From article about Luana Maroja getting tenure at Williams College
Posted on 05/28/2019 1:32:30 PM PDT by Borges
I have taught evolution and genetics at Williams College for about a decade. For most of that time, the only complaints I got from students were about grades. But that all changed after Donald Trump’s election as president. At that moment, political tensions were running high on our campus. And well-established scientific ideas that I’d been teaching for years suddenly met with stiff ideological resistance.
...
In class, though, some students argued instead that it is impossible to measure IQ in the first place, that IQ tests were invented to ostracize minority groups, or that IQ is not heritable at all. None of these arguments is true. In fact, IQ can certainly be measured, and it has some predictive value. While the score may not reflect satisfaction in life, it does correlate with academic success. And while IQ is very highly influenced by environmental differences, it also has a substantial heritable component; about 50 percent of the variation in measured intelligence among individuals in a population is based on variation in their genes. Even so, some students, without any evidence, started to deny the existence of heritability as a biological phenomenon.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Facts don’t care about your feelings.
IQ tests are racist.
Typical Master’s Thesis for a Millennial:
“Nuh uhhh!”
...after Donald Trump’s election... political tensions were running high on our campus... some students argued instead that it is impossible to measure IQ in the first place, that IQ tests were invented to ostracize minority groups, or that IQ is not heritable at all... some students, without any evidence, started to deny the existence of heritability as a biological phenomenon.
The Atlantic publishes yet another Trump-bashing piece by a partisan media shill. Thanks Borges.
i can’t stand IQ... japanese poetry that doesn’t rhyme? why bother?
“The Atlantic publishes yet another Trump-bashing piece by a partisan media shill. Thanks Borges.”
Not at all. The author points out the defects of snowflake and pajama boy thinking as it relates to reality. Observing real differences among groups is not immoral, and not all differences can be ascribed to social, economic and political causes. He points out that having such a snowflake world view forces its adherents to see all differences being due to outside forces (Trump) and causes them to not even look for what might be the real causes of such differences.
He goes on to say that such thinking coerces professors into avoiding some topics altogether just to keep from being harassed or even fired. This in turn reduces the quality of science.
True. Well stated.
The author is a “she”.
From article about Luana Maroja getting tenure at Williams College
You didn’t read the article very carefully.
I’ve got a little familiarity with her views. She’s right to be worried. The only response that will work is to expel students who try to suppress free speech, and let them try to work out that paradox with the limited tools with which they were born. In the second piece linked here, the Williams policy is going to strike a balance between “free expression” and “inclusion”, which of course shows that “inclusion” is itself exclusionary and the polar opposite of free expression.
Luana Maroja should have taken the time to add the same (one sentence, but it’s something) background about how something from President Trump had “triggered” the fascist snowflakes that is present in the second link here, that would have been an improvement. But that would mean giving President Trump credit for advocating the very policy she claims to support.
[snip] The controversy at Williams comes after President Trump signed an executive order recently barring federal research funds from institutions that do not meet their free speech obligations. Williams is in the process of revising its policies after President Maud S. Mandel announced the creation of a committee of students, professors and administrators to recommend changes that would strike a balance between free expression and inclusion. [/snip]
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