Or Else.
This started with
No sooner had Sergei posted a preprint of our accepted article on his
website than we began to encounter problems. On August 16, a
representative of the Women In Mathematics (WIM) chapter in his
department at Penn State contacted him to warn that the paper might be
damaging to the aspirations of impressionable young women. “As a matter
of principle,” she wrote, “I support people discussing controversial
matters openly … At the same time, I think it’s good to be aware of the
effects.” While she was obviously able to debate the merits of
our paper, she worried that other, presumably less sophisticated,
readers “will just see someone wielding the authority of mathematics to
support a very controversial, and potentially sexist, set of ideas…”
Translation: "The peasants might not be able to deal with this, so shut up."
Which continued to
On September 4, Sergei sent me a weary email. “The scandal at our
department,” he wrote, “shows no signs of receding.” At a faculty
meeting the week before, the Department Head had explained that
sometimes values such as academic freedom and free speech come into
conflict with other values to which Penn State was committed. A female
colleague had then instructed Sergei that he needed to admit and fight
bias, adding that the belief that “women have a lesser chance to succeed
in mathematics at the very top end is bias.” Sergei said he had spent
“endless hours” talking to people who explained that the paper was “bad
and harmful” and tried to convince him to “withdraw my name to restore
peace at the department and to avoid losing whatever political capital I
may still have.” Ominously, “analogies with scientific racism were made
by some; I am afraid, we are likely to hear more of it in the future.”
"Dump this paper, or we'll ruin you."
This is what 'science' has come to with activists: "Say/publish things we don't like, and we'll destroy you and your life."
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