A day after an internal email by a Google employee was leaked to the press, a combination of ideological intolerance and scientific illiteracy led Google to fire James Damore for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” On the day he was fired, Quillette.com published several brief essays by academics on the science of sex differences, mostly vindicating his … Continue reading “From College Indoctrination to Corporate Intolerance”
As a liberal who grew up near California’s Bible Belt in Orange County, I was brought up to believe that the enemies of reason were the Christian creationists who taught that the world is 6,000 years old and that biologists can’t explain the evolution of complexity without invoking a divine creator. While I still believe creationists are wrong, I have come to see their progressive academic counterparts as a bigger problem. I’ll call them the New Creationists. They use Darwin as a bludgeon against the old creationists, but then reject scientific conclusions when they conflict with their political convictions.
In effect, tenure is a barrier to entry in the academic job market that makes it difficult to replace poorly performing faculty with better alternatives.
After ten years, the program in philosophy, politics, and economics is growing well at both universities.