Christopher J. Ferguson teaches psychology at Stetson University, and he is unimpressed with the APA’s embrace of the left.
He writes at Quillette:
My APA ResignationI’ve been a member of the American Psychological Association (APA) for years, and a fellow for the past six or seven years. I sat on their Council of Representatives, which theoretically sets policy for the APA, for three years. I am just ending my term as president of the APA’s Society for Media and Technology, where I have met many wonderful colleagues. Yet, at the end of 2021, I decided to resign my membership in the APA. My concern is that the APA no longer functions as an organization dedicated to science and good clinical practice. As a professional guild, perhaps it never did, but I believe it is now advancing causes that are actively harmful and I can no longer be a part of it…The ideological capture of the men and boys guideline in particular should have been a red flag of what was to follow: a complete capitulation to far-left ideology following the murder of George Floyd. That murder raised legitimate questions not only of criminal justice reform (of which I am a supporter) but also reignited simmering debates about race. Such conversations are understandably emotionally fraught and often ideological, with deep right-left divides on the topic. There’s a wide range of space between believing the US is still mired in Jim Crow and that it is a racial utopia, but it is often hard to guide conversation into that constructive middle ground, where nuanced and data-driven conversations can be difficult but productive. What we don’t need is our science organizations going all-in on one side of our polarized divide and stoking furor with hyperbolic statements. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the APA and other left-leaning organizations did.In May 2020, the APA’s then-president (the position is largely honorary, rotating each year) Sandra L. Shullman, referred to the US experiencing a “racism pandemic.” The second word is basically a cliché obviously borrowing the buzzword from the COVID19 era which had just hit the US two months earlier. Shullman, speaking officially for the APA, went on to say, “The deaths of innocent black people targeted specifically because of their race—often by police officers—are both deeply shocking and shockingly routine. If you’re black in America—and especially if you are a black male—it’s not safe to go birding in Central Park, to meet friends at a Philadelphia Starbucks, to pick up trash in front of your own home in Colorado or to go shopping almost anywhere.”These are terrifying words. They’re also at best debatable, arguably simply untrue.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY