Why academics bent the knee to radical political activists.

or, Why are theories about sex and gender created by a professor of comparative literature taken seriously in biology?

One of the more interesting phenomenon of the last 15 years is the degree to which ideas created by radical left wing political activists in the humanities managed to gain legitimacy in totally unrelated fields. For example there is a theory that says (among other things) that gender is a social construct which is performative and that sex is a spectrum not a binary. This theory was most widely championed by Judith Butler, a a professor in the Department of Comparative literature at UC Berkley who has a degree in philosophy. Large portions of that way of thinking have been adopted in biology, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, in spite of heavy resistance from experts in evolutionary biology like Richard Dawkins. Professors in fields like Education, English Literature, Art History, Queer Theory, Post-Colonial Theory, Critical Race Theory, and the like have had their politically motivated theories about biology, psychology, sociology, truth, and politics, become widely accepted in fields in which these politically activist professors have little to no formal training.

To give another example, the psychological theory of unconscious racism was created by a lawyer working in the field of Critical Race Theory who had a Bachelors of Art, a law degree, and no PhD in Psychology. In spite of the fact that the article relies heavily on the use of Freud’s psychological theory to make it’s case, it was not published in a journal of psychology, but rather in the Stanford Law review. And yet, for all that, this theory has gained legitimacy in psychology to the point where some form of the idea (unconscious racism, implicit bias, unconscious bias, etc) is now taken to be obvious by many academics working the field of psychology. How is it that a lawyer with no formal credentials in psychology managed to have a politically motivated theory about racism, have it published in a law journals, and then become widely accepted by Psychology professors?

As near as I can tell, the answer to this question has two parts.

The first part is that activist professors were able to create their own academic peer-reviewed journals in which they published their own ideas, and these journals allowed activists to give their theories an air of legitimacy. A number of people (including James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose, and Bret Weinstein among others) have referred to this as “idea laundering.”

In essence, the way this works is to exploit a weakness in the way in which academic ideas are tested for validity, legitimacy, rigor, and truth. In the academic world the way that ideas are vetted for their rigor, legitimacy, truth, etc, is a system of peer-review in which theories, ideas, studies, tests, hypothesis, and so on are submitted to peer-review by academics who are experts in a given field. Academics have their peers (hence the term peer review) read and review their papers, and only publish the papers that the reviewers believe merit consideration by the larger academic community. In theory all this means is that an idea is worth considering, in practice any idea that passes peer-review in a well respected journal is taken to have significant merit and is often taken to be correct by journalists, politicians, think tanks, and eventually the general public. When activists with advanced degrees create their own journals in order to publish politically motivated scholarship, they often succeed in having their politically motivated theories treated as though they're a neutral source of rigorous scholarship about how society actually works. The result is that politically motivated theories that have been developed in order to advance leftist politics are treated as though there the result of disinterested truth-seeking.

The second part has to do with the social dynamics in play.

Academic life it typically conducted according to a set of well forged academic norms and practices. Most notably, that differences of opinion are supposed to resolved through cordial discussion and debate. Such things as insults, name calling, reputational destruction, threats of violence, social pressure, and the like are generally frowned upon. That is not the way academic life is supposed to be conducted. Accordingly, most people become academics because they want to spend their life dedicated to the study and understanding of some topic or other, not because they want to engage in heated face-to-face conflict. The result is that academics tend to have a very polite, kind, gentle, disposition, and they tend to avoid unnecessary conflict whenever they can. They want to be liked by their students and have good rapport with them in order to teach them well, and they want cordial relationships with their colleagues, even when they disagree. This sort of temperament is very well suited to spending hours of studying and reading in the pursuit of truth, but it is ill-suited for engaging in social conflict. The result is that when faced with angry mobs, reputational destruction, threats, and social conflict, many academics fold faster than superman on laundry day.

John Searle once wrote “The most offensive trait of American academics as a class is their timidity. In many cases even those who have tenure are unwilling to take controversial stands (I guess for fear of being hated by their colleagues and students.” ¹ This creates a problem when it comes to dealing with a group of activists who seek to advance their goals through the very same methods which are not supposed to adopted in academia: social pressure, threats, name calling, reputational destruction, face-to-face conflict, and so on. Where the typical academic can be quite timid, the activist academics and students involved in the protest movement are quite willing to engage in heated social conflict, and use many of the exact sorts of tactics which violate the norms of University life. The result is that politically motivated academics backed by a vigorous movement of student activists chomping at the bit for conflict are easily able to extract concessions from Universities while forcing dissenting academics to pull back, put their heads down, and keep quiet.

This dynamic creates a situation where well meaning academics who lack the fortitude to stand up to aggressive activists end up keeping quiet and refuse to push back against the politically expedient scholarship that emanates from activist academics. Many academics in the STEM fields and the social sciences will then bend over backwards to accommodate activist scholarship in their fields, or at least avoid criticizing it directly lest they end up drawing the ire of student activists willing to attack their reputations, protest their speaking events, shut down their talks, or “cancel” them.

This kind of dynamic is what makes it possible for obviously flawed politically motivated scholarship (of the sort exemplified by Ibram Kendi and Robin Deangelo) to gain a foothold in Universities and go unchallenged in spite of its obvious weaknesses. When these social dynamics are combined with effective idea laundering the result is that deeply flawed theories developed for purely political reasons are able to gain academic legitimacy in the academic world and become widespread in field full of academics who know better (or ought to).

Academics who know better need to start saying something. One of my favorite philosophers, Jospeh Heath, once remarked that the fact that he has tenure (and thus cannot be summarily fired for his views) gives him a special obligation to say what he actually thinks.² Setting academia right is going to require that this attitude become widespread, and that academics begin apply the same standards of rigor and level of criticism to activist scholarship that they do to everything else. No more free passes for those who game the systems or win through a superior ability to navigate and wield social conflict.

Sincerely,

Wokal_distance.

1. John Searle, Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , Jan., 1993, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Jan., 1993), pp. 24-47 P.45

2. The Kendi bubble bursts