Prominent Academic Psychologist Quitting Professional Organization Over Mandatory Diversity Statement
“The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP)—recently asked me to violate my quasi-fiduciary duty to the truth”
We live in a world where not complying with leftist ideology can cost you professionally.
Reason reports:
Mandated Diversity Statement Drives Jonathan Haidt To Quit Academic Society
It was probably inevitable that Jonathan Haidt, an academic long concerned about the politicization of academia, would eventually be caught up in the displacement of intellectual inquiry by ideological rigidity.
Last week the New York University (NYU) psychology professor announced that he would resign at the end of the year from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, his primary professional association, because of a newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group’s conferences explain how their submission advances “equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals.” It was the sort of litmus test against which he has warned, and which he sees as corroding institutions of higher learning.
“Telos means ‘the end, goal, or purpose for which an act is done, or at which a profession or institution aims,'” he wrote in a Sept. 20 piece published on the website of Heterodox Academy, an organization he cofounded that promotes viewpoint diversity on college campuses, and republished by the Chronicle of Higher Education. “The telos of a knife is to cut, the telos of medicine is to heal, and the telos of a university is truth.”
“The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP)—recently asked me to violate my quasi-fiduciary duty to the truth,” he added. “I was going to attend the annual conference in Atlanta next February to present some research with colleagues on a new and improved version of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. I was surprised to learn about a new rule: In order to present research at the conference, all social psychologists are now required to submit a statement explaining ‘whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP.'”
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Sooooo…. don’t submit a statement and make them stop you from presenting. We have a tendency to take our balls and go home when these organizations pull these kinds of stunts and as a result they become more and more unhinged. I’m guilty (see ya, ACS!), but these clowns still strut around in the organization’s skin demanding we respect them (to paraphrase Dave Burge). It takes too much energy to keep things unbiased and even and most professionals have day jobs. O’Sullivan’s Law strikes again.
They won’t put you on the program without the statement.
Dr. Jordan Peterson left the Univ. of Toronto for the same reasons.
DIE will kill many professions, all while the Chinese and Russians laugh at us.
This is no different than requirements in other countries that all speeches and papers on any subject begin with thanks to the Great Leader, or acknowledgments to insights on whatever subject gleaned from Mao Tse-Tung Thought.
I am told that Cornell U also now requires all faculty members to submit the same sort of statement every year. True Professor? Please advise.