Recent articles

I have gotten two opinion pieces out this week:

1) A piece in Areo on the doubletalk around diversity and affirmative action.

2) A piece in Real Clear Education on the obstacles to improving graduation rates when students are underprepared and need to work to support themselves.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

 I have been reading a lot but haven't had the blogging bug. Until today, because I read two very different things that clicked together.

I'll start with the Serious Reading: I'm reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a very philosophical novel that I won't attempt to summarize in full. I'm about a third of the way in, in chapter three of Part 3 ("Words Misunderstood") He's describing the experiences of Sabina, a Czech woman who has moved to Switzerland after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Sabina is talking to some other Czech emigres, and one of them starts inquiring into her anti-communist bonafides. Did she engage in sufficiently dissenting activities back in Czechoslovakia? Did she do enough to oppose the Soviet-backed regime?

Sabina's realization is that this guy is the mirror image of the communist functionaries who would scrutinize people's dossiers before they could get jobs or travel visas or official approval for other activities of life. It also reminds me of a point that Vaclav Havel made in his essay "The Power of the Powerless": These modern authoritarian regimes care deeply about appearances. It's not enough to just threaten to kill anyone who tries to thwart the dictator's material interests, they also need to keep up the veneer of ideological uniformity.

Related to the veneer of ideological uniformity, today I learned that in the official Dungeons and Dragons rules they will no longer refer to Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, etc. as "races." They are now "species." It seems that the essentializing of group differences in Dungeons and Dragons comes too close to racism in our real world.

There are two levels on which we could look at this. If we approach it purely on the level of the specific term, well, I don't know what the "right" term is to describe a world of fantasy and magic, with trolls and wizards and lizard-men and gnomes and all sorts of other weird stuff. Surely trolls and humans and lizard-men differ from each other more than, say, humans from different continents differ from each other. On that level, "race" seems an inapt term, and trying to equate the difference between an orc and an elf to the difference between two groups of real humans seems illogical. On the other hand, the existence of half-elves, half-orcs, half-giants (in some stories), etc. suggests that these creatures can mate with humans, and maybe do differ less than most species.

Not to mention that they mix and mingle in many of these fantasy societies, which may be the far more salient reason to say that they are more akin to different human races than to, say, dogs and cats. From a story perspective, Elves and Dwarves and Lizard Men (or Lizard Thems, to be gender-neutral?) are groups that often have their own separate kingdoms but frequently trade and sometimes even mix in bustling trading ports. Their interactions are fantastical, exaggerated stand-ins for conflict and cooperation between human groups, as magical creatures in fairy tales have long been. "Race" captures their story function quite accurately, if sometimes uncomfortably. (And who said fiction is or ought to be uniformly comforting?)

But that's not the real point here. It's not about dogs and cats versus human groups in modern society. It's about moral hygiene. It's about trying to ensure that this fantasy game doesn't corrupt the youth with ideas that run counter to the morality that adults are trying to install. And we've seen this game before, with the 1980's freak-outs about D&D being satanic. Now a new group of prim, proper grown-ups with strict moral codes is trying to parse games of fantasy and imagination for anything that might corrupt the youth, and lo and behold they've found it. How long before Tipper Gore starts bitching about music again?

All of this has happened before and will happen again.

In Defense of Dissenting Syllabi

(Also published at Medium)

Could any professor fairly summarize–in just one sentence–the complicated history of land rights in their locale over centuries of conquest and settlement? Ethicists, historians, political scientists, lawyers, and other experts could fill thick volumes while analyzing that topic–or at least fill more pages than any syllabus. Nonetheless, University of Washington (UW) computer scientist Stuart Reges provocatively stated on his syllabus “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.” Reges now alleges in a lawsuit that his institution initiated disciplinary action in response. While this may seem on the surface to be a question of workplace speech on matters ancillary to the course, it goes to the heart of open discussion in higher education. If faculty are encouraged to air popular stances on complex questions, we must also allow dissent from those stances.

Taken in isolation, Reges’ syllabus statement is obviously inappropriate. It’s hard enough to get students to pay attention to reading assignments and homework deadlines; why alienate anyone with provocations irrelevant to course material? My physics syllabus this fall will list assignments on electromagnetic waves and relativity, not my opinions on drug legalization, face masks, or election procedures (to reference just three of my many contrarian views). The only reason to drop political bombshells in my syllabus would be to encourage careful reading. (“Hidden amidst the due dates is an opinion on gun control. Can you find it?”) If UW merely required that syllabi be simple, practical documents focused on course content and policies, few would object.

In context, though, Reges’ statement is less an exposition of John Locke’s theory of property ownership than a response to UW encouraging instructors to include syllabus statements acknowledging the Native Americans from whom the land was taken. (Writer and law professor Eugene Volokh confirmed the official encouragement in correspondence with UW Allen School Director Prof. Magdalena Balazinska.) Reges’ protest was not good pedagogy, but UW’s recommendations make it harder to reasonably push back on his statement. A university that values open inquiry and expression cannot reasonably scrub syllabi of dissent on complex topics that have been declared syllabus-appropriate.

Open inquiry does not mean that every venue must be open to every idea. My physics class this fall will not be an appropriate venue for discussing territorial claims in Kashmir (as long as we’re on the topic of land rights…), nor would a class on international politics be a good setting to discuss Einstein’s theory of relativity. Likewise, evidence-free assertions, irrespective of topical relevance, would be inappropriate in either class. However, despite the strong evidence supporting the theory of relativity, my physics class is an entirely appropriate setting for discussing clever experiments that search for evidence contradicting it.

In Reges’ case, the university had already decided that computer science syllabi are appropriate venues for discussing this topic, and his statement referenced a widely-studied philosophical argument. Locke’s argument is, of course, fair game for both praise and criticism in relevant academic venues. The fact that computer science classes are not good venues for discussing Locke’s ideas is a reason to keep computer science classes focused, not to selectively promote certain views on land ownership.

One might want to treat land acknowledgments differently from other social and political controversies since they address the propriety of the institution’s very existence in that location. However, colleges and universities avoid prescribing stances on many other activities with weighty implications for their missions. For instance, a student health center’s decision to offer (or not offer) certain reproductive health services could affect whether some students are able to remain in college, and likewise have profound moral consequences (depending on your outlook). ROTC provides crucial financial support for many students, and some research programs rely on Department of Defense research grants. Nonetheless, most people recognize that war, peace, and reproductive rights are fit for open debate, not prescribed stances.

A tempting pedagogical rationale for treating land acknowledgments differently from Reges’ critique thereof is that most land acknowledgments are harmless nods to widespread sympathies for marginalized groups, while Reges’ critique was inflammatory and distracting.  However, this argument sidesteps the fact that academics frequently critique widespread sentiments. Patriotic sentiment tugs at many people’s heartstrings, but everyone agrees that criticism of the US government is fair game. Jesus preached a charitable message that even many atheists admire, but no reasonable academic would consider Christianity beyond critique. At the same time, we mostly try to strike a balance whereby religion and partisan politics are kept out of syllabi, except when germane to the course material.

If university policy just required succinct syllabi that avoid irrelevant controversies, I–and likely many other academics–would deem it a mundane workplace rule akin to word limits in travel funding requests. However, if one opens discussion of a controversial topic, basic fairness requires room for reasoned dissent in academic environments. To quote a controversial book, to everything there is a season. Syllabi should be useful, academic discussions should be informed, and dissent should receive fair consideration.

Next Book: The Color Bind

I'm currently reading The Color Bind: California's Battle to End Affirmative Action by journalism professor Lydia Chavez. I stumbled across it pretty randomly and thought the topic looked interesting. It was written in the 1990's, and looked at the battle over Prop 209, which ended most forms of affirmative action in California's public institutions. I was in California but not very aware of this stuff at the time, so it's an interesting look at that era for me, written by someone who was on the scene at the time.

I doubt I'll blog all of it in detail, but in the first few pages it's interesting to see that some of the key proponents were a couple of obscure academics, one of them an adjunct philosophy instructor with various affiliations, and the other a tenured professor of anthropology at Cal State Hayward (now known as Cal State East Bay). On pages 7-8 she describes the anthropologist's experiences at a 1989 conference on multiculturalism, and the strong emotions he came away with. (He was not pleased.)

I suppose some readers might say this is too simplistic, to ascribe so much to an obscure academic conference. And if the question is why millions of people voted as they did, it's obviously about far more than one frustrated anthropology prof. On the other hand, if the question is why one guy became an activist willing to do the work, well, everyone has an origin story, and often those stories start with seemingly small things. Whatever you think of the bigger subject and controversies, it's a very human and convincing detail.

More thoughts on Susan Pinker

I've read nearly 200 pages of Pinker now. I'm procrastinating from other things.

She makes a very obvious case that men and women frequently want different things in the professional realm, particularly in regard to work-family balance. That is something that virtually everyone agrees is true, and most also agree that professions should accommodate that fact so that women can pursue a wider range of professions.

What is less obvious is the extent to which this is a preference wired in the brain versus a response to facts of life. Pinker clearly sees it as wired in the brain, but a perfectly plausible alternative is that women are simply responding to certain realities that are rooted in experience and the practicalities of having children. 

To wit, two people might start off wanting the same things, but then go on to face different circumstances and have their goals and desires diverge. If, tomorrow, my life changed completely (and we needn't make this some magical scenario where a genie changes my biology, I could simply lose my job or get a different job or get sick or my wife dies or my wife gets an amazing new job or a close family member moves nearby or whatever else, good or bad or in-between) I might well start wanting different things in life. None of this would have anything to do with changes to my brain or past experience or socialization or whatever else, just a change to my present circumstances. Likewise, women might well (and indeed seem to, based on all available evidence, I hasten to add) have brains wired like male brains, but have different goals because of experiences and facts of life.

Pinker makes a case for difference, but she doesn't make a case for difference rooted in the original brain programming. (Nor did her brother succeed in making that case in his book, I hasten to add.)

Not all differences are nature or nurture, at least in the sense of things shaped by genes and early environment. Some differences are present. Take two twins. Raise them the same way. They won't be exactly the same, but they'll generally be quite similar. Then put them in different situations and of course they'll take different paths, even with the same nature and nurture.

Now, in some sense differences due to new circumstances are still environmental, and hence nurture, but they're not baked-in nurture. And anything involving reproduction is ultimately nature, but societies shape the circumstances under which that very natural function is carried out. A society with flexible jobs and subsidized childcare will be one where people are "nurtured" to perform a "nature" function differently than one with less flexibility and less support for childcare.

On a different note, Chapter 7 is probably the chapter most consistent with more acceptable, consensus notions in the present. In Chapter 7 she makes much of Impostor Syndrome. She sees it as biological, which obviously gives short shrift to culture and society. But even worse, there's now reason to believe that Impostor Syndrome is as common among men as among women; men just talk about it less because (in keeping with the nature of Impostor Syndrome) they're even more insecure about it! I don't fault Pinker over her assumption that Impostor Syndrome is more common among women; she wrote in 2008 and a lot has changed in the social science landscape since then. (I do fault her assumption that it's biological, but that's the fundamental nature of the book, not a matter specific to her discussion of Impostor Syndrome.)

I'm also not convinced that Impostor Syndrome actually limits people. This is not a quibble with Pinker specifically, but with all discourse around it. Given the number of highly successful people who have it, we can't really rely on it as an explanation of any failures or shortcomings. Yes, some people might well say that Impostor Syndrome is why, at some point, they turned down an opportunity to go farther. On the other hand, people weigh opportunities every day, and sometimes they look at one and say "Nope, not this one, I'll try something else." Sometimes they say they're choosing something else because they think they're not good enough, sometimes because they think it's a dubious opportunity, sometimes because they see something better. 

If we're humble about our self-knowledge, we should be a little careful before assuming it was actually Impostor Syndrome, or at least that Impostor Syndrome led them to make a decision that they shouldn't have made. What if a person decided not to take an opportunity because they feel they need to spend a little more time in their current situation, consolidating and preparing for the next step? Or that spending more time in their current situation might offer some benefits to better prepare them to make good on the next step down the line? That might actually be a good call, even if "Oh, I'm not ready, I'll fail" is a rather pessimistic way of framing the decision.

The Sexual Paradox by Susan Pinker

Susan Pinker is a psychologist and the sister of Steven Pinker, who wrote The Blank Slate. She also wrote her own controversial book alleging biological differences between groups: The Sexual Paradox. She cites abundant research purporting to show sex differences in a wide variety of contexts, but she frames her book around the captivating hook of two distinct subsets of men and women: Men who went on to successful careers after exhibiting various learning disabilities and other neurological challenges as children. This makes for fascinating individual tales, but it also limits the lessons that we can draw from the focus of her book. Even if we set aside the anecdotes and just focus on, say, statistical comparisons between men and women with dyslexia (or whatever other condition), we're comparing outliers from two groups, rather than averages or medians. This limits the relevance to the wider populations of men and women.

Also, her anecdotes are subject to interpretation, and her interpretations depend on which details one emphasizes. To wit, consider some of the women profiled in Chapter 3, which focuses on women who left STEM careers:

1) She considers a computer science professor pseudonymed "Donna." Donna spent sixteen years in the field but then said she was bored. OK, so it was lack of interest that drove her away? Well, Pinker later mentions that Donna got burdened with a disproportionate amount of mentoring and committee responsibilities, a common experience for women faculty, especially in STEM. Can I say with certainty that Donna left more because of a disproportionate burden rather than disinterest in the field? Of course not. But without more extensive quotations from Donna I can't be confident that Pinker accurately summarized Donna's motives.

2) A geography PhD pseudonymed Sonia. Sonia started a professorship but apparently didn't enjoy the demands of teaching and research. OK, fair enough, though I will note that it's not clear that she lacked enthusiasm for the subject; it seems that the workload was hard to balance, a common concern. Preferences regarding the pace of work are very different from preferences regarding the type of work.

So she took an administrative role in an office preparing grants and reports. But her boss was a jerk. Pinker says he was a jerk to everyone, so it wasn't sexism; we lack the evidence to adjudicate that interpretation. She thus changed careers to elementary education.

It's hard to read this narrative as indicating some innate preference for people-oriented work, given that it was a third choice and other factors beyond the type of work played into each transition. Maybe this individual woman really did prefer people-oriented work over data on land use or whatever. Maybe she liked both. Maybe she actually would have been happier doing geography in a different context. We don't know.

3) She also cites an anonymous law professor who got a BS in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, then went to an MD/PhD program, and finally left (with the MD but apparently not the PhD) to go to law school. She is now a law professor, and claims to be happier. She says she was not discouraged in any way while she was in science, and in fact felt pressure to stay rather than pressure to leave.

Maybe so. I'll just note that people who get a BS from Yale, an MD from Harvard, and a law degree from presumably a top-tier law school (she's an Ivy law professor, and they rarely hire from outside the top tier) are unusual in many ways, and move in unusual environments. Not only would I not extrapolate from her to a wider swath of women, I also would not extrapolate from her universities to all of academic science.

Besides women, she also discusses Terence Tao, a top mathematician who was a prodigy from an early age, but was nowhere near extraordinary in language skills. Again, I wouldn't extrapolate from such a singular person to men at large. She likewise made references to Einstein earlier, and the contrast between his mathematical and language skills. She doesn't explicitly endorse the theory that he was dyslexic, but she is clearly willing to entertain it. Besides the fact that Einstein was, um, unusual, the man read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in his teens; that is not an easy read (to put it mildly).

When she cites larger studies she has a point, but her case studies are not as illustrative as one might hope.

Derrick Bell's _Silent Covenants_

 I've been reading Derrick Bell's Silent Covenants. Bell was an influential figure in critical race theory (CRT), a school of thought that nowadays is associated with some of the more batshit things to show up in school lessons and workplace trainings on race and diversity. Defenders of CRT have argued that it is mischaracterized by its critics, and after reading Bell I think they are basically right. Or, at least, I think they are right to say that the idea has roots that are far more reasonable than what the critics currently point to. That's separate from whether the critics are accurate in their characterization of the various trainings currently trotted out. Since this book was published in 2004, I'm not going to use this post to examine workplace diversity trainings in 2022.

Bell's central points in this book are (1) Brown vs the Board of Education didn't accomplish anywhere near as much as was hoped (a pessimistic point, but one that he defends reasonably) and (2) white people only support progress for Black people when and to the extent that it also benefits white people. The second notion is called "Interest Convergence." I think it's basically true: Most people aren't saints, so they will pursue self-interest more than the interests of others. There's a lot to be pessimistic about in that observation, and it can lead to a pretty accurate characterization of the world as being about conflict and struggle. It's a Hobbesian notion about the state of nature.

At the same time, there's a way to view interest convergence more positively: Improvement for disadvantaged groups happens when people see a common good. This is not so different from Hobbes' notion that we can escape a state of nature via a commonwealth.

I don't know enough about CRT, or at least pre-2020 CRT outside of various trainings, to say if other theorists mostly think in terms of common good or conflict, but Bell is clearly a pessimist, and for understandable reasons.

Bell's value judgments are largely unassailable in the way that value judgments tend to be, because they are rooted in premises that you either accept or don't, or accept in some situations. Where I take issue with him is in the later chapters, where he dances around the idea that Black students tend to need different educational models than white students. To the extent that he's explicit about different needs, it's largely focused on pride and role models, and I think those points are pretty unassailable. But he keeps hinting that there's more, and that's a common feature of progressive educational commentary. Needless to say, I fundamentally disagree with him there, and wish he didn't go down that road, because it detracts from his more valid analyses.

Hobbes, Chapter 30

 A few quick thoughts on chapter 30 of Hobbes.

Paragraph 3: Hobbes believes that people should be educated on doctrines that are conducive to peace, and that it is a sovereign's duty to make sure people receive this sort of education. The uneducated or miseducated are easy to seduce. On this I agree, though I don't agree that the ill-educated are drawn to resistance. The ill-educated can easily be co-opted by an authoritarian leader.

Paragraph 6: He concedes that the biggest obstacle to teaching people doctrines conducive to peace (or at least to Hobbes' notion of peace) is that people are determined to not learn things that run counter to their ambitions. True enough.

On the other hand, he also believes that the common people are like "clean paper", essentially blank slates. I guess any authoritarian, even a seemingly cynical one, is ultimately an idealist. He believes that people are controllable.

Hobbes, Chp. 18 & 19

 A few things stand out from the last few chapters of Hobbes:

Chapter 18, Paragraph 9: It is the right of the sovereign to decide what speech is permissible. Of course I recoil from this...but he's not wrong. I say that not to really excuse infringements of speech rights, but to note that even respecting speech rights is a choice. We say it isn't a choice, we say it isn't something the government gets to decide, but they do. And not just in the "fire in a crowded theater" sense and related matters, not just in those edge cases. The choice to respect laws and constitutional rights and court rulings is ultimately a choice. In a free society it's a choice that the government makes frequently and without much argument, but it's a choice. When you dig deep into the nature of power, that fact is inescapable.

And we saw on January 6 that respecting the foundations of a liberal society really is a choice, and it's a choice that the powerful don't always make, and neither do their supporters. We saw that some leaders choose illiberally, and ultimately their resistance failed only because other people in key places resisted them. How great or small you think the threat ultimately was, it was a threat, and it was a threat that was averted by choices.

Chapter 19, paragraph 4: Hobbes argues that monarchy is the best form of government because it ties the monarch's personal interests to the state and people. This is of course entirely incorrect, as plenty of leaders put their own interests ahead of their people's. However, leaders who put themselves too obviously ahead of their people tend to run pariah states. Perhaps we can say that a liberal and affluent society is more likely to be one where the leader sees the affluence and prestige of their state on the world stage as being in their own personal interests, and they thereby foster a dynamics and free society.

Of course that's idealistic, but the point of ideals is to ask what direction to push in.

I think there's a lesson for leadership: If your organization is one that everyone wants to be a part of, you and your organization will thrive. If you just want to get your own piece of the pie at the expense of others, you will hurt the place.

Chapter 19, paragraph 23: The Romans built a stable empire by bringing people in the provinces under the umbrella of Roman citizenship and rights. This gives some context with the modern interest in inclusion.

Latest Read: Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

 I'm reading Leviathan by Hobbes. I previously read about Hobbes in Mark Lilla's The Stillborn God, and now I'm reading the original. I won't blog everything because it's a dense work. Surprisingly readable, but nonetheless dense, in that many points are made in a paragraph and then it moves on. With so many bases covered, there's no way I could blog the whole thing.

As Lilla said, Hobbes approaches problems of society in terms of human nature and what will work, rather than as an effort to discern the mind of the creator and impose those insights on society. So the first 100+ pages (in this edition) are all about human nature and behavior and words and knowledge and rhetoric and, um, well, everything. I obviously won't blog all of it, but I want to note a few points that stood out:

Chapter 2, section 2: He states the law of inertia a few decades before Newton. In terms of political philosophy the point here is that people change in response to either internal processes or external stimuli, i.e. there is always a cause for people's changes. This is important to his later arguments about how to control people.

But as a physicist, it's interesting that he was aware of this. I confess to knowing far less than I should about the origins of the Law of Inertia. Apparently it was known to philosophers decades before Newton's Principia, and already used for analogies.

Chapter 2, section 8: He says that he doesn't believe in witchcraft, but he thinks many witches believe that they have real powers, and they seek to cause mischief, so they deserve punishment. Also, if people were less superstitious and hence less fearful of witches and other potential supernatural threats in the community, they'd be more obedient to civil authority.

His approval of punishing witches for civil good is not terribly surprising from what I previously knew about him. His point about how less superstitious people would be more orderly is an interesting one, however. In general, people who have less fear of their neighbors are less prone to vigilantism, but are also less drawn to "law and order" figures. 

Chapter 8, section 1: Virtue requires inequality. "For if all things were equal in all men, nothing would be prized." I am unsure whether modern egalitarians fail to grasp this or grasp it perfectly.

Chapter 8, section 26: He makes the same point that Galileo made: The Scripture was written to teach us about morality and salvation, not to teach us about the motion of the heavens. He was a contemporary of Galileo, and according to a footnote actually met Galileo, so I should not be surprised here.

Chapter 9, section 48: "...honour consisteth only in the opinion of power. Therefore the ancient heathen did not think they dishonoured, but greatly honoured the Gods, when they introduced them in their poems, committing rapes, thefts, and other great, but unjust, or unclean acts." I've noted before that polytheistic divinities showcase human flaws rather than enjoying a monopoly on morality. Hobbes has a different take, arguing that even these polytheistic deities are honoured rather than seen as cautionary tales. I have to ponder that. It's certainly true that the Old Testament God acts in ways that would raise eyebrows if a human did it, but his moral monopoly grants Him license.

Chapter 11, section 25: Curiosity drives people to seek for causes and causes of causes, until eventually they postulate a deity as the ultimate cause. This is related to the point Lilla made, that religion in politics provides a sure foundation. God is the ultimate postulate. Take that away and people are adrift.

I think this might also explain why many ideologues of non-theistic sorts (e.g. Marxists, Critical Race Theorists, atheists who have gotten a little TOO excited about not having a lord and savior) behave in ways that often resemble religion: They have a foundation, something that scratches the same psychological itch, so they behave in a similar way.

I'm in Newsweek!

 Long time no post, but I'm back to say that I was just published in Newsweek! My article is a critique of a rather bizarre physics education research article that came out recently. I want to thank everyone in the Heterodox Academy Writers Group, who helped me with very useful feedback, and also put me in touch with a Newsweek editor.