The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), proudly trumpeting its obscurantism, has pre-published “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity: The problems with arguments for intellectual pluralism”. These theses boil down to “some thoughts are wrong”, which is true but woefully incomplete. They ignore the greatest merit of viewpoint diversity, namely that it speeds social learning. This conclusion, which follows easily from Bayes’ rule, is analogous to Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection in evolutionary biology. Genetic diversity is crucial to the quest for biological fitness. Viewpoint diversity is crucial to the quest for truth.
Railing against viewpoint diversity would only make sense if we had a quick, easy and provable way of discerning the truth. The whole point is that we don’t.
The AAUP and many if not most progressive academics reject intellectual diversity because the part of them that is still honest recognizes that much of their world view cannot stand open debate and competition with other ideas. As with any cult...and that is progressivism is...the "church" falls when the opponents can successfully refute the existence of the "god" they worship.
If arrogance is confidence in oneself without basis, our current crop of academic, political and social "elites" is without historical peer in arrogance.
I must say (and I am an Ivy university trained engineer) the intellectual abilities/reasoning of the AAUP is pretty poor. There was a time when university attracted the brightest minds, but now it doesn't. As post sec education has become more accessible (and with bigger student bodies) the avg IQ has dropped (necessarily, reversion to the mean). This is proof of that.
Of course there are problems with viewpoint diversity: Is there no limit? Don't there have to be limits at specific social places? What should be tolerated where and for what reason? Do advanced students in a biology course really have to endure the viewpoint of a creationist even if it steals them time and this has already been discussed? Can the flat earther insist on viewpoint diversity to become invited to the science conference? This is economical: How much time is wasted, how much money, how much of human ressources, if there are simply too many viewpoints, or viewpoints not based on good data, at specific places? But also: How much time, money, human ressources are wasted, if, maybe at other (probably less specific) places, viewpoint diversity is abandoned? What I think it needs are formulations and then testing, testing, testing, of specific practices for specific endeavours with their specific goals. What does work if real humans do it and what does not? During the last half year we have seen a sufficient number of people from the viewpoint diversity side acting against what they claimed to believe. This is just human. But it is time to make this question a bit less philosophical and to collect data on what has what impact. Everything comes with a cost. It would be good to be honest about side effects, trade-offs and the prizes we will pay in any case.
True, a wide range of beliefs per se does not speed learning. Variance weights idiosyncrasy by relative credibility. True too, credibility can't be assigned in the abstract. My essay objected only to the generic arguments raised by the AAUP (and which it doesn't truly believe, since the main defense of DEI in faculty hiring is 'viewpoint diversity'). On some issues, I'm more disparaging of outlier views than current academic fashion is. For example, in contrast to a recent Nature op-ed, I don't think that "indigenous methodologies" deserve treatment on par with modern scientific method.
One error that the AAUP paper commits is that it silently conflates viewpoints with views. That DNA forms this or that structure is a view, not a viewpoint.
I am afraid, both Lisa Siraganian's original and Kent Osband's critique of it are too long (and the latter one is also too technical) for me to follow them in detail, but I agree with one quotation from the former: "however seriously one worries about “groupthink” in academia, viewpoint diversity is not the answer. It only offers us another quota system."
Indeed, the same way as "D" in DEI is merely an euphemism for racial and ethnic quotas, "viewpoint diversity" is an euphemism for mandating a certain fraction of conservatives, Republicans, and Christians among the faculty, and dismantling the units which are too liberal or too secular. So, the starting question of the debate should be: why does it matter?
Take, say, a math department: it is totally irrelevant what the political composition of its faculty is -- as long as it does not engage in non-meritocratic hiring and graduate admission practices (which unfortunately some occasionally do). In contrast, the issue is relevant for departments specializing in one or another branch of humanities, and this is because these areas have drifted from "search for truth" toward "promoting values". Let's recall how this happened.
Postmodernism of the sixties proclaimed that "truth is a social construct". Conclusion: to change the world one needs to change a narrative -- to redefine truth. So, social sciences have evolved from inventing various oversimplified idealizations (called "theories") trying to capture one or another aspect of reality and competing for success in the market of theories, into political activism. Over a couple of generations the academics probably themselves forgot (and certainly forgot to teach their students) that their scientific notions of various kinds of "oppressors" and "oppressed" are merely abstractions not applicable to live people. This is how a theory becomes an ideology -- laymen start thinking in terms of these abstractions and theories as if they really captured the complexity of the real world.
Thus, the problem is not how to introduce "viewpoint diversity" so that different ideologies and value systems could compete, but how to weed out political activism and restore the principles of objective scientific research undistorted by ideologies and values.
Here is one criterion. Scientists give different names to different phenomena -- and try to establish hidden connections between them. Politicians tend to give the same name to different phenomena -- in order to lead their audience to a requisite conclusion. This sounds abstract, but here is a familiar example.
One invokes "settler-colonialism", "apartheid", or "genocide" in connection with Israel not because the relationship between Israeli and Palestinians has any true resemblance with British colonialism, South African racism, or Holocaust, but because these are obviously negative characteristics in a layman's mind, and so this helps to smear Israel (when that's the goal).
Modern experts in political sciences and Near Eastern studies have been working hard in order to redefine these terms so that they would become applicable to Israel. That is, they intentionally give the same name to obviously different phenomena. So, they fail this test for distinguishing research from activism.
The October 16, 2023 statement https://ucsdfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Statement-on-bias-in-UC-statements-1.pdf by the University of California Ethnic Studies Council (representing 300 faculty systemwide) constantly resorts to this intentionally concept-blurring terminology -- thereby implicating itself and the entire Ethnic Studies faculty in political activism devoid of scientific content.
And "viewpoint diversity" has nothing to do with this.
Imo, viewpoint diversity would allow students and non-tenured professors to discuss "how to weed out political activism and restore the principles of objective scientific research" without jeopardizing grades or careers. That seems highly relevant to your examples. However, you've raised an excellent point that neither Siraganian nor I mentioned, namely that the "quest for truth" has come to mean something far more subjective and value-laden in social sciences than it does in STEM.
My guess is that the term "flat circle" refers to a constant curvature "regular" circle, or S₁. I gather this term was probably first introduced by Nietzsche in his writings. And undoubtedly, Nietzsche was not particularly acquainted with mathematics.
That phrase is more than slightly disconcerting to anyone with a modicum of quantitative training.
Brilliant critique of this absurd AAUP "paper". AAUP went full woke years ago. I know at the University of Washington the two professors who manage the AAUP listserv censor posts regularly.
Railing against viewpoint diversity would only make sense if we had a quick, easy and provable way of discerning the truth. The whole point is that we don’t.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much
just to clarify, this comment refers to Prof Sarginian
The AAUP and many if not most progressive academics reject intellectual diversity because the part of them that is still honest recognizes that much of their world view cannot stand open debate and competition with other ideas. As with any cult...and that is progressivism is...the "church" falls when the opponents can successfully refute the existence of the "god" they worship.
If arrogance is confidence in oneself without basis, our current crop of academic, political and social "elites" is without historical peer in arrogance.
I must say (and I am an Ivy university trained engineer) the intellectual abilities/reasoning of the AAUP is pretty poor. There was a time when university attracted the brightest minds, but now it doesn't. As post sec education has become more accessible (and with bigger student bodies) the avg IQ has dropped (necessarily, reversion to the mean). This is proof of that.
Of course there are problems with viewpoint diversity: Is there no limit? Don't there have to be limits at specific social places? What should be tolerated where and for what reason? Do advanced students in a biology course really have to endure the viewpoint of a creationist even if it steals them time and this has already been discussed? Can the flat earther insist on viewpoint diversity to become invited to the science conference? This is economical: How much time is wasted, how much money, how much of human ressources, if there are simply too many viewpoints, or viewpoints not based on good data, at specific places? But also: How much time, money, human ressources are wasted, if, maybe at other (probably less specific) places, viewpoint diversity is abandoned? What I think it needs are formulations and then testing, testing, testing, of specific practices for specific endeavours with their specific goals. What does work if real humans do it and what does not? During the last half year we have seen a sufficient number of people from the viewpoint diversity side acting against what they claimed to believe. This is just human. But it is time to make this question a bit less philosophical and to collect data on what has what impact. Everything comes with a cost. It would be good to be honest about side effects, trade-offs and the prizes we will pay in any case.
True, a wide range of beliefs per se does not speed learning. Variance weights idiosyncrasy by relative credibility. True too, credibility can't be assigned in the abstract. My essay objected only to the generic arguments raised by the AAUP (and which it doesn't truly believe, since the main defense of DEI in faculty hiring is 'viewpoint diversity'). On some issues, I'm more disparaging of outlier views than current academic fashion is. For example, in contrast to a recent Nature op-ed, I don't think that "indigenous methodologies" deserve treatment on par with modern scientific method.
One error that the AAUP paper commits is that it silently conflates viewpoints with views. That DNA forms this or that structure is a view, not a viewpoint.
I am afraid, both Lisa Siraganian's original and Kent Osband's critique of it are too long (and the latter one is also too technical) for me to follow them in detail, but I agree with one quotation from the former: "however seriously one worries about “groupthink” in academia, viewpoint diversity is not the answer. It only offers us another quota system."
Indeed, the same way as "D" in DEI is merely an euphemism for racial and ethnic quotas, "viewpoint diversity" is an euphemism for mandating a certain fraction of conservatives, Republicans, and Christians among the faculty, and dismantling the units which are too liberal or too secular. So, the starting question of the debate should be: why does it matter?
Take, say, a math department: it is totally irrelevant what the political composition of its faculty is -- as long as it does not engage in non-meritocratic hiring and graduate admission practices (which unfortunately some occasionally do). In contrast, the issue is relevant for departments specializing in one or another branch of humanities, and this is because these areas have drifted from "search for truth" toward "promoting values". Let's recall how this happened.
Postmodernism of the sixties proclaimed that "truth is a social construct". Conclusion: to change the world one needs to change a narrative -- to redefine truth. So, social sciences have evolved from inventing various oversimplified idealizations (called "theories") trying to capture one or another aspect of reality and competing for success in the market of theories, into political activism. Over a couple of generations the academics probably themselves forgot (and certainly forgot to teach their students) that their scientific notions of various kinds of "oppressors" and "oppressed" are merely abstractions not applicable to live people. This is how a theory becomes an ideology -- laymen start thinking in terms of these abstractions and theories as if they really captured the complexity of the real world.
Thus, the problem is not how to introduce "viewpoint diversity" so that different ideologies and value systems could compete, but how to weed out political activism and restore the principles of objective scientific research undistorted by ideologies and values.
Here is one criterion. Scientists give different names to different phenomena -- and try to establish hidden connections between them. Politicians tend to give the same name to different phenomena -- in order to lead their audience to a requisite conclusion. This sounds abstract, but here is a familiar example.
One invokes "settler-colonialism", "apartheid", or "genocide" in connection with Israel not because the relationship between Israeli and Palestinians has any true resemblance with British colonialism, South African racism, or Holocaust, but because these are obviously negative characteristics in a layman's mind, and so this helps to smear Israel (when that's the goal).
Modern experts in political sciences and Near Eastern studies have been working hard in order to redefine these terms so that they would become applicable to Israel. That is, they intentionally give the same name to obviously different phenomena. So, they fail this test for distinguishing research from activism.
The October 16, 2023 statement https://ucsdfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Statement-on-bias-in-UC-statements-1.pdf by the University of California Ethnic Studies Council (representing 300 faculty systemwide) constantly resorts to this intentionally concept-blurring terminology -- thereby implicating itself and the entire Ethnic Studies faculty in political activism devoid of scientific content.
And "viewpoint diversity" has nothing to do with this.
Imo, viewpoint diversity would allow students and non-tenured professors to discuss "how to weed out political activism and restore the principles of objective scientific research" without jeopardizing grades or careers. That seems highly relevant to your examples. However, you've raised an excellent point that neither Siraganian nor I mentioned, namely that the "quest for truth" has come to mean something far more subjective and value-laden in social sciences than it does in STEM.
My guess is that the term "flat circle" refers to a constant curvature "regular" circle, or S₁. I gather this term was probably first introduced by Nietzsche in his writings. And undoubtedly, Nietzsche was not particularly acquainted with mathematics.
That phrase is more than slightly disconcerting to anyone with a modicum of quantitative training.
Thanks for pointing this out. I have changed the phrasing.
Brilliant critique of this absurd AAUP "paper". AAUP went full woke years ago. I know at the University of Washington the two professors who manage the AAUP listserv censor posts regularly.