Day 3: USC Conference on Censorship in the Sciences

To finish up my reportage on the USC conference on Censorship in STEM, I present a video Day 3 for your delectation.  It’s 6½ hours long, but below I’ll give the time marks for three items of interest, one of which is of interest only because it includes ME.

First the whole day; I’ve put the written schedule at the bottom so you can find the other talks.

The first talk is by heterodox black political scientist Wilfred Reilly, speaking about ten taboo topics; it begins at the beginning. I won’t list the taboos, so you’ll have to listen to the talk to see them.

The second talk, involving Julia Schaletzky, Luana Maroja, and me, begins at 4:29:51; its topic is “Censorship, sciences, and the life sciences”.  I can’t bear to listen to myself again. But I advanced the video 5:26:00, where some guy asks me about filling the “god-shaped hole” in humanity, and by eliminating religion the hole is filled by solipsism, some undefined “meta-narrative”. I got as heated as I ever do in a meeting, which is not very heated, but did stand my ground.

But below a talk you must hear. It’s from Greg Lukianoff, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). I think it was the best talk of the conference, and was also the last one. Fortunately, you can avoid scrolling around above because the talk is also posted as a standalone video (below). It’s a bit over 52 minutes long, and the topic is “How cancel culture destroys trust in expertise.”  Lukianoff is a passionate and eloquent speaker.

It’s a very good talk packed with information and slides, beginning with what happened to professors during the Red Scare in America the 40s and 50s, and then going on to the increase in cancellation happening today: how many professors get fired, how many deplatforming attempts are happening and how fast they’re increasing, and how schools rate on free speech. (Lukianoff really doesn’t like Harvard or Columbia; see 28:00, at 44:30, and at 51:44, when he says that Columbia should declare itself a “technical school.”)

Lukianoff also gives a number of examples of demonization or cancellation, all of which bear on how speech is chilled (note his comment on the Nature Human Behavior policy), and describes some ongoing FIRE lawsuits to promote free speech.

There are a full twenty minutes of good questions, the first by Jonathan Rauch (“What about the ACLU, the AAUP, and other organizations like yours?”). All of the questions get thorough and thoughtful answers.

Finally, here’s the schedule for day 3: