STEM, DEI, and Academic Freedom

I found this week’s installment challenging, not because of a lack of material but because there’s too much of it. The New York Times, as usual, provides ample fodder for analysis. Its motto, “All the News that’s Fit to Print,” is obvious hyperbole, suggesting that any alleged news not found in its pages is unfit for publication and that its pages contain a comprehensive record. That might have been true back in 1897, but it hasn’t expanded to fill modern information space, leaving plenty for me to write about. But, instead of talking about groundwater depletion (again), I thought I’d talk more about the contradictions listed in the title.

First, let’s unpack the acronyms in the title: STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, and it is shorthand for an educational curriculum intended to train a workforce ready for the emerging world. It’s also a significant theme of this serial. DEI (also Latin for ‘gods’) stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 1 . This acronym is shorthand for a broad-brush organizational Fairness Doctrine, acknowledging a scientific consensus that a uniform, unbalanced, and adversarial environment is unproductive and unhealthy. I’m reasonably sure that, in some eyes, DEI is viewed as the absence of bias (or, more pejoratively, ‘wokeness’), another theme I touched on earlier.

It might seem obvious, particularly if you’ve been reading this series for a while, that there is an unavoidable non-sequitur between these two concepts. In Science, facts exist. While scientists celebrate a diversity of thought when data is lacking, Science is, ultimately, decisive. So, on the one hand, we’re training students to think critically about data, and on the other, we’re asking them to suspend criticism of others.

The article that prompted this installment was on the front page of Sunday’s edition under the headline “Diversity Statements by Faculty Complicate Hiring on Campus” 2 . Specifically, it related to the case of University of Toronto Professor of Psychology Yoel Inbar. He was offered a potential position on the faculty at UCLA as part of a twofer, as his partner (female) was also being recruited. Dr. Inbar was asked to complete a DEI statement and dutifully checked that box.

As it turns out, five years before, he recorded a conversational podcast ( Episode 15 of “Two Psychologists Four Beers”, aptly describing the atmosphere for productive scientific conversations!) where he questioned the value of DEI statements from the perspective of human psychology. He’s academically qualified to do so since he directs “The Morality, Affect, and Politics (MAP) Lab“ at the University of Toronto, which is a scientific effort to “understand people's beliefs about consequential social questions.” He pointed out that DEI statements are examples of “Value Signaling” (alternatively, “Virtue Signaling”). In this psychological phenomenon, people seek to indicate their purity by publicly supporting a moral cause, even if considered extreme. Consider the infamous witch trials of Salem as an example of how this sort of signaling can lead to unfortunate outcomes.

When a group of students put these two facts side by side, they concluded (correctly) that they appeared incongruous. Then, these self-righteous students became outraged and petitioned UCLA’s leadership to retract its employment offer based on hypocrisy. [There is an irony here since signing a public petition is textbook Value Signaling, and the primary petitioners were psychology students!] The problem is that university leadership sided with the petitioners instead of affirming the faculty’s right to hire thoughtful, nuanced scholars sufficiently proficient in their field that they can teach the next generation to think objectively about challenging issues (precisely the objective of STEM).

There are two possible explanations. First, Prof. Inbar may be a closet bigot, an extreme hypocrite who publicly supports DEI while practicing the opposite privately. Or, it’s possible that he endorses DEI both publicly and in practice but believes that DEI statements are poor indicators of true psychological beliefs. Because the author is human (with both compassion and flaws) whose career would have been derailed long ago for hypocrisy, I’m picking the latter as more reasonable, but you’re free to draw your own conclusions. I don’t know about you, but it seems the statement was intended more as a software EULA (those things we never parse before clicking “I agree”). It’s intended to protect the recipient rather than the author.

Unfortunately, this case is not isolated based on ‘woke’ values. In a subject closer to my wheelhouse, scientifically, consider Maitland Jones. In 2017, he was hailed as one of the eight coolest professors at NYU, despite a reputation for “tough love”:

Orgo is a nightmare, and Maitland, who wrote the Orgo textbook, an internationally renowned experimental chemist and an avid Jazz lover, can actually make it a nightmare as well. But it’s really just tough love: Maitland will push you to understand Organic chemistry radically and you will come out of his course having the best tools to use to become a chemist. (Nour Che on the OneClass blog here )

As a Ph.D. Organic Chemist, I can relate both to the challenge of the coursework and the pressures on young minds to grasp the subject material. Prof. Jones’ changed how the subject material is taught, focusing on problem-solving instead of memorization, in other words, teaching students to think. Further, his dedication to excellence in teaching (vs. research) puts him in rare company among his peers.

Five years later, however, the situation was turned upside down. After receiving an anonymous petition from undergraduates complaining about how such a difficult course damaged their self-esteem 3 , NYU administrators dismissed Prof. Jones over the objections of both faculty and students. (The New York Times article on the case is here. ) The irony here is that he had officially retired from Princeton in 2007 (where he had taught organic chemistry for decades) and was teaching under contract at NYU because of his love of teaching! He could only legally be dismissed because he had tenure at Princeton, not NYU.

What changed? According to Prof. Jones's account, the top students still grasped the material and did well on the exams, but the bottom students dropped out. These students skipped lectures and failed to avail themselves of recordings, while “office hours” were ignored.

His conclusion:

What is overwhelmingly important is the chilling effect of such intervention by administrators on teaching overall and especially on untenured professors. Can a young assistant professor, almost all of whom are not protected by tenure, teach demanding material? Dare they give real grades? Their entire careers are at the peril of complaining students and deans who seem willing to turn students into nothing more than tuition-paying clients. (Maitland Jones’ Op Ed in the Boston Globe, here )

Academic freedom is a primary victim of cancel culture, even though some politicians accuse educational institutions of promoting it. If academic institutional leadership allowed free expression and defended university professors instead of caving to the will of a minority, then students would learn the actual value of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Perhaps some proponents confuse DEI with fairness in a competitive world. The rules must be followed, but people have different skills, aptitudes, and commitment. What’s the point of playing hard if, in the end, all you get is a participation trophy? As humans, we all have issues, and many are self-inflicted. Everyone should strive to fix the problem instead of fixing the blame.

There are significant parallels between spineless academic administrators who fail to stand up to a mob of students and Republicans who fail to stand up to their crime boss. Both groups must take moral leadership seriously: We must balance rule by a mob and rule by The Mob on both ends of the spectrum.