Two other choices quotes from the Boston Globe article about MIT faculty protesting the shabby treatment of Professor Abbot:
Brad Rosenheim, associate professor of oceanography at the University of South Florida, said EAPS did the right thing because Abbot’s opinionsconflict with the department’s official stand on diversity, equity, and inclusion. “It’s almost schizophrenic, in a way, to have a diversity statement and to invite somebody who espouses these views,” Rosenheim said.
The problem wasn’t Abbot’s political opinions, Rosenheim said. Rather, it’s the fact that he has so openly expressed them.“I could invite somebody else who has the same views as Dorian Abbot, but hasn’t written a Newsweek piece and hasn’t promulgated videos of it on the Internet,” Rosenheim said.
That's reassuring: your academic freedom won't be violated by Professor Rosenheim as long as you keep your incorrect thoughts to yourself!
The views Abbot expressed in the Newsweek essay “is very harmful to a lot of people who are interested in becoming scientists,” said Dawn Sumner, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Davis. “Students from underrepresented races and ethnicities experience exclusion from what he said,” said Sumner, who holds an doctorate in geology from MIT.
Put aside the usual abuse of the "harm" word (they may be angry about Abbot's views, offended by them, upset about them, but they are not harmed), why would any students "experience exclusion" (what is that experience like exactly?) from the fact that Professor Abbot favors evaluating all candidates as individuals, without regard to race, religion, etc.? Could it really be that students from "underrepresented races and ethnicities" "experience exclusion" any time someone is skeptical of affirmative action? I rather doubt it, but even if some do (perhaps having been primed to feel so by fools like Professors Rosenheim and Sumner), that simply is "too bad for them" if academic freedom is an actual value in universities. All faculty holds views that I am sure some students "experience exclusion" from, but that can not possibly be, consistent with academic freedom, grounds for sanctioning the faculty, cancelling their lectures or invitations, and so on. Students have to realize that faculty hold views they may not like. As long as they receive fair and equitable treatment in the classroom and the university, they have no grounds for complaint.
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