Thread by @aaronsibarium

NEW: A gender studies professor who says "white empiricism" undermines Einstein’s theory of relativity sits on a top advisory panel at the Energy Department.

Meet Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, who claims string theory "failed to succeed" because the field has too many white men.🧵

Prescod-Weinstein, a professor of physics and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire, was appointed to the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) under the Biden administration in 2024.

The panel advises the DOE on research and funding priorities for particle physics, giving it significant say over which projects receive federal support.

Prescod-Weinstein will remain on HEPAP until 2027 unless the Trump administration takes action to remove her.

Prescod-Weinstein’s role at the Energy Department has rankled some scientists, who say that an institution tasked with directing federal research should not be advised by a woman who, in one 2020 paper, wrote that "Black feminist theory intersectionality should change physics."

"Her scientific accomplishments seem modest and her racialist and sexist view of science, combined with her uniquely destructive activism, ought to be disqualifying," said Sergiu Klainerman, a mathematician at Princeton University who studies the theory of general relativity.

President Donald Trump has vowed to eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs within the federal government. And while Prescod-Weinstein is not a DEI official, she has espoused some of the most extreme positions associated with DEI.

She first raised eyebrows in 2020 when she argued that a culture of "white empiricism"—in which "only white people" are deemed capable of objectivity—"undermines a significant theory of twentieth-century physics: General Relativity."

Later in the paper, she blamed racism and sexism for the slow pace of scientific discovery in physics: "String theory has failed to succeed...because the community—which is almost entirely male and disproportionately white relative to other areas of physics—is too homogeneous."

Two years later, in a blog post written with three other scientists, Prescod-Weinstein alleged that James Webb—the former head of NASA for whom the agency’s high-powered telescope is named—had overseen a purge of gay employees in the 1960s.

She continued making that claim even after it had been debunked in an 89-page report by NASA’s chief historian, Brian Odom, who wrote that "no available evidence directly links Webb to any actions or follow-up related to the firing of individuals for their sexual orientation."

After Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, Prescod-Weinstein, who describes herself as "#BlackandSTEM and all Jewish," became a vocal apologist for the anti-Israel protests that roiled American campuses and frequently bled into anti-Semitism.

"I am enormously proud of the students who have sacrificed to fight back against a genocide," she wrote in August. "Let the students protest, and don’t fucking snitch. Free Palestine!"

Prescod-Weinstein has also said that "white Jews refuse to acknowledge that they benefit from and participate in white supremacy...wasting time that could otherwise be spent upending that white supremacy."

The Energy Department declined to comment on Prescod-Weinstein’s remarks about race and gender, but said that she attended a HEPAP meeting in December where "she contributed to discussion of several topics, all of which were related to agenda items."

One of those topics was the security measures at Fermilab, a national particle physics laboratory overseen by the DOE. During that meeting, Prescod-Weinstein expressed concern that the high level of security could exacerbate "anti-Asian" and "anti-Arabic" racism.

"I worry a little bit about the intersection of those kinds of social and structural biases with these kinds of security issues that are put into place," she said. "How is the committee thinking about ensuring that people’s Title VII rights are upheld?"

Tldr: A Biden-appointed gender studies professor who thinks "white empiricism" undermines modern physics now sits on a top physics advisory panel within the federal government.

Read the full story here: freebeacon.com/campus/disqual…