Identity politics has corrupted academic disciplines and produced bad, politically warped forms of knowledge, says Alka Sehgal Cuthbert in Spiked, and even the hard sciences are no longer immune. Here’s an excerpt.
Witness the introduction of ‘Afrochemistry’, a new module in Rice University’s undergraduate chemistry degree. Students who choose this module will “apply chemical tools and analysis to understand black life in the U.S.” and “implement African-American sensibilities [eh? How do you “implement” a “sensibility”?] to analyse chemistry”, according to Rice’s website. “No prior knowledge of chemistry or African-American studies is required for engagement in this course,” it assures prospective students.
How, precisely, does “black life” affect chemistry – an objective, scientific discipline? And what exactly are these “African-American sensibilities”? Do Rice academics believe they have stumbled upon the ‘essence’ of being a black American, as if black Americans are a homogenous cultural bloc? And even so, what does all this have to do with chemistry? This is all hokum, bunkum, superstitious and retrograde. Such mythical thinking might have a place in artistic practice, but not in the study of the hard sciences.
Terms like “black life” and “African-American sensibilities” may have some delimited use within certain disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology and politics. But they are not generalisable concepts of knowledge. Furthermore, these buzzwords gesture to a racialised belief system, political discourse and social practice – the sort of things you’d find in DEI policies. They have nothing to do with the pursuit of scientific truth.
“We are at risk of undermining the very foundations of academia,” Alka says.
Worth reading in full.
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