Briar’s Reviews > The War on Science: Thirty-Nine Renowned Scientists and Scholars Speak Out About Current Threats to Free Speech, Open Inquiry, and the Scientific Process > Status Update

A chapter of apologetics for philosophy and classics departments. Odd addition to the book. I can see how we cannot remove it from it's very European roots and the authors' response. I think we should expand these departments but that does not seem to cross their minds. I think the language issue would be less so if America implemented some good foreign language requirements. Based on Wyoming, that might be a while..

Weiss adds to the unexamined fields. 'They can make up tradition as the go along' is the claim made for indegenous tribes. Nice lack of citation there. More complaining about virtue signaling. There is a discussion to be had about when something goes from respected grave site to anthropology. However, not applying it equally is what I see as a problem. These talks are not had about ossuaries in Europe for instance.

Did they get their talking points from Fox? Complaints about various headlines mostly from the left. They complain about both sides in a paragraph but spend most of the time misunderstanding many arguements of those they disagree with from the left. Very little introspection on any of the topics. We should respect all cultures, test their practices to see if they have merit, and sex and gender are different.

Pardy is complaining about the Canadian Sumpreme Court. He states justice should be blind. It should be but then we ignore history. He has issues with C-63, which seems to be a bill trying to regulate the internet so it's less like the Wild West. Pardy likes the American first amendment. He like other free speech absolutists seems to ignore that freedom of speech is not freedom of consequences. Superficial essay.

Another mathmetician complaining about decolinization and Nature. Armstrong complains about the symbolic nature of these efforts and those of BLM. He does want the history of math taught. However, there seems to be no critical thinking beyond the headlines. History is very political. What reaches textbooks and how questiuons are posed in them are as well. Armstrong comes across as someone complaining about change.

Klainerman spends much of the essay addressing a French research paper. I have no reason to doubt his translations. However, the whole essay seems be be a mathmetician misunderstands social sciences and inequality.

Thompson starts with a false dichotomy of knowlege vs dogma. She supports free speech yet seems to take issue with students expressing theirs in regards to Israel. Again, anti-Israel is not pro-Hamas. She references First They Came poem without reference to who has been doing more censoprship. I think defunding universities is doing more to censor our universities than a student that takes an anti-colonialism view.

For someone arguing against dichotomies, he sure uses them. He focuses on the current conflict in Isreal, conflating Hamas and Palestine. Hamas would harm me in multiple ways. However, genocide is genocide. I am against Hamas and the IDF. Geonicde should be a thing of the past wherever it takes place. I would like the author to expand on the idea that anti-colonialism is not a good approach.

This chapter is tone deaf and only uses biased recent exampes. The authors are complaining about modern censoship without much thought or explanation. Their historical examples point to a glaring omission. All recent examples are presented as a result of 'wokism' however their historical examples include Darwin. Who was afraid of the church. The authors completely ignore book bans, which are largely conservative.

Saad's essay is utterly lacking in understanding. One sided to the point of being comical. Complains aboue the cult of DEI. It's not a cult. He brings up Alan Turning saying he would not be hired for two specofoc positions, leaving out that he was chemically castrated for being gay. The one person he brings up would have been protected under DEI. We should be honey badgers against bad ideas...like Saad's.