four photographs, dating them 1882. Sometimes dated by modern writers to 1880.
1881 (one of the above). One of the two images published as a cabinet card of Emma Darwin by Barraud, possibly done on the same day, is dated 1881
I believe the four above are the last photos of Darwin taken when he was alive; he died at home in Downe on April 19, 1882. He was only 73, but, as you see, looked much older. Hard work and an unknown ailment that plagued him much of his life had taken its toll. Wikipedia’s account of his death:
In 1882 he was diagnosed with what was called “angina pectoris” which then meant coronary thrombosis and disease of the heart. At the time of his death, the physicians diagnosed “anginal attacks”, and “heart-failure”; there has since been scholarly speculation about his life-long health issues.
He died at Down House on 19 April 1882. His last words were to his family, telling Emma “I am not the least afraid of death—Remember what a good wife you have been to me—Tell all my children to remember how good they have been to me”. While she rested, he repeatedly told Henrietta and Francis “It’s almost worth while to be sick to be nursed by you”.
He had expected to be buried in St Mary’s churchyard at Downe, but at the request of Darwin’s colleagues, after public and parliamentary petitioning, William Spottiswoode (President of the Royal Society) arranged for Darwin to be honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton. The funeral, held on Wednesday 26 April, was attended by thousands of people, including family, friends, scientists, philosophers and dignitaries.
A tweet from Adam Rutherford showing Darwin’s memorial stone in Westminster Abbey; he’s buried beneath it. It’s easy to miss, so if you go looking for the stone, look carefully:
On this day in 1882, Charles Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey, having died at Down House on 19th April. His pall bearers included Joseph Hooker and Alfred Russell Wallace. pic.twitter.com/dpJeyuTCjf
1881. One of the two images published as a cabinet card of Emma Darwin by Barraud, possibly done on the same day, is dated 1881.
[Addendum by Greg Mayer: Jerry alerted me to this valuable addition to Darwin Online yesterday, and I had a chance to look though it then. It is wonderful– in the original meaning of being full of wonders! It has the incredibly precise attention to detail and context that characterizes all of John’s work, but also reveals, even in a catalog of photos, his grasp of the big picture of why Darwin is worth studying and how we can still learn so much about him.
The news of the site came at an opportune time. I had been attempting to track down the date of a photo that I show to students in my evolution class, and Google image search wasn’t working properly. But with The Complete Photographs of Darwin, I quickly determined that it’s 1878a, taken by Leonard Darwin!
Once again Darwin scholarship in particular, and evolutionary biology and the history of science in general, are in debt to John van Wyhe. Darwin Online is now more indispensable than ever.
(Jerry mentioned two of John’s more notable contributions, concerning Darwin’s “delay” and the receipt of Wallace’s initial manuscript on natural selection. Here are his original papers on those two topics– both well worth reading.
van Wyhe, J. 2007. Mind the gap: did Darwin avoid publishing his theory for many years? Notes and Records of the Royal Society 61:177-205. full text
van Wyhe, J., and K. Rookmaker. 2012. A new theory to explain the receipt of Wallace’s Ternate Essay by Darwin in 1858. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 106:249-252. pdf )]
