Thread by @daniela_witten

Like many people, I have spent the last 10 days watching so much tragedy unfold. So much anguish from Black colleagues here on twitter.

And so I've been trying to think of ways that *I* can improve my tiny corner of the world.

A thread on why change is hard in academia 1/

Maybe you have heard of Ronald Fisher, "a genius who almost single-handedly created the foundations for modern statistical science" and "the single most important figure in 20th century statistics". (Geneticists: he is also well-known in genetics.) 2/

Fisher developed many seminal ideas in statistics: Fisher’s exact test and Fisher information, to name just two. 3/

Unfortunately, Fisher was not a great guy. He was really big into eugenics. Check out his Wikipedia page: "eugenicist" is actually the second word used to describe him (after “British”, but before “statistician” or “geneticist”).

4/

Before you tell me that “this was a long time ago” or “eugenics meant something different then”: he died in the 1960’s, & eugenics meant the same thing then that it does now. He said some terrible things in the 1950's. I don't want to put them on Twitter. 5/

There is a very prestigious award in stats called the Fisher lecture. I am on the award committee, and I’m embarrassed to say that until a few days ago, I hadn’t thought this through: like many people, when I thought Fisher, I thought “Fisher information”, not eugenics. 6/

But a few days ago I realized: yikes!! It is not good that a major award is named after this guy!! And so I thought — as a full professor from a good department who is a member of the award committee, I can get the name of this lecture changed! 7/

Now before you tell me that a name doesn’t matter — it does. We know that names are just symbolic . . . but symbols matter.

There is a reason that there are movements to remove monuments honoring Confederate generals. Symbols are powerful. 8/

Also, there is a strong precedent for renaming (or terminating) lectures that are named after people whose values we do not share today. An example from gynecology: Sims performed surgery on slaves w/o anesthesia; Sims lecture was terminated a few yrs ago. Makes sense to me.

9/

So, I emailed a number of full professors from top departments in my field, who — if they agreed that this name is problematic — would be able to work with me to get it changed. I thought that getting consensus on this would be super easy. After all, Fisher died 60 yrs ago. 10/

Whelp, I was wrong.

I got a couple of tepid positive replies … and then crickets.

And then the no’s started rolling in. 11/

One person declined by saying that they “worry a lot about racism and intolerance in general in society”, but that “this sort of revisionism . . . gives liberals . . . a bad name with a large swath of the population.”

What revisionism?? This is not revisionism. 12/

Another person declined by saying that “We should move forward by enabling persons to obtain education and jobs so class lines can be broken down.”

This is certainly true — but it is conflating race with class, and is also not directly relevant. 13/

Another person said that the lecture name should not change because, in 2016, Princeton University did not change the name of the Woodrow Wilson building, despite his racist views.

Princeton is a leader in a lot of ways, but I don’t think this is one of those ways. 14/

And finally, another person said “I've never considered this award to be celebrating Fisher the man. We are celebrating Fisher the scientist, no?"

Well, that's not what Wikipedia says. It says that the award is in honor of Ronald Fisher. 15/

Let me be clear: this thread is not a criticism of any one person. (Well, except for Fisher.)

And I hold all past Fisher award winners in highest regard: I know and admire many of the winners personally, and I admire all of them professionally. They were not on my e-mail. 16/

But it's 2020, and there’s a need for us in academia to look hard in the mirror and see whether the things that we are doing are contributing to an environment that is welcoming for all people.

I do not think that naming a lecture after a famous eugenicist is a good move! 17/

The fact that a majority of statisticians who I queried about this disagreed with me is incredibly discouraging about the prospect of seeing any real change in our field. 18/

Yes, it's just the name of a lecture. But we need to start somewhere.

Statistics: we can, and should, do better. /fin