(mod note: excised from Higher Education)

https://californiaglobe.com/section-...ral-orthodoxy/

I don't agree with everything in the open letter but I think it's important to know the minority view.

We know the minority view well before this assclown spoke out. It is, just as this ****wit said, "But have you considered that black people are just worse people, and that George Floyd was a criminal?" **** that minority view, and **** you for spreading it uncritically. How about you speak to the parts you do agree with, so that we can dunk on you.

Is the part you liked:

You are wrong.

OK, out with it then.

The author of that letter is a mathematician not a history professor. The correct use of the word "isomorphic" is a tell.

I saw the disagreements you posted in the other thread, so I'm going to respond more to the author than to you. I'd note I'm not even sure the views expressed represent a minority -- the letter reads like a laundry list of common complaints from racial conservatives. The same ones published in WSJ (the MacDonald piece), or promoted on Fox, or elsewhere. Anyone who has ever had a conversation with a conservative who disputes the salience of racial inequality has heard all of these many times.

The fundamental issue is the author's ignorance. Particularly of history, which is all the more egregious given their invocation of the field.

The first two just demonstrate a complete ignorance of the relevant history. Why is it that they never go on to wonder why black Americans are involved in more crime? I know why white supremacists do this: they want to imply the existence of an innate and biological racial hierarchy, but they don't want to just come out and name their goal.

The last quote, and really the entire piece, ignores the fact that you can fill an entire library with scholarly texts on racial inequality and discrimination, treating both the history and providing empirical evidence. So the author could find answers to these questions, if they were willing to seriously engage that literature. I'm sure some colleagues could point in the right direction.

Instead the author attacks Coates, who is a brilliant writer but not a researcher at all. The Case for Reparations is not the pinnacle of scholarship on race. I think it's a brilliant and immensely important piece, politically, but here it's just a strawman.

Another piece of ignorance, and another strawman, is around the nature of racial inequality:

Again, if the author actually engaged with the research and historical literature, then they would probably realize that this is a strawman. Bonilla-Silva's Racism without Racists would be a good place to start. Basically they are arguing for a false dichotomy: that either we still live under Jim Crow (explicit white supremacy), or else there are no socio-economic factors that contribute to racial inequality, it's all down to individual agency.

But that's just bad sociology. It ignores the historical role of racism (Jim Crow, redlining, etc.) in creating self-perpetuating economic inequality. It ignores more subtle ideological biases which inform our unwillingness to try to redress that economic harm. It ignores the extreme importance of residential segregation, which did not end with Jim Crow. It ignores the feedback loops that exist between poverty and mass incarceration. All of this is discussed in scholarly literature. None of it reduces to some cartoon villain caricature of the KKK, which is what he wants to exist in order to admit that race is important.

Just to be sure, I find huge chunks of the letter disagreeable.

Even for the arguments that I am fairly sympathetic to (more emphasis on individual agency, examining why other minority groups have done well), I think he stretches the case too far.

Other objections:
I think the writer is aware he's creating a caricature of his positions. You can see it in the language. He knows there is racism and that to some extent, success of Black Americans depend on the goodwill of white people and that's why he adds the word exclusively to "rest exclusively on the goodwill of whites."

He also engaged in intellectually dishonest "bad sociology" that, ironically, he accused the liberals of engaging in (accurate accusation to some extent) and I find that irritating.

There are other issues, such as the ones you mentioned.

I skimmed the article. The point of the article seems to be the author finds it problematic we can't even have a rationale discussion, and he would be fired if he released the article under his real name. I am sure he would love to have a back and forth with you (or someone like you) on your counterpoints, but he can't.

Obviously the author believes he is correct (although I imagine he might be more open to genuine discussion than most), but the point isn't who is right and who is wrong. The problem is in the current climate most people are not even allowed to disagree with the moral majority opinion without extreme risks, especially in academia. Which is an indictment on academia.

I didn't comment on that aspect of the letter because it's not really the part that is important to me right now. But I do tend to think that if the author wants to be able to discuss these issues intelligently and openly, then they do also have some obligation to bring more to the discussion than a Breitbart-level understanding of the subject. I think that obligation is an ethical one in particular, because of the history. But there's also an intellectual and professional obligation. That said, I would not personally call for that professor to be fired for the letter.

I have at least some of my own reservations about things like cancel culture, or about creating an intellectual culture on campuses that is too insular and closed. I think there can be some valid objections on those grounds. I think you and he both overstate the case, though. I see plenty of published research which does not agree with the view you're calling the "moral majority." As I said, the views he says dare not be expressed get published in the WSJ. The author's view may also be somewhat skewed by being at Berkeley, which I'd imagine is going to be more of a hotbed for this stuff than most universities.

I also think people just have to accept that social norms exist and will continue to exist, and we will always be negotiating them. People who want to be able to say anything they want with no social repercussions are bound to be disappointed. I think freedom to express unpopular views is important (and I mostly agree with Scott Sumner's take), but for better or worse it's always going to involve some negotiation of norms, and when you're essentially asking for the right to promote white supremacist arguments, I think it's generally a good thing that those norms are pretty discouraging.

This is fine, but I think a lot of people feel it isn't academia's job to enforce majority social norms, and shut down dissent. Some people feel might actually be the opposite.

"An anonymous letter has been circulating, purportedly written by a @UCBHistory professor. We have no evidence that this letter was written by a History faculty member. We condemn this letter: it goes against our values as a department and our commitment to equity and inclusion."


This is the UCB History departments response to this anonymous letter. This is something I would expect from a Fortune 500 corporation's publicity department. It is so empty and vacuous and devoid of any intellectual perspective. Sometimes it really does seem academia has completely sold itself out to the neoliberal machine and become corporations.

You can't act in a condescending manner and call him ignorant without even addressing his point

It's comical that even in your reply you do the thing he is speaking about.

"Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated."

even on a poker forum we have people responding with emotional arguments rather than facts

How about you show the data you speak about instead of speaking like your word is God.

I wish the data (and history) on racial inequality fit neatly into the scope of a forum post, but it doesn't. I've probably written tens of thousands of words on the subject on 2+2 in the last 6 years or so, and barely scratched the surface. I don't really expect most people to be very familiar with much of it, but I do have higher standards for professors supposedly arguing from the standpoint of academic historians.

I mentioned Racism without Racists, but I could mention a few other books that I think are accessible: The Color of Law is good. I can, and have, linked a number of articles with empirical evidence of discrimination in various areas before, and they are not even close to being representative. But here's a few examples:

The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets

Racial disparities in school-based disciplinary actions are associated with county-level rates of racial bias

More audit studies on employment discrimination: 2003, 2014, some brief discussion here

On policing and criminal justice: disparities in the use of force, disparities in plea bargaining, bail, jury selection, and sentencing

There's also plenty of interesting research on how racial ideology contributes to politics, e.g.

Beyond Performance: Racial Resentment and Whites’ Negativity Toward Government

Race Matters: The Impact of News Coverage of Welfare Reform on Public Opinion

This is just stuff that I've personally read and remember well enough to think to link. I'm not trying to gish gallop you here, only to reiterate the point I made in my post: the author of that letter can't discuss these issues intelligently if they won't even engage with the available literature.

Based on their response it doesn't seem like the UCB History department is really interested in discussing issues intelligently or engaging literature.

They are just interested in moralizing. Again, this is what they wrote.

We condemn this letter: it goes against our values as a department and our commitment to equity and inclusion.

I know we have become so conditioned to people in academia acting like this that it doesn't even register anymore. But I imagine even just a few years ago it would have seemed extremely perverse for a University department to be using vacuous moral language, as opposed to discussing issues intelligently or engaging themselves.

It is just all so empty, and vacuous and ultimately disappointing.

Maybe a better letter would get a better response?

This. Stupid letters aren't worth anyone's time.

So one sec, in Kelhus' mind academics are not allowed to make statements about their positions?

Its an empty, vacuous statement. It's something I would expect out of a PR department for Nike or Citibank.

I think the average 9 year old could write something with more meaning. They are free to think and reply however they want (at least as far as I am concerned, I doubt UC Berkeley feels the same way and they would punish them if they got out of line), but if that is the tenure and standard of academic thought at UC Berkeley, than count me not impressed.

You mean "tenor," not "tenure."

#ShutDownSTEM

I sort of agree with Kel here They could at least write a couple of paragraphs similar to WN's initial response. Their response seems to be "we're not even dignifying this with a response", which only serves to validate some of the points made in the letter in the first place.

It's also concerning to me (if true), that expressing the views in that letter would cause an academic to lose his professorship and be blacklisted.

I think the truth is partly that the majority of academics would rather not get involved in hot political topics at all. You're going to get a different response to your highly charged open letter (which is clearly written with a particular political audience in mind) than you are if you go to some conference and argue with someone's presentation, or if you just publish your own work arguing with any particular point, or even if you just write an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, which I seem to recall has published pieces in a similar vein at least with regard to academic freedom.

If true, that reflects pretty terribly on academia.

It was a fully appropriate response to that letter, along the lines of "LOL nah". More than that attributes too much value to a valueless letter.

This is coming the guy that questions everyone's motive who won't engage in deep discussions on phrenology.