TUCSON – On July 25, the Arizona Daily Star ran a story (behind a paywall) about professors at the University of Arizona lamenting that the Trump administration has injected politics into science and government grants.
The professors criticized the university administration for not taking a strong stand against the politicization of what should be an objective, unbiased, science-based process.
I nodded my head in agreement with the underlying sentiment while reading the introductory paragraph to the story.
Then, as I continued reading, my BS detector began buzzing to remind me of the fact that the U of A and other universities have often taken sides on political issues and the culture wars instead of staying neutral. (My son earned two engineering degrees at the U of A, and the university is located in the same town that I now call home.)
On a related note, it’s not a myth that students and speakers who take the wrong side on college campuses have been cancelled and shamed.
At the same time, academics accuse MAGAs of group-think while engaging in their own group-think. Not only that, but they have something in common with MAGA in their group think: illiberalism. They want the state to subjugate the individual to the group, but by different methods, for different groups, for different ends.
Ironically, in the very same Daily Star story where profs railed against politicization, one of them, a director of an institute at the U of A, said that “food security,” “environmental justice,” and “marginalized populations” were among the funding priorities. He also said the university should continue to work on such “wicked problems” as climate change and water and food security.
Those sounded more like subjective, qualitative value statements from the humanities than the empirical, quantitative, unemotional language of science.
Coincidentally, on July 24, the day before the Daily Star story, the Wall Street Journal published a story (behind a paywall) on a rift occurring in the discipline of sociology.
The rift is between two factions of sociologists.
One faction believes that their mission is to bring about societal change and take a political position on such issues as racism, social justice, colonialism, and all of the other hot-button buzzwords. As the WSJ story reported, the president of the American Sociological Association described sociology to its members as “currently undergoing a renaissance as antiracist, decolonial, feminist, queer and transnational theorizing lead us to more inclusive insights.”
Geez, why are today’s panjandrums so hackneyed and unoriginal? Can they speak in anything but vacuous buzzwords?
The other faction of sociologists believes that the social science of sociology should stick to science and not venture into activism and the culture wars.
Neither the WSJ article nor the Daily Star article mentioned that college faculty are overwhelmingly Democrat—less so in engineering, economics and science but still a majority in those disciplines. The highest percentages of Democrats are in the social sciences and the humanities. For example, 98% of anthropology faculty are reported to be Democrat.
The skewed politics can be seen on yard signs in a neighborhood next to the U of A campus. Many professors and college administrators live in the neighborhood and seem to have an insufferable self-regard for their virtuousness.
Are we to believe that U of A faculty and staffers leave their politics on the kitchen counter before heading for campus?
That’s what they want us to believe. Being virtuous, they certainly wouldn’t try to deceive us.
Mr. Cantoni is an author, activist and retired executive. Contact: [email protected].
Bingo.
Of the Liberal Arts academics I can say only this: The School of Architecture should be impressed at the elasticity, ductility, density, durability, and imperviability of their Echo Chamber.
The six decade long leftist inculcation of students by liberal educators has finally reached its pinnacle: Marxist, communist, dead-brained bobble heads following their insanity like lemmings.
What about the BILLIONS of dollars the U of A gladly accepts from China?
U of A is acting as a subversive agent of the Chinese based on U.S. soil.
U of A has multiple programs that send Arizona Students to China for indoctrination into accepting China and the CCP was.
Man, Cantoni’s son must appreciate these articles. Hope it’s not hurting his career. Is there any Craig likes?
UA’s over-employment of, & production of more paper-elites, meets AI agentic forces. All on AZ taxpayers’ nickel….right! The wailing and gnashing of teeth is yet to start; 2030 is only 41 months away.
Back in the early 70’s when vietnam was the headline hot spot protest (riots) were planned at the UA. A lot of the faculty supported the idea. TPD to their credit got ready to respond. They surveyed the local area and found the ‘peaceful protestors’ had stashed rocks, bottles etc around the area with garbage can lids (to be used as shields) and other similar items. They told the news agencies not to do onsite reporting as it would aid in the riots, and believe it or not they didn’t! Anyhow these clowns (professors) would try to gain support for the ‘protest’ aka RIOTS but were really not successful in their efforts. The protest less the riots were initiated but again tpd had shutdown the stashed supplies and they amounted to NOTHING. Would like to see that happen in todays world but never will. Everybody is protesting against the country WHILE Europe is taking action to stop their migrant invasions as trump has initiated here. If they want to protest here they need to have a stand that echoes what we have voted for in the last election not the ‘save’ democracy BS of the left/democraps.
Bravo, Mr. Cantoni hits the nail on the head. Opinion, rather than science is often the fare of nearsighted academics who love their own biases rather than a true scientific method of theory and proofs. Fact-checking is fair game and reality matters more than theory.