Thread by @JeffreyASachs

Here's a nice one for you. @UTAustin has suspended a research study on anti-racist education after rightwing criticism and a Title VI complaint. The details are extremely damning.

insidehighered.com/news/2021/11/2…

@UTAustin What was the study? The researchers had 200 white pre-K children watch professional videos related to anti-black racism. The goal was to study whether/how they affected the kids' attitudes toward racism.

@UTAustin It's an important question, regardless of what you think of anti-racism efforts. For instance, @mattyglesias wrote just this week about a study showing that this sort of thing can have a major downside. This is research we should all support!

slowboring.com/p/how-to-be-an…

Not Mark Perry. He's the UMich prof who filed the Title VI complaint against the study. You may remember him from the 200+ other complaints he filed with OCR, all targeting what he considers anti-male discrimination in higher ed.

poetsandquants.com/2020/10/21/a-p…

Perry says that UT Austin study violates the CRA because the anti-racism program is only offered to white kids and is therefore discriminatory. The researchers explain that they're simply being guided by their research question and politics shouldn't get in the way.

And anyway, researchers target specific populations all the time without incident or complaint. For instance, the OCR also prohibits age-based discrimination in education, but Perry does not seem concerned that the study is limited to 4-5 year olds.

@UTAustin, faced with the complaint and bad press in rightwing media, has suspended the study pending OCR's investigation, if indeed it launches one. In the meantime, the researchers warn that the delay is undermining the quality of their findings. UT Austin doesn't seem to care.

@UTAustin This sort of thing is very, very bad. Even if you loathe anti-racist education, you should be able to see that. Liberals and the left are just as capable of filing spurious OCR complaints as their counterparts on the right. It's a terrible road to go down.