From Russia with Love: Science and Ideology Then and Now
From Russia with Love: Science and Ideology Then and Now
by Anna I. Krylov, Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California
Note: this paper was presented at “The Politicization of the Sciences: A Conversation” panel at Duke University on 12/6/2021 and subsequently revised
Abstract:
My everyday experiences as a chemistry professor at an American university in 2021 bring back memories from my school and university time in the USSR. Not good memories—more like Orwellian nightmares. I will compare my past and present experiences to illustrate the following parallels between the USSR and the US today: (i) the atmosphere of fear and self-censorship; (ii) the omnipresence of ideology (focusing on examples from science); (iii) an intolerance of dissenting opinions (i.e., suppression of ideas and people, censorship, and Newspeak); (iv) the use of social engineering to solve real and imagined problems.
Introduction
I will begin with a Russian joke from my childhood.
A kid comes home from school and says: “Daddy, today we had a civics lesson and the teacher told us about the Constitution.”
Dad: “Uh-hum.”
Kid: “He told us in the USSR we have a Constitution, just like in America.”
Dad: “Uh-hum.”
Kid: “And that our Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, just like in America.”
Dad: “Well, the difference is that the American Constitution also guarantees freedom after the speech.”
Today, perhaps, not quite.
I am sure many of you have read Orwell’s books—1984 and Animal Farm. If it has been a while, you should reread them now. You may find them much more relevant than you did 20 years ago.
Orwell’s characters live in a dystopian reality in which control of the individual by ideology has been taken to its limit. In the USSR, we lived in such a dystopia. When I read Orwell’s books in the late 80s, I was stunned. How did he know what it was like to live in our country, the happiest and most-progressive on the planet?
When I left the USSR in 1991, shortly after the Wall came down, I thought that the oppressions of totalitarian regimes would be a thing of the past; a story you tell your grandchildren, and they tell you, “Oh, come on, grandma, you are making this up.” I thought I would never again experience an atmosphere of ideological control, omnipresence of ideology, policing of speech and thought, suppression of dissent, compelled speech, fear, and self-censorship.
Yet living my life as a professor of chemistry at an American university in 2021 keeps bringing back memories from my school and university time in the USSR. Not good, sweet memories—more like Orwellian nightmares.
Not everyone sees these parallels. This is not surprising. How would someone who grew up in a liberal democracy recognize the tactics and tools used by totalitarian regimes? It takes a genius like Orwell to know.
That is why I wrote my essay, “The Peril of Politicizing Science” [1]. I wanted to bring this message to my community. And I am happy to be here and to talk about these parallels.
I have organized my remarks around four themes:
The atmosphere of fear and self-censorship;
The omnipresence of ideology (examples from science);
The intolerance of dissenting opinions (suppression of ideas and people, censorship, Newspeak);
The use of social engineering to solve real and imagined problems.
Atmosphere of fear and self-censorship
Let’s begin with the pervasive fear of speaking up. First, some definitions. Self-censorship is the refusal to produce, distribute, circulate or express something for fear of punishment. Self-censorship is different from discretion. When I choose not to talk about my views on religion at the dinner table in order not to upset my mother-in-law, that is discretion. But when I choose not to say in a faculty meeting that considering only diversity candidates for a faculty search is discriminatory because I am afraid of being ostracized, or worse—that is self-censorship.
The flip side of self-censorship is compelled speech. That is when people express opinions that are not their own for fear of punishment. Again, there is a difference between telling little white lies in order to please someone and saying something you do not believe in for fear of repercussions. Saying “Oh, you look exactly like you did 30 years ago” to your high-school sweetheart is not compelled speech. Compelled speech is when your institution issues a pledge to fight systemic racism and you are afraid to ask, “Is there any evidence of systemic racism in our university?” Instead you stand up at the faculty meeting and pledge to apply yourself fully to dismantling systemic racism.
Self-censorship is a reaction to oppressive environments. It is a symptom of fear. It is an indicator of cancel culture.
How often do we engage in self-censorship? Let’s do the numbers.
Surveys have been conducted since the early fifties that measure how often Americans self-censor their speech [2,3]. In 1953, 13% of Americans self-censored (for reference, this was the McCarthy era). In 2019, 40% of Americans self-censored (this is in the general population; the percentage is higher among the highly educated, and is 60% among college students). The results of an MIT poll [4] taken in November 2021 are even more disturbing: 60% responded “Yes” to the question “Do you feel on an everyday basis that your voice, or the voices of your colleagues are constrained at MIT?” and 83% responded “Yes” to the question “Are you worried given the current atmosphere in society that your voice or your colleagues’ voices are increasingly in jeopardy?”
Responses to my viewpoint (“The Peril” [1]) showed the totality of fear in our community [5]. I received more than 400 emails. Of these, 25% commented that it was very brave of me to write it. Many expressed concerns for my future—an old friend reminded me: “Unfortunately 1984 doesn’t end well.” 25% admitted that they are often afraid to speak and that they engage in compelled speech.
Let me read a couple of quotes from the emails I received to illustrate this point. One correspondent wrote:
[T]he situation in STEM is certainly Orwellian. I am frequently scared of expressing the Wrong viewpoint, resulting in self-censorship. Worse, at times I feel pressured to give a statement (a social performance) that I am aligned with the Correct viewpoint.
Another wrote:
I came about your viewpoint … as I was scrolling through Twitter over the weekend. Unsurprisingly, a Twitter mob ... came together to demand the retraction of this essay from the [journal]. I am appalled with this behavior, to say the least. I do think ideas like this should be rigorously and thoroughly discussed and debated instead of just shutting it down, all because the mob thinks such ideas are harmful to so-called marginalized people. I am a gay, person of colour, supposedly belonging to that same group of people that they intend to protect. However, I do not think I am protected nor am I safe. And often because of this, I remain quiet in these social media platforms, fearing that my future career in science will be in peril.
This fear is experienced at all career stages from graduate student to emeritus faculty.
I was not surprised to hear similar observations made by Michael Powell, a New York Times reporter, in his interview with Yascha Mounk (Persuasion) [6]. Powell commented that often his conversations with tenured faculty end up with: “But of course I would not say this publicly.”
This fear is not unfounded. We know from the story of Dorian Abbot, who refused to self-censor, what befalls those who express dissenting opinions [7].
COVID-19 is not the only pandemic we are experiencing.
There is an epidemic of self-censorship. And based on the responses to my viewpoint from abroad—maybe even a pandemic. It shows that cancel culture is very real. It is a clear indication of how illiberal our society has become.
Omnipresence of ideology
In the USSR, everything and everyone was scrutinized through the lens of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Everything was critically analyzed in terms of class struggle, the struggle between the oppressors and oppressed.
I literally mean everything—from hairstyle and fashion to novels and philosophy. I once got a notice for “advancing an imperialistic agenda” for showing up in jeans to an informal school event. In literature classes, we analyzed images of the oppressed people in Leo Tolstoy’s novels and the depiction of class struggle in Pushkin’s romantic poems. And the signs of corruption and decadent decay of the West in Hemingway’s books.
Science was not spared from this ideological control. Every institution had a department charged with executing this control and ensuring that the science and the scientists were in strict compliance with Marxism-Leninism. Scientific theories and ideas were scrutinized by the Party to determine whether or not they were aligned with Marxist-Leninist philosophy and whether they advanced the interests of the proletariat. Whether they belonged to wholesome Soviet science or rotten Western influences.
Sometimes entire disciplines were declared “bourgeois pseudoscience” and research was banned for years. Examples include cybernetics and genetics. Sometimes the Party would single out specific theories, such as resonance theory in chemistry, and execute a purge.
This created lasting damage and had direct economic impact.
The most famous example is Lysenkoism [8,9]. Trofim Lysenko was an agronomist. He was hostile to Western ideas and—truth be told—was not well educated. He rejected Mendelian genetics because it was inconsistent with Marxist ideology. He did not believe in genes. He rejected the idea of experimental control groups. He loathed Western “bourgeois” scientists. He mocked and rejected the scientific method as Western and denounced it as a tool of imperialist oppressors. He famously said: “Mathematics has no place in biology.”
Lysenko promoted the Marxist idea that by exposing crops (or people) to the right stimuli, you can shape them into anything you want. You can teach orange trees to grow in Siberia. This was of course total pseudoscience, as was well recognized by many at the time.
Yet, Lysenko rose to a position of power because his bogus science was backed by the government. His opponents were fired and imprisoned. Many, including the famous geneticist Vavilov, perished in the gulag. Lysenko stayed in power for more than 30 years, 12 years past Stalin’s death [9].
Why did the Party support him so strongly? First, they liked the message. Lysenko was promising an agricultural miracle. Second, they liked his animosity towards the West. Third, they liked his pedigree. Lysenko was the poster child of a “people’s scientist” because he came from a family of poor peasants. The press lovingly called him the “barefoot scientist.” He did not learn how to read till the age of 14. In contrast, his main opponent Vavilov—a brilliant biologist—was suspect because of his class (the “intelligentsia”). This was the official Party policy—to rapidly promote members of the proletariat into leadership positions in agriculture, science, and industry.
Lysenko’s bogus science was used to introduce new agricultural practices on a large scale. As a result, crop yields decreased dramatically and millions of people died of starvation. The impact was not limited to the USSR. Lysenko’s theories were also adopted by Mao Zedong in China, where they led to the Great Chinese Famine (of 1959 to 1962), in which tens of millions died.
Let us come back to 2021 and look around. Just as in the USSR everything was analyzed through the Marxist theory of class struggle, we are now told to view everything through the lens of Critical Social Justice. We hear about systemic racism and systemic sexism lurking everywhere. And “Social Justice Warriors” (SJW) are bravely fighting them! A few examples:
French food is deemed to be inherently racist [10].
Children books are canceled because some illustrations or verses are declared racist [11].
A professor gets in trouble for showing a classic movie, the 1967 film Othello, in an English composition class [12].
Another professor gets in trouble for speaking a Chinese word in class that sounds like an English racial slur (this happened at my university) [13].
Inanimate objects are found racist and thus canceled. Our SJW activists can move mountains—almost literally. University of Wisconsin removed a 42-ton rock from campus because of a single instance—almost 100 years ago—that it was referred to in a local newspaper by a racist name [14].
Much more dire manifestations of the SJW agenda are subverting research and education, most notably, in the life sciences and medicine [15]. Just as happened in Soviet Russia, the new ideology is declaring entire disciplines—for example, mathematics—racist [16,17]. There are proposals, some already enacted in Oregon and California, that call to “dismantle white supremacy” in the mathematics classroom. How does white supremacy manifest itself in the classroom? By “the focus [being] on getting the ‘right’ answer” and asking students “to show their work.” Google “equitable math instruction” to see what this is all about. These programs are backed by serious institutions, such as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In California, there is a proposal to do away with advanced math programs in schools. Why? Because they are racist. Why are they racist? Because their demographics do not match the state’s demographics. How can we make math instruction equitable? Instead of raising the quality of education for everyone, the SJW favor the path that socialist regimes—real [18] and dystopian [19]—took: bringing everyone down to the lowest common denominator.
For the same reasons, proficiency tests are being dropped, grading standards lowered [20], standardized tests eliminated [21], and so on.
What will the consequences of such policies be? I think they will be devastating, possibly on the scale of Lysenkoism.
These types of pedagogical initiatives, driven by ideology, are not limited to K–12. They are everywhere. I can list many examples from serious universities—Brown, Yale, UCLA, University of Michigan—as well as from Europe and beyond [1].
These pedagogical innovations aim to “decolonize the curriculum” and make it “more inclusive.” What does this mean in practice?
Do not mention the names and contributions of cis white men. For example, in some schools and universities (e.g., University of Sheffield in the UK) [22], they no longer teach Newton’s laws, but instead, “the three fundamental laws of nature”. Why? To “decenter whiteness” and “decolonize the curriculum” [22,23].
An article in the prestigious journal Nature calls for the decolonization of pharmacology in South Africa [24]. The author proposes “anchoring the curriculum in local experience” by teaching about how drugs were once developed from folk remedies and focusing on the contributions of non-Europeans. While such topics might be appropriate for a history of pharmacology course, reshaping the curriculum with the sole purpose of decentering Western science is detrimental to the training of competent, modern pharmacists.
The Journal of Chemical Education has by now published two articles—one from the US [25] and one from the UK [26]—about decolonizing chemistry instruction and dismantling systemic racism in chemistry.
I could go on and on with these examples.
This is not innocent. The replacement of science education by ideology, such as teachings of Critical Social Justice, will cost us dearly.
3. Intolerance of dissenting opinions (suppression of ideas and people, censorship, rewriting history, Newspeak): Cancel culture then and now
In Russia, we did not know the word “pluralism.” I heard it for the first time in the late 80s. Non-conforming thoughts and actions were punished—up to sentences in prison or a mental asylum [18].
Not speaking up was not enough—one had to enthusiastically engage. “Who is not with us is against us”—I remember this slogan from the first grade. And god help those who are against us.
Social coercion was used extensively. We did not have social media then, but there were other tools to ostracize, such as public condemnation at a school assembly or at a class meeting, or in a school newspaper. For big names there was the big press.
Now we live in the shadows of Cancel Culture. People are being disinvited and de-platformed. Or dragged through administrative investigations and reviews, which is a form of punishment [27]. Dorian Abbot’s case is a good example [7].
Scientific papers are being retracted or self-retracted. Not because of scientific concerns—but because findings are deemed to be offensive to some. Or because they contradict the dominant narrative. Many examples are from biology [15], but this ideological intrusion is not limited to the life sciences [28-32].
The mechanism of censorship and suppression is different from Soviet Russia. It is not administered by the government, but rather by Twitter vigilantes—by outrage mobs who use social media to call for punishment of those whose views they find objectionable [28].
But mobs alone would not be able to enforce censorship. In Western democracies, outrage mobs do not burn heretics at the stake, at least not yet [28]. They do not retract papers. They do not cancel seminars. People in positions of power do—university presidents, department chairs, journal editors. Bret Stephens called this “Coward Culture” in his New York Times opinion about Dorian’s case [32].
Sadly, some organizations are institutionalizing censorship.
Here is a recent example [29,30]: The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) issued guidelines to its journal editors to “consider whether or not any content [in a submitted manuscript]... might have the potential to cause offense.” The memos and published policies emphasize that it is the perception of the recipient that determines offense, regardless of author intent.
The RSC gave 15 “indicators” of offensive content, which included content that is “[l]ikely to be upsetting, insulting or objectionable to some or most people.” That covers a lot of ground, doesn’t it?
How does that align with the publisher’s mission to facilitate the communication of high-quality chemistry research? This is a subversion of the institution of science by SJW agenda.
Some may consider such vague guidelines harmless. People say; “Oh, this is just about sending the right message. They put it in place, but would never enforce this nonsense.” Or “It’s not really relevant to chemistry; we do not do any controversial research.”
But we should not fool ourselves. We already see an epidemic of Orwellian thought and language policing—on our campuses, in publishing, and even in computer codes. There is no limit to what social justice warriors will find offensive.
Recently, in my role as an editor of a peer-review chemistry journal, I received a report on a paper submitted to the journal in which a reviewer advised the authors not to use the term “Shockley-Queisser limit,” quoting the arguments from an article published in an ACS journal [33]. The Shockley-Queisser limit is the theoretical upper limit of a solar cell’s efficiency, which provides a critically important benchmark for solar energy technology. It is called the “Shockley-Queisser limit” because it was derived and published by the physicists Shockley and Queisser. This naming convention a common practice in chemistry and physics. Why would one want to obliterate the name Shockley-Queisser from print? Because Shockley held abhorrent views on race and IQ. Truly racist—there is no discussion about it. So the question is do the moral shortcomings of Shockley undermine his scientific legacy in the area of semiconductors?
The list of scientists considered to have “crossed the line” and are thus to be canceled is long. I mentioned some of them in my viewpoint [1]: Stark, Haber, Debye, Schrödinger. Should we obliterate their names? Would it really make science better? Or should we use these scientists’ stories as—in Barak Obama’s words—“teachable moments?”
I want to quote Professor Roi Baer, who wrote to me:
For me, it is difficult to think of Johannes Stark as a great scientist, because of his antisemitism and his vocal call for the persecution and canceling of Jewish scientists and “Jewish physics.” Still, I teach the “Stark effect” in my class. I also tell my students what a terrible man Stark was. He deserves condemnation, but not a cancellation.
One problem with canceling those who “crossed the line” is that the line is being constantly redrawn. Here are a few recent examples from the current renaming craze on campuses and in professional organizations [5,34]:
Robert Millikan, Nobel Laureate, most known for his ingenious oil-drop experiment, measuring the charge of an electron. Millikan was also the Chairman of the executive council Caltech (de facto its President) where he contributed to transforming it from a backwater school to the place of excellence it is today. In 2021, following the report of a committee [34], the name of Millikan was removed from buildings, programs, and fellowships.
Ronald Fisher, the founder of modern statistics and evolutionary biology, was canceled by the Evolutionary Society (his name removed from the prize) [35] and by his own college in Cambridge (the stained glass window commemorating his contributions was removed from the chapel) [36]. When, in response, a group of distinguished biologists published a scholarly paper discussing Fisher’s legacy [37], they were attacked on social media and in the press. The tone of the Twitter posts, in particular those from the Race Equality Network of Edinburgh University [38], reminded me of Lysenko’s rhetoric.
Thomas Henry Huxley, known as Darwin’s bulldog, outspoken opponent of slavery and racism, and advocate for women rights, was cancelled by West Washington University and Imperial College London [39,40].
Well-argued and well-documented objections [37,39,40] to these cancellations have been either ignored or condemned.
These campaigns remind me of Soviet history [1], which was constantly rewritten to obliterate the canceled and to conform to the current Party line. Every day former heroes became enemies of the people. Encyclopedias, textbooks, newspapers, and archival photographs were air-brushed to remove the canceled. A running joke was that the number of heads in historic photographs often does not match the number of pairs of feet.
Today’s cancellation does not stop at people’s names. Newspeak is invading the English language in a truly Orwellian fashion. A few examples [1] illustrate this.
The journal Nature published a letter calling for the replacement of the accepted technical term “quantum supremacy” by “quantum advantage.” The authors regard the English word “supremacy” as “violent” and equate its usage with promoting racism and colonialism. They also warn us about the “damage” inflicted by using such terms as “conquest.” Professional societies (e.g., the Association for Computing Machinery) [41] and tech companies (Google, IBM) joined the suite. Last spring I attended a meeting on quantum information science—it was a sad spectacle to watch grown-up scientists stumbling, trying to avoid the “offensive” word. About 90% conformed to this idiocy.
Many universities and corporations devote significant resources to identifying and rooting out (supposedly) oppressive language. These activities are usually carried out under the banner of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
What is oppressive is constantly changing. For example, the University of Michigan has called [1] for the elimination of such hurtful and racist terms as “picnic,” “brown bag lunch,” “black-and-white thinking,” “master password,” “dummy variable,” “disabled system,” “grandfathered account,” “strawman argument,” and “long time no see.” Brandeis University has a website dedicated to Newspeak. They recommend replacing “trigger warning” by “content notice” and offer DEI-approved suggestions for replacements for “take a stab at it,” “you are killing it,” “walk-in appointment,” and “abusive relationship.” John McWhorter, a prominent linguist, commented about this in The Atlantic [42]. I noticed that some of these recommendations have already been adopted at my university, USC—the crime reports sent out by our department of public safety now speak of homeless people as “unhoused individuals.”
While finalizing this essay for publication, I learned that Google, Apple, and IBM are now censoring not only spoken and written language—such as manuals and documentation—but also computer codes [43].
We cannot dismiss these examples as innocent excesses. This war on language is an essential part of Woke ideology. It is a sink of money and human resources—just think about the cost associated with developing a Microsoft Word feature for identifying offensive language [44] or rewriting computer code to eliminate mentions of “master database.” These performative actions also create a smoke screen, detracting attention from real problems. Our complicity with these “initiatives” allows the DEI apparatus to grow and intrude further into our institutions—from policing the language to policing the content of our courses.
4. Social engineering to solve real and imagined problems.
In the USSR, everything was managed top down. Social engineering was the main tool for building a supposedly better world. Let me share just one example.
Our institutions were obsessed with demographics, which were controlled by quotas. For example, for Jewish kids it was nearly impossible to get into top physics or mathematics programs. Why? Because Jews were over-represented. And having too many Jewish faces among mathematicians did not represent the demographic makeup of our great nation.
I learned about the existence of Jewish quotas on my first day at university. Before that I believed the official narrative—that everyone has fair access to education and everyone could pursue their dreams.
My dream was to study chemistry, so I applied to the chemistry department at Moscow State University. I passed the entrance exams and was duly admitted. But then it happened that I learned from a high-school friend that the chemistry department had a special track for theoretically oriented students, and that it is very hard and very advanced. I had no idea of what a theoretically oriented curriculum was about, but I signed up for it, more or less on a dare, because my friend told me that it is not suitable for girls.
So I am there on the first day of classes, meeting my classmates for the first time. There were about 30 kids enrolled. The first surprise—there were only 6 girls. The second surprise—most of the kids were Jewish. And they were in the program because it was as close as they could get to what they really wanted to study—math and physics. It was a backdoor—via the less-visible chemistry program. I remember telling my classmates how excited I was about chemistry and how I could not wait to get into a chemistry lab. In response, another girl, who later became my best friend, told her story—“I hate chemistry! I want to study mathematics! But look at me,” she said, “I am obviously Jewish. And my family name is Jewish. So I have zero chance of getting into a physics or math department.” I still remember the shock I felt from hearing this story over and over.
How do things look now? I already described California’s proposal to do away with advanced mathematics programs in their public schools [16]. Race-based admissions have quietly become common practice—the extent of them is documented in the book A Dubious Expediency [44]. The University of California system has permanently abandoned admission tests, in the name of equity [21]. Faculty hiring is now prioritizing diversity over merit.
Social Engineering is a reality. Is it the right way to address past injustices? Will it result in a better workforce? I do not think so.
Conclusion
There’s an old joke a Jewish friend of mine told me: What’s the difference between a Jewish pessimist and a Jewish optimist? A Jewish pessimist looks around and says, “Things can’t get any worse.” A Jewish optimist says, “Sure they can!”
We must forcefully resist this rise of illiberalism before it is too late. It will not go away on its own.
What can be done? Here are some ideas. First, speak up. Do not submit to bullies. Refuse to speak Newspeak. If you see that the king is naked—say the king is naked. Second, organize. There is safety in numbers. Organizations such as the Academic Freedom Alliance, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, and the Heterodox Academy, can provide a platform for action and protection against repercussions [46]. Do your share in defending humanism, democracy, and the liberal Enlightenment.
Thank you.
References:
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2. J. L. Gibson and J.L. Sutherland, Americans Are Self-Censoring at Record Rates, Persuasion (2020).
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https://opensource.google/docs/respectfulcode/
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44. Microsoft Word tools for inclusive writing:
https://www.howtogeek.com/677694/how-to-check-for-inclusive-language-in-microsoft-word/
45. A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education, by G. Heriot (Editor), M. Schwarzchild, Encounter Books (2021).
46. Organizations defending liberal Enlightenment values:
Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA): https://academicfreedom.org/
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE): https://www.thefire.org/
Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR): https://www.fairforall.org/
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 | A guest post by
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Today's piece on Persuasion describes modern-day discrimination of Asians, in the name of equity:
https://www.persuasion.community/p/how-liberals-lost-their-way-on-affirmative
The author makes explicit comparison with Jewish quotas.
Bravo, brave lady!