1/ The are several ways cancel culture erodes academia:
1. Directly getting people fired for their heterodox views.
2. Getting other academics to stay silent &/or avoid certain questions/topics out of fear.
3. Causing heterodox students to avoid going into academia altogether.
2/ I've seen & received many emails from all of these groups.
This not only puts suffocating limits on the idea space academics are allowed to explore, but also creates a feedback loop that leads to more & more ideological skew over time.
It's an epistemological death spiral.
3/ Before social media/internet university search committees had very limited information about a candidate's political views. Asking such superfluous questions is, rightfully, considered taboo during an interview. If you're hiring a microbiologist, their politics don't matter.
4/ But now search committees can just hop on social media and obtain the very information they'd consider inappropriate to ask for in person.
If it's inappropriate to ask in person, it's inappropriate to obtain through other means. Ease of access shouldn't change anything.
5/ So now search committees know a lot of information about applicants that's irrelevant to their ability to be competent scientists, but relevant to people's social lives. People are homophilic: they like to associate with like-minded people.
6/ But while homophily can be desirable in many social contexts such as friend your circles, D&D groups, or who you invite over for a dinner party, this instinct is to be suppressed in contexts where diversity of thought and perspective is vital, such as in universities.
7/ Diverse perspectives among colleagues help cover for others' ideological blind spots. It is essential for producing reliable knowledge.
While it's nice if you get along with your colleagues, hiring based on friendship potential greatly weakens the university.
8/ I don't see a way to pull out of the current death spiral apart from severe top-down enforcement of an anonymized hiring process. CVs stripped of all identifying information. In place of your name you get a number. Publications reduced to journal names and author rank.
9/ But I don't really see that happening anytime soon. If you have any other ideas on how to right the ship, please comment below.
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