It also provides more evidence of the decidedly anti-intellectual
strain increasing its infestation of the academy in America, and not just because
it devoted one of its several symposia slots to the burning plant-related issue
of “Yes
Bobby, evolution is real!” That specific meeting devoted itself to “railing
against and ridiculing” the Louisiana Education
Science Act, for which I’m sure the taxpayers footing the bill for
university-related attendees were glad to have funded this politicized spleen
venting.
This whining and moaning became a triumph of emotion over reason, because
the law does nothing that its accusers allege. It mandates that Louisiana science
educators should make maximal efforts to induce critical thinking into their
classrooms. As anybody who cares to read the statute itself can observe, it does
not in any way make obligatory the teaching of creationism, as its febrile
critics maintain.
But a hallmark of the political left is that when the facts get in the
way of its faith, change the facts or get rid of them. Thus, we get this idea
that there’s some kind of voodoo behind the language of the law, that a grand conspiracy
exists identified by code words, that from the legislators who drafted it
messages are being sent out to impressionable science teachers across the state
to forsake Darwin in favor of Bible inerrancy when it comes to teaching – never
mind, of course, that the questions on which public school teachers’ students and
their own careers will be judged seek correct answers entirely unrelated to
creationism, and for private schools these affect their employers’ ability to
participate in the state’s voucher program.
So this notion turns out to be just one more fantasy of the left, a
concept that if you think about it enough and believe in it strongly enough,
somehow it becomes true despite it bearing no relationship to the real world.
We see it time and time again in the area of the sciences with issues such as
the myth
of significant man-made global warming, the hoax
of “environmental racism,” and the denial that human life is taken cavalierly
through abortion on demand, among many others, where political agendas trump
careful scientific inquiry because of the psychological necessity to believe, because to them faith is more important
than scientific inquiry.
Not that the conference itself does not have strands of politicization
running throughout. The very title of the symposium in question demonstrates causal
disregard of the facts to suit an agenda: referring to Gov. Bobby Jindal, he
never has said that evolution is not real. And, having dispensed with backing
diversity in thought, the conference embraces diversity by characteristic, by
having the “Enhancing
Scientist Diversity in Plant Biology Luncheon,” which one hopes brings
forth recommendations to achieve this unnecessary undertaking that are much
less totalitarian in nature than its attitude about free inquiry.
The statute itself, that neither promotes nor inhibits any particular teaching
of science, merely states the obvious about how teaching ought to occur. Educators
and researchers genuinely committed to free inquiry and developing creative
thinking thus would think it’s neither here nor there, and the only real value it
has is as a symbolic commitment the state has to excellence in instruction. But
it’s the pathological hatred of it and the deliberate distortion of its meaning
leading to this obsession with it that makes for the issue, not the existence
of the law itself. And this pattern of behavior paints a disturbing picture of
individuals inside and outside of academia and politics who seem to endorse
Lysenkoism because this attitude fits some ideological imperative of theirs.
No doubt a large majority of the conference attendees could care less
about these political sideshows and remain far more interested in research and
teaching. Yet that the organizers accepted these as subjects on which to invest
resources reveals the unfortunate trend found in many professional organizations
in academia which are willing to give politics primacy in their endeavors. At
least in their case the capitulation has not been complete, unlike the leading
society in my profession which has for incoherent
and politicized reasons abandoned New Orleans as a meeting place. Still, that
some want repeal of a law exhorting free inquiry reminds us that Lysenkos still
exist, and have infiltrated the very institutions essential to check thetotalitarian impulse this long march represents.
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