Thread by @joshcowenMSU

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It’s a big edu/policy research conference week (#APPAM2022 #ASHE2022 #UCEA22) and here’s a short thread on ideological diversity in edu-research and edu-journalism #edchat using the Greene/Heritage studies as a hook

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Some formal edu research/journo communities have tolerated increasingly far-Right stuff for years, in part because of a genuine commitment to multi-perspectives, and also out of fear of being labeled ideological or against free speech themselves

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And in the #edchat journalism space there is some of the notorious #bothsides pressure too, to give voices to the Heritages and Catos if the world.

This is why people like Corey DeAngelis routinely are quoted as expert researchers when they’re really political activists

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The Heritage/Greene studies using methodological tools to “prove” trans kids shouldn’t get hormone therapy, or schools shouldn’t hire DEI staff, or woke is bad for kids, or even that privatizing schools has a sound evidence base…

…that’s not ideological diversity, folks

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What it is is the same kind of stuff as late 19th century pseudo-science used to justify racism, sexism, etc.

It’s also funded like #schoolvouchers activism, as I’ve shown, by election deniers—so it’s anti-democracy too.

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We aren’t talking about ideological differences on, say, whether PD works for teachers or whether carbon taxes help climate change.

Or even what the right edu-response to the pandemic was wrt remote/masks etc.

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We’re talking about giving voice to people who are using their credentials (often Ivy PhDs) to imprint a racist and sexist and anti-democratic agenda with a degree of seriousness and legitimacy.

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I don’t know what the solution is—or even how to fully articulate the problem—but I do know that far-Right #schoolvouchers/woke/anti-DEI researchers like Greene have for years taken advantage of open scholarly communities to legitimize their increasingly hateful work.

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And members of those communities need to be more forceful drawing lines between legitimate multi-sided discourse and tolerating this kind of hateful pseudo-science.

This isn’t about diversity of opinions now.

It’s about human rights.

/end

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