University programs focusing on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) used to promote the best candidate regardless of their background, but years of activist efforts appear to have changed than, making race more important than talent.
The College Fix reported that the efforts have led scientists to suggest that the ability “to produce the best science” is being damaged.
“Some of my friends and professors in science were saying, ‘Oh the people in sociology are trying to study us and judge us and tell us how to do better and be better people,’ and we were laughing at that seeing how silly that was because we’re the rational ones,” said McGill University chemistry professor Patanjali Kambhampati, referring to the 1980s and 1990s, when diversity first took hold in academia.
Kambhampati, The Daily Wire previously reported, told the Fix he has raised nearly $7 million from the Canadian government and from elsewhere.
“But everything seemed to change about a year or two ago,” Kambhampati told the Fix. “In the last two years the federal grants have begun to ask for equity, diversity and inclusion statements.”
“Initially, they started asking us to state our EDI position, which is a new thing,” Kambhampati said. “The newer thing happened in the last one year where the federal agencies said we’re going to look at your EDI statements first and foremost. That will be the gatekeeper.”
Another scientist who has been punished for speaking out against prioritizing anything other than scientific ability is University of Chicago professor Dorian Abbot, who teaches in the school’s Department of Geophysical Sciences. Abbot told the Fix that “20 years ago the emphasis was on reducing biases and identifying the most promising candidates from a scientific perspective regardless of their background, which I strongly support.”
Today, however, Abbot says the diversity requirement is “focused on trying to hit quotas for group membership, discriminating against members of undesirable groups, and suppressing the speech of those who disagree with any aspect of it.”
“The effect,” he said, “has been that we are hindering our ability to produce the best science by (1) selecting young scientists partially using criteria other than scientific merit and potential and (2) promoting a climate of fear and repression, which damages creativity and drives excellent young scientists out of the field.”
An example of the pervasiveness of diversity over science is Stanford University’s Department of Computer Science releasing a statement on the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict in December. The statement included an anti-racism toolkit that looked like a reading list for a racial studies course, the Fix reported.
“We condemn the violence, trauma, and suffering that the Black community has both historically and contemporarily endured,” the statement said. “The pervasiveness of anti-Black racism reaffirms our department’s mission to create an equitable, diverse, and inclusive community that centers, affirms, and uplifts everyone and prioritizes an enduring sense of belonging and community for all.”
It should be noted that Rittenhouse shot three white people in self-defense, and was acquitted accordingly.