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My inclination is to be someone who respects science and experts, but I find this difficult to adhere to when it comes to academia. Academics have historically occupied a very important place in society as those who have devoted their lives to understanding the world around us and, as a result, were key in forming how people actually understand the world around us. They are supposed to be the trusted and truth-oriented intellectuals, but I just don’t think that is the case and I have grown increasingly skeptical of academia.
I simply don’t think it has a descriptive orientation anymore, nor do think it is any longer the realm of truth-seeking. It seems to have either a normative orientation or a quais-descriptive orientation in which the endeavor is regarded as truth-seeking and it actually does have some descriptive value, but it’s done by people who a. Got into academia because they were passionate about one side of an issue b. Have a similar set of values and thus perspective c. Ask a question from a common and loaded perspective d. Focus on questions that are important to the structural integrity of a specific line of reasoning
Probably intertwined with 1, academia appears to be pretty ideologically homogenous, and that homogeneity exists reasonably far to the left. Even if they are trying to be unbiased, it’s exceptionally difficult to recognize ones own bias as bias; it’s just regarded as normal. And I think a unique element of progressivism is, I’m not sure whether it’s dogmatism but I think there is a relatively unique tendency to not distinguish between values/opinions and fact. i just don’t find progressives often framing their convictions as opinions. So if someone like that is conducting academic research, if they do not regard their opinions as opinions, they do not regard their bias as bias, and thus they do not perceive themselves as having a bias to control for. As a result academic research which is normative in nature is being presented and absorbed as if it is descriptive in nature. I think an example of this relates to the DEI space, in which I think most people would agree that that issue does not appear to allow much room for disagreement, despite the fact that it is exceptionally complex, deals with ambiguous and nebulous structures (not saying they don’t exist, but they aren’t exactly things you can reach out and touch and describe in unambiguous terms)
I can't imagine this criticism applies meaningfully to the hard sciences. Have all the physicists abandoned truth seeking in favour of identity politics?
It seems there is a loud minority of people familiar with professional physicists that believe this to be the case. They make a compelling argument from what I’ve seen. That Sabine woman from Germany is a good example. I think there are others
You can make the case that string theorists ahve abandoned truth seeking (though they would certainly disagree), but this is completely unrelated to wokeness. And there are plenty of other branches of physics, chemistry and biology which are very practical (like condensed matter physics), who are pretty much untouched.
I was doing my PhD back when the "Science Wars" (i.e. the application to the sciences of the 1990's era PC which had completely taken over most non-econ social sciences and a substantial minority of the humanities) were living memory. The pushback from professional physicists was organised, effective, and in the case of the Sokal hoax, hilarious. The biological establishment ended up getting involved in a classic Illuminati megaturn, where Big Pharma used the Orbital Mind Control Lasers to turn the Revolutionary Communist Party into a Libertarian-aligned card, giving them a +4 bonus to take control over it. They then used the Revolutionary Communist Party to take control of the Science Communicators.
I am out of academia now, but my impression is that this time round:
The attack is less dangerous - the 1990's science warriors wanted to demolish physics' claim to intellectual authority whereas the 2010's wokists just want us to take on a few token diversity hires. And this is something physics is very used to dealing with - the rows between physicists and women-in-STEM advocates over the number of women in physics are an ongoing nuisance that never went away even during the 2000's lull in the culture war.
The pushback, to the extent there is one, is much quieter. I can't tell whether or not this is because the threat is perceived as less dangerous, or because in today's campus climate it is not possible to organise against PC crap.
The response of working physicists to this sort of thing is basically "Bend over here it comes again" - it is annoying, but it doesn't stop you doing science the way having your lab burned down by anti-GMO protesters did.
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