Thread by @Katja_Thieme

Listened to this.

A few thoughts. In no particular order.

Will Reusch favours "hard sciences" and has a very linear conception of & belief in scientific progress.

He criticizes others for using feelings while thinking, yet he's so much feeling himself.

This bit amused me.

One minute, Reusch asks Wright about people who talk about sex as a spectrum, "These are smart people...is it virtue signaling, like is this what we're supposed to think or are they really buying into this?"

Badness of virtue signalling established. 2/

On the same topic and a few moments later, Reusch struggles to express his feeling: "I just don't understand it!...These ideas were not created by scientists!...That's what's sooooo--It. Really. Baffles. My. Mind! I just don't get it!" 3/

I thought it was funny, the pivot from dismissing virtue signalling to displaying a bit of outrage. There is good reason not to buy into concepts like "virtue signalling" and "outrage culture." Or, not without first thinking of defining them and providing evidence for them. 4/

This interview was recorded after Wright had written his thread about leaving academia. I questioned his reference to several dept chairs who had allegedly told him they'd hire him if it weren't for his public speech. Then he put that story on the record in *The Daily Caller.* 5/

I questioned it again. Next, he repeats it in this podcast. There is no fact-checking, there is no probing. I doubt there are those dept chairs (he uses the plural each time). This is how alternate truth about the inner workings of academia gets made. 6/

https://twitter.com/Katja_Thieme/status/1250957725875372032?s=20

The academic job market is very tough--Colin Wright knows and acknowledges this. There are many factors why he wasn't successful in securing a permanent job and that fate hits too too many people. Most of these factors have do with current conditions in unis & colleges. 7/

The denunciations Wright encountered on the job posting Google doc were way out of line. His suggestions about how that impacted his reputation and how that might have changed what members of job committees knew about him are reasonable. 8/

I have sat on many hiring committees. I also work at a uni with a faculty association--a quasi-union--and general pressure for open and critical discussion of administrative process. When on hiring committees, I have been instructed not to do internet searches on candidates. 9/

For good reason. Candidates should have a measure of control over how they present themselves to the committee and the committee should not be given license to unevenly dig for info on candidates. I can vouch that for the committees I sat on, what Wright fears did not happen. 10/

If among the people whose job files I've read there'd been someone who had been called a transphobe on a Google doc with job postings, neither I nor the other committee members would know. Nor would we be able to bring it up in the committee's deliberation. 11/

Elsewhere in the podcast Colin Wright rails against the way he thinks uni's diversity and inclusion policies destroy merit and the work of natural sciences. 12/

I will point out that the practices for handling job candidate's files that I just described--practices that would safeguard Colin Wright had he applied at my uni (maybe he did, even!)--are the result of 1) faculty association advocacy, & 2) equity, diversity, inclusion work. 13/

My best advice for someone worried about academic career prospects for people who get flak for their public speech from other academics the way Colin Wright did (including from me) is to push for faculty unions. 14/

The fight for fair chances at an academic job is not best fought against other academics. It is with uni hiring processes, it is with uni structures, and it is aided by unions that are willing to go against bad practices & activists willing to go against bad structures. 15/

Too bad Colin Wright doesn't much like the idea of activism nor the idea of task forces on equity, diversity, inclusion pushing for fairer forms of assessment including in the process of hiring new faculty members. 16/

Colin Wright prefers to take his limited experience and present it as evidence for the state of academia to listeners and readers outside academia. It is weak evidence.

He meets a more critical audience in other academics. He dismisses them or he doesn't engage. 17/

Back to the actual interview.

There are some more, erm, moments.

Reusch says he wants to host adversarial debate on his podcast to find out the truth, but can't find enough people on "the other side" to agree to come. He also says they don't argue the same way. 18/

Reusch: "A lot of that side is rooted in postmodernism that you're almost playing two different games. They're playing a game 'it feels this way so it's true' & that's not the same game that the hard sciences are typically playing. Is that an accurate way to break it down?" 19/

Wright: "I've made a comparison between sort of the postmodern activists how they enter into a discussion and the way that the creationist and intelligent design people did."

Reusch: "It's like a religion."

Wright: "Yeah. Yeah."

20/

Pray tell, @swipewright, what are postmodern activists? 21/

CW: "There is an important distinction there, too. Back when I was arguing against creationists and intelligent design proponents, what we could agree on, at least, was these basic observations of the way the world is as we see it. You know. The facts of the world are there." 22/

CW: "Creationists and intelligent design, they see the world as it is, but they kind of conjecture that there is some magical stuff going behind the scenes and their explanation for how things got this way and how we are is where we disagree." 23/

CW: "But when I argue with these, sort of, postmodern people, we can't even agree on the most basic observation. Like, they don't even agree that shared facts exist, they think that facts themselves have to do with your power position."

WR: "Tools of oppression, right." 24/

Oh boy.

Who are these postmodern people?

Postmodern people, can you out yourselves to me?

[Cue Pulp song:]
I wanna talk to postmodern people.
I wanna know what postmodern people do.
I wanna listen to postmodern people.
I wanna listen to postmodern people
Like you.

25/

(HT to @lastpositivist.)

Colin Wright keeps going. He suggests that postmodern people think that when someone has a higher oppression score, their facts are truer and more correct than other people's facts.

This view is rather silly.

It also has nothing to do with postmodernism.

27/

CW: "It's just more expedient to their activism, where they could try to convince people based on arguments. But it's much easier to just change the words that we use." 28/

CW: "A lot of laws that we have that give women, you know, women's rights movements and Title IX stuff that refers to gender and all these old laws, gender was interpreted to mean biological sex..." 29/

CW: "... it never meant to be as someone's internal identity, how they feel about themselves in relation to certain traits that they have. But if they can change the words man and woman now to not being sex terms but referring to identity, they don't have to change any laws." 30/

On the extreme iffiness when Colin Wright talks about legal issues related to sex and gender, I have commented here. 31/

medium.com/@KatjaT/a-pinc…

There's a part where Wright bemoans the fact that people who have studied physics but don't turn into physics researchers become part of "critical physics studies" and analyze narratives in physics! Outrageous! But, hey, let's hear insect biologist Colin on these old laws! 32/

By the way, even though so much of Colin Wright's public work intersects with anti-trans activism, I don't think he mentions transness and trans rights at all in the interview. He briefly brings up intersex people. That's it. Quite an omission. 33/

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