The Campus Battle Between Critical Theory and Liberal Enlightenment Hits Home
This time my boss, and therefore myself, are caught in the crosshairs
Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Third, Non-Binary, and Other-Gendered Persons of Taste, Class, and Distinction…. it is my great pleasure to bring to you the next rendition of America’s Favorite Game….
Nate Bork Goes and Does Something Incredibly Stupid. Again.
Stanford Black Race Scholar Steven Othello Roberts et al. (2020) publishes an article on how Psychology is racist in Perspectives on Psych Science (PoPS). Shortly thereafter, Klaus Fielder takes over editorial duties at PoPs, and Bernhard Hommel submits a critique saying that it’s activism to the point of not being scientific. This critique is sent out to three reviewers (including my boss, Distinguished Professor Lee Jussim, who identifies as a tennis player), and this work is recommended to become peer-reviewed papers.
Then shitshow, shitshow, shitshow, some back and forth and God only knows what, then more shit show.
Roberts gets mad and accuses Fielder and everyone else involved of being a racist, the other side gets mad and accuses Roberts of being a phony activist only pretending to be a scholar, Roberts gets a petition going to get people fired, followed by the other side filing a petition to not have those people get fired, and I, being an adjunct instructor who is doing a self-funded, unpaid postdoc position with absolutely no job safety whatsoever, decide to get involved and sign the ‘don’t fire people’ one.
Score (as of 10:29 pm MST on Dec. 5, 2022):
Roberts, et al: 1226 signers, and Fielder has been told to resign or he’ll be fired.
Academic Freedom Squad: About 100, including me. (We lost, bigly)
Jussim’s take on the whole thing can be found here on his Substack. I’ll also edit this to include anything new by the Roberts’ camp should I come across it (feel free to send it my way if you find it first).
Good.
Point 1 - Obviously Lee Jussim isn’t a White Supremacist. I’ve publicly disagreed with him before on this intersection between Liberalism and Critical Theory, but the idea that he’s a proponent of hate or racism or any of that is total fucking bullshit.
Point 2 - Similarly, while I haven’t heard of Roberts before, the man has some seriously amazing reviews at Rate My Professors. Both he and Lee are way, way more credentialed than little old me. I only just heard of everyone else involved, but we can safely assume that they too are much more credentialed than myself.
Point 3 - In my defense, all I ever wanted to be was a Philosophy teacher wherever and in whatever setting wherever the universe sent me, before the EID administrators blew my little world apart. I would have been happy to live out the rest of my life as a schnook.
What’s this all about?
This is the world of Critical Theory colonizing the Liberal world of higher education within a capitalist system, and the clash is about the pursuit of objective truth vs. the pursuit of liberation from Western and Westernized forces of Whiteness, Objectivity, the Scientific Method and its related Methodological Approaches.
My dissertation focused on the problems associated with the Neoliberal-Progressive model of higher education, and this battle occurred within that ideological territory.
I’ve also discussed LibsofTikTok as an incredible weapon for the Political Right, and similarly, my explanation of Critical Race Theory leads to this critique of the Political, non-Liberal Left’s weapon of choice:
“Agree with us or else” as a mission statement. Specifically, “Agree with us or we will accuse you of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, bigotry, xenophobia, patriarchy, etc. and ruin your career and your entire life. We will also ruin the lives of anyone who doesn’t join us in our attacks, or who remain silent, or who voice support for any position which disagrees with us.”
This is the ideological nuclear weapon that has been deployed.
BUT……..
The nuclear counter-response has been a public backlash of, “I don’t give a fuck what you call me anymore. In fact, fuck you, fuck your politics, fuck your mother, fuck your whole family, MAGA, Alex Jones was right, and you can all kiss my fucking ass.”
This rejection of claims of credibility by those in elite institutions is being seen across the board (and this was 4 years ago. Public perception of higher education has continued to drop since then, including a 14 point fall between 2020 and 2022):
Perspectives -
So, the perspective of the Roberts camps is this - Utilizing Critical Theory, particularly Critical Race Theory, we have identified a number of features of Western civilization that were built to support certain groups over others. This needs to be rectified in the name of fairness. It’s not fair that the system was built to favor Whites over BIPOC persons, straight people over gay, transgender, and queer people, rich over poor, and the systems of oppression need to be dismantled, including the systems of knowledge like Psychology.
The perspective of the Fielder and Hommel camp is this - even if there are areas of research which reinforce these structures, the goal of transforming the field from pursuit of truth into a political pursuit of power to destroy these structures is unjustified. Truth must remain the primary goal, and while efforts to improve that pursuit are justified and worthy, the replacement of truth with a pursuit of power in the name of social justice will do more harm than good.
The question the Fielder and Hommel types need to face is this:
“When confronted with the choice of abandoning truth or being accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamaphobia, etc., is it worse to surrender and forgo the pursuit of truth or to be accused of hateful speech and conduct?”
And the question to the Roberts types is this:
“Are we willing to embrace authoritarian and totalitarian measures, including the politics of personal destruction and widespread fear, to achieve our aims, and what is the cost of achieving power through fear and intimidation?”
Finally, should either side accept compromise? What about everyone else?
The progressive Left, under Neoliberal-Progressivism, has control of many of our elite institutions, especially in higher education. The problem is that they are only a very, very small minority of the population. Is control through fear and intimidation really the best strategy here?
There are many of us in the Liberal Enlightenment tradition who would like to use Public Discourse, reason, free speech, academic freedom, and debate. But with these kinds of vicious cancel campaigns destroying lives and reputations, my concern is that it’s going to make efforts at compromise impossible, and that will only lead to more polarization and radicalization, which seems to be taking us to a very dark place. And quickly.
That’ll benefit the extremists and radicals on both sides, for a while at least, but at tremendous cost to everyone else and the institutions that exist to serve the public good. I personally would prefer to create a space where everyone is welcome and to embrace both diversity of identity and diversity of thought.
Otherwise there’s going to be a whole lot more of this in all of our futures:
As always, thank you for reading, and if you think I’ve gotten something wrong or have been unfair, I’m always happy to edit these articles to represent your viewpoints better.
And…
-Dr. Nate Bork
Roberts' apparently (but is he serious?) wants psychologists to compare groups of different races to see how they differ on tests. In cognitive psychology or cognitive neuroscience this would obviously be a disaster. What happens when the groups differ on some fundamental ability, like memory, attention, or cognitive control? We've been down this road. That's called "race science". Roberts' hasn't come to grips with this. Yes, Roberts' is calling for more race science, but he hasn't really thought through his position. Jussim assumes that, unless there is good reason for it, psychological studies should examine samples that represent the demographics of the population. Under this model, you don't go out looking for differences between groups, which is obviously a complete minefield and the road to cancellation. Instead you assume you can generalize to the population from a representative sample. Yes, there are cases where this is not the right model, but wen studying fundamental psychological processes, it absolutely has to be the sensible default. And pursuing some sort of racial hypothesis is flat out off the table for white psychologists, for obvious reasons.
"People/Person/Writer/Artist/Actor/Student of color", "community/communities of color" & all the other terms like it are the updated terms of the old racist term "Colored". They're a sign of devolution. Not to mention using those terms perpetuate racism instead of lessening it.