From NBC News: After lecture is canceled, free speech debate roils science academia
Some academics are pushing back against what they see as personal politics that overshadows scientific work. Others stress that actions have consequences.
By Denise Chow
A prominent climate physicist has resigned from one of his roles at the University of California, Berkeley, after he said faculty members would not agree to invite a guest lecturer to the school who had come under fire for his political views.
The lecturer, Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist, has been criticized for opposing affirmative action programs and other initiatives to promote diversity, equity and inclusion at colleges and universities. He has been the subject of boycotts and opposition from left-leaning students and at academic faculty meetings.
In a statement on Twitter, the physicist, David Romps, said Monday that he is stepping down as director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center, or BASC, “at the end of this calendar year or when a replacement is ready, whichever is sooner.” Romps will remain a professor in the school’s department of earth and planetary sciences, a university spokesperson said.
The incident has added to the debate about when, if ever, it is appropriate to suppress speech on college campuses.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology this month rescinded a lecture invitation to Abbot, a geophysicist and associate professor at the University of Chicago, amid public backlash over an op-ed he co-wrote in Newsweek that argued in favor of a “Merit, Fairness, and Equality” framework on campuses as an alternative to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, which he said sought “to increase the representation of some groups through discrimination against members of other groups.” Last year, Abbot also denounced the riots that erupted in Chicago after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. He addressed those comments in a post published Oct. 5 on Substack.
Abbot was scheduled to deliver the prestigious Carlson Lecture at MIT’s department of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences about his research on climate science and the potential for alien planets to support life.
Romps, who did not respond to a request for comment, said his request to the faculty followed the MIT cancellation.
Romps said he asked faculty members whether the school could invite Abbot “to speak to us in the coming months to hear the science talk he had prepared and, by extending the invitation now, reaffirm that BASC is a purely scientific organization, not a political one,” he wrote on Twitter.
He said that discussions remained unresolved and that his colleagues’ unwillingness to include guest lecturers who have divergent political beliefs goes against the school’s mission.
“Excluding people because of their political and social views diminishes the pool of scientists with which members of BASC can interact and reduces the opportunities for learning and collaboration,” he wrote, adding that such actions signal that “some opinions — even well-intentioned ones — are forbidden, thereby increasing self-censorship, degrading public discourse, and contributing to our nation’s political balkanization.”
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna3105.
We'll see where the story goes from here. However, as we noted yesterday, such controversies are not a Good Thing for academia. We have already seen political interventions in some states, particularly in regard to public universities. Perhaps UC seems immune since it resides in a "blue" state. Congressional elections in 2022 and the presidential election in 2024 could change things, even in California. Don't think so? Ask your grandparents about "1950s' loyalty oath controversy" at UC. Ask your parents about what happened to Clark Kerr in the 1960s. Or Google these events.
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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2021/10/abbot-controversy-spills-over-from-mit.html.
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