Editor’s Note: This piece is part of a new Minding the Campus article series called Minding the Sciences, wherein we are renewing our focus on the sciences given the many threats it faces in modern academia. Click here to learn more.
In late April 2023, twenty-nine scientists published a manifesto titled “In Defense of Merit in Science.” The authors (I will call them the “Twenty-Niners”) noted with irony that a defense of merit could only find a home in the Journal of Controversial Ideas. Merit is controversial? Never mind—the piece is a high-minded and vigorous defense of Enlightenment values against the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mania that is sweeping through our society. I agree with everything the Twenty-Niners wrote.
That same week, three events provided disturbing contrast to their manifesto.
1. The University of Pennsylvania held a show trial to strip tenure from Amy Wax, professor of law, who hurt the feelings of black law students.
2. Way out in Bakersfield, Matthew Garrett, professor of history at Bakersfield College, was railroaded for ruffling the feathers of black people, along with sympathetic administrators and trustees. For his sin, he was stripped of tenure and dismissed.
3. Scott Gerber, professor of law at Ohio Northern University (ONU), was pulled out of his classroom by campus security officers and perp-walked (along with an armed state police escort) to the ONU law school dean’s office. There he was told he could either resign immediately or face termination proceedings. His offense? ONU declines to say anything other than a vague assertion that Gerber was not sufficiently “collegial,” which is academic speak for “you hurt peoples’ feelings.”
These stories made me think something else about the Twenty-Niners’ manifesto: dream on, you sweet summer children!
That sounds harsh. I should explain.
The Twenty-Niners are no Pollyannas. They correctly lay out the many ways in which DEI opposes the scientific worldview and, indeed, endangers science itself. They are clear-eyed about the damage DEI has done: some of the manifesto’s authors have experienced this damage first-hand. While they are not the first to point out the danger, they have, in my opinion, done the best job to date of explaining how DEI endangers the future of science.
The Twenty-Niners’ remedy for the DEI ailment falls naively short, though. Two of their six recommendations suffice to make my point. Scientists, they write, should “[insist] that government funding for research be distributed solely on the basis of merit.” Okay! Similarly, scientists should “[ensure] that admissions, hiring, and promotion are merit-based and free from ideological tests.” And we agree again!
And how many divisions has the Pope?
What the Twenty-Niners seem not to realize is the nature of the fight they (we) are in. Nice-sounding words notwithstanding, DEI is a political project, which means it is motivated only by the pursuit of power. Its proponents are not interested in philosophical discussion. While scientists have been busy at their benches, DEI ideologues have been playing the long game, and they have taken over all the systems that scientists long thought would defend the autonomy and intellectual independence that are essential to their craft.
• Think your administration supports your attachment to Enlightenment ideals? The cases of Wax, Garrett, and Gerber bely that hope. We can point to many others: these three illustrate only the most recent, brazen slaps in our faces.
• Think tenure will protect you? Tenure is on its way out, I’m afraid.
• Think your grants will buy you safety? Doesn’t money talk? I have bad news: nearly every grant funder has swallowed DEI whole, so good luck getting your proposals read, never mind funded.
• Think your supposedly independent accreditation boards will defend your right to determine how you teach your students? Think again. They, too, have been thoroughly captured by DEI’s advocates, and they didn’t consult you about that.
• Surely, your professional and scientific societies will rise to your defense? Well, they’ve been thoroughly blue-pilled. Exhibit A: the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is now completely woke. The same can be said for virtually every other professional scientific society.
• If I nevertheless decide to take a brave stand against DEI, my colleagues will defend me in solidarity with our shared values, right? Fuhgeddaboudit! Your colleagues know how their bread is buttered, and conformity to DEI is the social credit they need to buy the butter. They will not jeopardize careers, promotions, grants, and all the other emoluments of modern academic life to stand up for you.
The unfortunate reality is that scientists, even scientists of the Twenty-Niners’ caliber, have lost control of their professions. To restore science to what it should be, scientists need to wrest control back. Not urge, wrest. Furthermore, they will not be able to do so from within the hollowed-out husk that the academic ecosystem has become. Scientists’ role there, whether they acknowledge it or not, is no longer to do science—it is to keep the grift going. The actual science that you do is just a mask.
Saving science is going to thrust science into some unaccustomed and uncomfortable places. If you don’t like, say, the governor of Florida signing legislation to zero out DEI funding, provide a realistic alternative. Hint: you’ve already lost to a shapeshifting, entrenched ideology that is not about to go away. And you have nothing to say about it.
Image: Adobe Stock
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