"Academic Mobbing" Undermines Open Inquiry and Destroys The Soul of Universities, Noah Carl, 23-7-2019, The Economist Open Voices

11/8/2019 “Academic mobbing” undermines open inquiry and destroys the soul of universities - Open Voices
Open Voices
“Academic mobbing” undermines open inquiry

and destroys the soul of universities
Controversial ideas should be subjected to debate, says Noah Carl, an independent researcher
and erstwhile research fellow at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge
Open Future
Jul 23rd 2019
This is a by-invitation commentary as part of The Economist’s Open Future initiative, which is
designed to spur a global conversation across the ideological spectrum on individual rights, open
markets, free speech, technology and more. You can comment here. More articles can be found
here.
Subscribe: 12 weeks for $12
*** or sign up to enjoy 5 articles free
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2019/07/23/academic-mobbing-undermines-open-inquiry-and-destroys-the-soul-of-universities 1/9
Get our daily newsletter Get full access to The Economist via print,
online and our apps or sign up to enjoy
Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily 5Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
articles free.

Email address Sign up now
Sign up: 5 articles per month

In a 1951 essay for the New York Times Magazine entitled “The Best Answer to Fanatacism—
Liberalism”, the philosopher Bertrand Russell laid out ten principles which he believed
summed up the liberal outlook. The fth item on Russell’s list was, “Have no respect for the
authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.” This statement
echoes the motto of Britain’s Royal Society (a learned society founded in 1660 for the
promotion of scienti c knowledge), which is Nullius in verba, meaning “Take nobody’s
word for it.”
Both Russell’s statement and the Royal Society’s motto capture the idea that when we nd
ourselves in disagreement with someone, we expect that person to give reasons and to
present evidence, rather than to simply declare his position as authoritative. Resolving
disagreements through reason-giving is important in every domain within society. But one
domain where it should be considered especially important is the university. We expect
academics to engage with one another through careful, reasoned dialogue—whether in
person, on the internet, or through their published works.

or sign up to enjoy 5 articles free
Get full access to The Economist via print,

5 articles free.

However in recent years, many academics and academic institutions have been falling far
short of this ideal. A phenomenon has arisen—sometimes referred to as “academic
mobbing” —in which a large number of scholars get together to ritually denounce one of
5 articles free.
their colleagues, usually by means of an open letter. Greg Lukiano and Jonathan Haidt
drew attention to this phenomenon in their book “The Coddling of the American Mind”
(Penguin, 2018). Examples of academics who have been “mobbed” in recent years include
Sign up:
Jordan Peterson, Nigel Biggar, Rebecca 5 articles
Tuvel, Bruceper Gilley,
month Rachel Fulton Brown,
Alessandro Strumia, Amy Wax, Ricardo Duchesne and Peter Boghossian.
In December of 2018 I had my own “mobbing” experience. Earlier that year I had been
appointed to a research fellowship at St Edmund’s College in the University of Cambridge.
However just two months into the three-year fellowship, I found myself the subject of a
censorious open letter (signed by over 500 academics), which claimed that my academic
work was “racist pseudoscience”. The letter used moralistic language and provided no
speci c evidence for its assertions.
An independent inquiry rejected the complaints against my appointment. But a second

investigation into my “activities and connections” concluded that my work was
“problematic.” As a result, St Edmund’s College terminated my fellowship. This is not the
forum to adjudicate my scholarship. Nor is it the place for me to defend my “activities and
connections”. Rather, what I wish to discuss is something far bigger: open inquiry and
academic freedom.
Many of the censorious open letters that have been signed by academics in recent years
share three important features. First, they a rm that the target’s scholarship lacks
academic merit, typically with little or no supporting evidence. Second, they impugn the
target’s character, for example by claiming that she is a “racist” or “white supremacist”. And
third, they proclaim that the target’s work constitutes a tangible threat to certain
marginalised groups within society.
Of course, it only takes a single individual to refute a bad argument. There is no reason to
gather tens or hundreds of signatories except for the purpose of achieving some collective
goal, such as rallying support for a political cause (eg, opposition to colonialism), or
pressuring an institution into action (eg, to have a particular individual red). Moreover, if
the target’s arguments were as awed as the signatories claim, they could simply be
rebutted. There would be no need for personal attacks and appeals to emotion. Hence even
a non-expert can reasonably conclude that signatories are probably motivated by political
Subscribe:
objections to the target’s work, rather 12 weeks for ones.
than substantive $12
Notwithstanding the psychological costs incurred by the target, open letters signed by
academics could be safely dismissed were it not for the fact that the signatories often get
exactly what they want. The target does get investigated
5 articles free. or red; his article does get
retracted from an academic journal. Such capitulation by academic institutions is in clear
violation of the principle with which I began this essay, namely that disagreements should
be resolved through reason-giving, rather than by appeals to authority. Hence it represents
a serious threat to academic freedom.
Persecution of intellectual dissidents is not a new phenomenon. In 399 BC, Socrates was
tried and put to death, based on the charge that “he busies himself studying things in the
sky and below the earth”, which it was claimed would “corrupt the youth”. In 1633, Galileo
was found “vehemently suspect of heresy” because he had claimed that the earth revolves
around the sun. Galileo was subsequently required to “abjure, curse and detest” his beliefs.
And in 1859, Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species”, which met with
sustained opposition from the Christian Church. After reading the book, the Reverend
Adam Sedgwick wrote Darwin a polite letter stating that he had found parts of the book
“utterly false & grievously mischievous”. Subscribe Log in or sign up
Manage subscription
Galileo’s theory of heliocentrism and Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection

caused widespread o ence at the time they were published because they con icted with
the sacred values of the Christian Church. Note that sacred values can be distinguished
from mere instrumental values in two ways: no amount of a sacred value can be traded o
for any amount of an instrumental value; and proposals to accept such trade-o s engender
moral outrage. Hence Galileo’s belief that the earth revolved around the sun was not simply
a tentative hypothesis with some preliminary supporting evidence. It was a direct a ront
to an entire moral system.
The sacred values of the Christian Church no longer predominate in institutions of higher
learning (with the exception of a few religious colleges). Today there are di erent sacred
values, ones that re ect an academy in which left-wing and progressive views are
overwhelmingly dominant. (It should be noted that there are still attacks on academics
from religious and conservative factions operating outside the academy.) The sacred values
of the progressive left do not constrain the study of celestial mechanics, or indeed most
other branches of technical science. Rather, they curb discussion of topics in the
sociopolitical realm, notably those for which it is possible to weave a compelling narrative
of victim and oppressor: sex, race, transgender, colonialism, immigration.

But perhaps some ideas are just too dangerous or too o ensive to be discussed openly. Why
should we care about academiconline
freedom at all?
and our apps or sign up to enjoy
5 articles free.
The rst reason is that people can be quite bad at objectively assessing risk. For example,
we judge activities to be riskier if our mental12images
Subscribe: weeks forof those activities contain more
$12
negative emotional content. Hence we might not be very good at identifying which ideas
really are dangerous. The second reason
Sign up:is that suppressing
5 articles per month bad ideas has a tendency to
back re. When a particular idea is declared taboo, it may end up becoming more
in uential rather than less, a phenomenon known as the Streisand e ect. The third reason
is that academic freedom serves as an error-correction mechanism. It allows us to weed
out the bad ideas, and sharpen our arguments against the worst ones.
Of course, the ideological skew of the professoriate is not the only factor behind the rise of
“mobbing” and the general reluctance of academics to speak frankly about certain topics.
Another important factor is the increase in university tuition fees, which has transformed
many students from dutiful scholars into entitled consumers. It is not uncommon for one
of today’s students to ask, upon encountering an invidious idea, why on earth she should
have to put up with it. And when dealing with complaints from students, university
administrators (who are ever mindful of their bottom lines) often choose the path of least
resistance, which means giving in to demands for censorship rather than standing up for
academic freedom.
The university should be the one institution in society where any idea—however
controversial—can be subjected to robust, open debate. However it increasingly seems to
be the institution where such debate is least possible. In a provocative lecture entitled
“Two incompatible sacred values at American Universities”, Mr Haidt argues that
universities face a choice. They can either retain “truth” as their ultimate aim, thereby
committing to uphold academic freedom and open inquiry, or they can adopt “social
justice” in its place. Some universities are already careening down the latter path. Let us
hope that most of them opt for the former.
________________________
Noah Carl is an independent researcher based in Britain. He obtained his DPhil in Sociology
from the University of Oxford. In 2019 he was red from his fellowship at St Edmund's College,
Cambridge, following a campaign by professors and students who objected to his research on
intelligence and the ethics of studying group di erences.

5 articles free.
You’ve seen the news,

now discover the story
Get incisive analysis on the issues that matter. Whether you read each issue cover
to cover, listen to the audio edition or go behind the headlines on your phone, time
with The Economist is always well spent.
Enjoy 12 weeks’ access for $12
Open Future
Jul 23rd 2019
Reuse this content
About The Economist


5 articles free.

Seed capital
The fertility business is booming
Investors are pouring money into companies that promise to help people conceive
Christianity and Marxism

Church leaders in central and eastern
Europe remain surprisingly loath to
condemn their old adversary
ERASMUS
Tertiary education in Africa

A booming population is putting strain on
Africa’s universities
Schumpeter
The Exxon Valdez of cyberspace
Subscribe Group subscriptions Contact us
Help


Keep updated online and our apps or sign up to enjoy
5 articles free.
Sign up to get more from The Economist
Signand
Get 5 free articles per month, daily newsletters up: 5more.
articles per month
Email address Sign up
About The Economist
Advertise Reprints
Careers Media Centre
Terms of Use Privacy
Cookie Policy Manage Cookies
Accessibility Modern Slavery Statement
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2019. All rights reserved.


"Academic Mobbing" Undermines Open Inquiry and Destroys The Soul of Universities, Noah Carl, 23-7-2019, The Economist Open Voices

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

"Academic Mobbing" Undermines Open Inquiry and Destroys The Soul of Universities, Noah Carl, 23-7-2019, The Economist Open Voices

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

11/8/2019 “Academic mobbing” undermines open inquiry and destroys the soul of universities - Open Voices

“Academic mobbing” undermines open inquiry

Subscribe: 12 weeks for $12

Sign up: 5 articles per month

Subscribe: 12 weeks for $12

Get full access to The Economist via print,

Subscribe: 12 weeks for $12

Sign up: 5 articles per month

Subscribe: 12 weeks for $12

Alessandro Strumia, Amy Wax, Ricardo Duchesne and Peter Boghossian.

An independent inquiry rejected the complaints against my appointment. But a second

Galileo’s theory of heliocentrism and Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection

Subscribe: 12 weeks for $12

Get full access to The Economist via print,

Subscribe: 12 weeks for $12

Sign up: 5 articles per month

You’ve seen the news,

Enjoy 12 weeks’ access for $12

Reuse this content

About The Economist

Subscribe: 12 weeks for $12

Get full access to The Economist via print,

Subscribe: 12 weeks for $12

Christianity and Marxism

Tertiary education in Africa

Subscribe Group subscriptions Contact us

Subscribe: 12 weeks for $12

Get full access to The Economist via print,

Subscribe: 12 weeks for $12

Sign up to get more from The Economist

Email address Sign up

About The Economist

Careers Media Centre

Terms of Use Privacy

Cookie Policy Manage Cookies

Accessibility Modern Slavery Statement

Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2019. All rights reserved.

Subscribe: 12 weeks for $12

You might also like