Today is #ShutDownSTEM day, wherein researchers around the world have forgone their scientific duties and instead decided to ‘Strike For Black Lives’ and, in the process, also condemned science as racist.
In doing so, it seems that the self-flagellating fancies of the Left have finally colonised the world of science. Predicted almost three decades ago by the science wars – a series of intellectual exchanges between scientific realists and postmodernist critics – the peculiar language of #ShutDownSTEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) betrays the anti-intellectual leanings of today’s science.
The initiative follows the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota a fortnight ago, and involves suspending “all usual academic work for the day, including teaching, research, and service responsibilities,” according to the organisers of Strike For Black Lives.
On the #ShutDownSTEM website, its organisers write how “In academia, our thoughts and words turn into new ways of knowing. Our research papers turn into media releases, books and legislation that reinforce anti-Black narratives.” The organisers then point the finger at “white and non-Black People of Color,” stating that we should take time today to “educate ourselves.”
Educate ourselves on what is left unsaid, the broken link to the resources page takes users to a library of guilt-trip literature laden with only two books remotely related to science. A cursory glance makes one assume it is about how inherently awful I am and how others differ to myself because of the colour of their skin.
In any case, #ShutDownSTEM betrays a certain worldview in the peculiar language it uses to accuse science of being racist.
Its focus on ‘new ways of knowing’ and its concerns of ‘anti-black narratives’ – both vague and offered without proof – are undoubtedly postmodern in nature. After all, what do narratives – subjective by definition – have to do with the objectivity of science?
Elliot Leavy – RT – June 10, 2020.
