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englishchinesetranslations · 4 years ago

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Critical Race Theory is a Victimization Cult

JUNE 29, 2020 ART KELLER

It is not a particularly unique observation to notice that the Critical Social Justice movement, particularly the part that embraces Critical Race Theory, bears tremendous resemblance to a secular religion. When asked about that similarity, sociologist Bradley Campbell, author of The Rise of Victimhood Culture, explained, I think it’s similar to a lot of utopian political movements in having similarities to religion. Those at the forefront of the movement, who wholeheartedly embrace an oppression/victimhood worldview derived from Critical Theory, and who see it as providing a basis for a call for repentance and change in their own lives and the lives of others, and as a call to restructure social institutions, seem to have embraced something very much like a religion. In my own work I’ve called it a “moral culture” rather than a religion, and I think that’s probably more accurate. We could call it “social justice culture,” or as Jason Manning and I called it, “victimhood culture,” but in any case, it’s a worldview that places a certain conception of social justice as the highest value. In this view oppression permeates social institutions and interactions, and social justice means fighting this oppression.

Drawing from critical theory, those who embrace this moral culture tend to view various social identities as the most important thing about people, and they see those identities as oppressor or victim identities. To be white, male, Christian, or straight, for example is to have a privileged position in a system of oppression, and to be a person of color, female, non-Christian, or LGBT is to be disadvantaged. Those who embrace the new moral culture aren’t alone wanting to address oppression and injustice, but they tend to see it in a particular way and to interpret everything in these terms…interpreting everything in terms of oppression and in elevating those concerns above all others seems to have led many of the activists to disregard liberal values such as due process and free speech.

While there is much merit in Professor Campbell’s analysis, I wonder whether it goes far enough. Religion, when taken to extremes, tends no longer to promote love, acceptance, and a sense of community and fulfillment—the stated goals of most religions. Religious extremism promotes violence, intolerance, tribalism, and a deliberately confused mental state in its adherents. When that happens, when religion “goes to the dark side,” we stop using the term religion, and start using the word “cult.” As a former CIA officer, I know what that kind of cult looks like. I can’t write about my own counterterror operations, or any training I may have gotten from the CIA in persuasion and indoctrination without having to submit it for pre-publication review to the CIA.

But nothing stops me from highlighting the work of others on the same topic, so we can see what the ideological conversion of a cult looks like up close and personal. Some of the best journalism on the terror group ISIS—a cult within a religion—was done by Rukmini Callimachi, whose Peabody-winning podcast, The Caliphate presents a grim journey into the heart of darkness. It is not for the faint of heart, as it includes detailed descriptions of beatings, gruesome executions, and religiously-justified systematic rape. The Caliphate follows a young Canadian whose nom de guerre is Abu Huzayfah. He starts as an ISIS fanboy watching videos of violence in the Syrian civil war, but when he shows up in online chat forums about the war, he gets engaged by lurking ISIS recruiters who use techniques explicitly designed to rob converts of the ability to think critically. Eventually he finds himself in Syria, operating as an ISIS policeman, flogging a man bloody for the crime of not forcing his wife into a niqab, and executing fellow Sunni Muslims (who ISIS claims to protect) for the crime of not surrendering abjectly to ISIS. And how does he justify murdering follow Sunni Muslims? It’s their fault, apparently. He had no agency in their deaths, even though he pulled the trigger.

By not turning their town over to ISIS the instant ISIS appeared, “They killed themselves,” he stated. He finishes his direct involvement by fleeing ISIS territory after his second murder on their behalf, disillusioned, but no less full of willful blindness about the harm caused by his radical views, as well as convenient self-justifications for why he doesn’t need to confess his murders to the Canadian police. This story, though far more brutal and gruesome, contains elucidating parallels to the rapid rise of Critical Race Theory in contemporary Western culture. Though there are many obvious differences, given our present context, it’s worth examining how ISIS and Al Qaeda lure in recruits in some detail. From Chapter 2 of The Caliphate: The speakers in this lengthy snippet of conversation are Callimachi, Abu Huzayfah, and Jesse Morton, an Al Qaeda recruiter who reveals exactly how he manipulated recruits into embracing Al Qaeda’s murderous ideology.

Huzayfah: I actually just started talking to them. You know, like, “Hello, how are you?”

Callimachi: And if you’re searching for an identity, and you don’t necessarily have a community that you really fit into ——

Huzayfah: Oh, it felt like, you know, wow. These guys — it’s easier to talk to them. Like, they’re more accepting of you.

Callimachi: This becomes your community.

Huzayfah: And I started asking questions about jihad and everything, what their viewpoint was, and how does — how is jihad, like, right? I would even put out things that I thought were wrong with jihad, like how is killing accepted? How is suicide bombings accepted? And they’d always give religious justifications.

Callimachi: What were the techniques that you, yourself, used to draw people in?

Morton: So you do that through the ideology. That’s the framework. At the same time, this individual is wide-eyed and asking you questions, like are suicide, uh, martyrdom operations permissible in Islam?

Callimachi: Can you give me examples of people that you recruited and explain to me how you did it?

Morton: Well, essentially, once you have an audience, once a person expresses an interest by email, or once you see that they are logging consistently into your conversation room —— What you have to do is you have to frame their personal grievance (emphasis added) in a way that is making them think that they can contribute to a broader cause. And we utilize three primary principles that are part of the jihadi or the Salafi jihadi, as they really call it, worldview.

Callimachi: And Jesse explained to me that there are actual steps that the recruiters are taught. Essentially, three steps. Three concepts, he called it. Morton: They are based upon interpretations of the Quran, and they are based upon references in Hadith.

Callimachi: Some of them are concepts that every Muslim, you know, believes in. But what they do is they sharpen them, and then eliminate any other understanding of these concepts (emphasis added) to the point where the person now believes that the only choice they have is to join an armed jihad.

Morton: The first principle to teach is what you call tawheed al-hakkimiya.

Callimachi: Tawheed al-hakkimiya, which is also sometimes called tawheed al-hakkimiya

Callimachi: The concept of tawheed means monotheism, a single God. But what the jihadists have done is they take tawheed, they take monotheism, to this completely other level.

Morton: Which is basically the belief in Allah requires belief that Allah is the lawgiver, the legislator, the one who developed the Shariah.

Callimachi: The only form of governance that the jihadists believe is acceptable is governance according to Shariah law, which they believe is divine law. This is the corpus of Islamic jurisprudence that was written down and shaped after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.

Morton: And what you do with that is you teach people that unless you have this belief, which most of the Muslims in the world don’t, you’re not a Muslim, really. You don’t understand your religion.

Callimachi: So you living in Canada and paying your taxes or voting in an election or abiding by the laws of that society negates your belief in God as the legislator, because that is not Shariah law, right? And your participation in that makes you an infidel. It basically expels you from the fold of Islam. It’s that radical.

Callimachi: Concept number two. Morton: What you do is you take it to the next principle, which we call kufr bi taghut.

Huzayfah: Once you’re declaring that there is one God only, one God, then you have kufr bi taghut. Morton: Which is a rejection of the false gods. Really, it means idols.

Callimachi: You’re supposed to rebel against false idols. It’s one thing to say, O.K., I live in Canada, I believe in Shariah law, so therefore, I’m not gonna vote, I’m not gonna pay my taxes, I’m not going to, you know, take part in municipal elections, I’m not gonna take part in any of that. That’s not enough.

Callimachi: They say that during the life of the Prophet Muhammad, there was an incident where he comes back to Mecca, and he goes to the Kaaba, which is that black cube structure. It’s considered the first mosque in Islam. And he apparently entered it, and he found it full of idols, and immediately he goes and smashes them. He destroys them.

Callimachi: So what did the jihadists do with this? If you have accepted that God is the lawgiver, right? Then the idol is anything that takes away from that idea.

Callimachi: So the democratically elected president of your country? That is an idol. The ballot box? That is an idol. The act of voting? That is an idol. And if you are a good Muslim, you don’t just let an idol sit around, right? You destroy it (emphasis added).

Morton: The third principle is al wala wal bara. Morton: Which means that your allegiance is to the Muslims only.

Callimachi: In Arabic, it means loyalty and disavowal or loyalty and rejection. I’ve heard ISIS members translate it as loyalty and hatred.

Huzayfah: Al wala wal bara, because if you’re believing there is one God, you’ll have to hate and love everything that God loves and hates. So that’s al wala wal bara.

Callimachi: It’s basically the concept of us versus them (emphasis added), which just kind of seals it. Morton: To reject contact and support for everyone else outside of the jihadi movement, including other Muslims, and you must sacrifice in the way of Islam for the sake of the global Muslim population.

Callimachi: So that means you don’t just reject the society that you’re in. You don’t just reject its leaders. You also reject your Christian friends. You also reject your Muslim parents, if your mother is not a practicing Muslim and is properly covered up, or if your father is forbidding you from joining the Islamic State, which is the only lawful form of government that there is.

Huzayfah: It says in the Quran, you have to enter the religion in totality. You can’t just cherry-pick.

Callimachi: And Jesse talks about how when you get them to that third stage ——

Morton: Once they’re indoctrinated to a certain degree-you could essentially do anything you wanted with them (emphasis added). Perhaps needless to say, any group that wants to move adherents into a state where it can do anything it wants with them has gone well past whatever beneficial aspects major religions purport to deliver and moved firmly into destructive-cult territory. Steven Hassan, an expert on cults, was himself once lured into the “Moonie” cult before figuring out, with the aid of his family, that a deluded fat Korean billionaire that owned a factory that was churning out AR-15 assault rifles was probably not, in fact, the Messiah. In Hassan’s book, Combating Cult Mind Control, he outlines what he calls the “BITE model” of cult manipulation. Not every cult follows every aspect of the BITE model, but every cult does some or most of the BITE techniques. These techniques begin lightly and get increasingly severe as cult recruitment progresses from initiation to indoctrination into reprogramming. These techniques are relevant in all cult contexts.

They are also clearly evidenced in the moral panic sweeping the country, which operates through the ideology of Critical Race Theory. [James Lindsay: For the last several weeks, my Twitter DMs, private messages, and email are bombarded daily by messages from scared and upset people reporting the sinister instances of CRT in action in their own lives—from their workplaces to their institutions to their social lives and to their romantic relationships—the phrases and actions in brackets following each BITE bullet point are examples of how CRT is showing up in real life. Each echoes a commonplace sentiment in the CRT research and popular literature and its related social activism.]

The B in BITE is Behavior Control. It includes Instill dependence and obedience [“Do better”] Modify behavior with rewards and punishments [“This apology leaves a lot out and is still very racist”] Dictate where and with whom you live [This is most nearly applicable in schools and various “spaces” that are to be “desegregated,” by which is meant excluding white and white-adjacent people in the name of inclusion; easily extends to living arrangements] Restrict or control your sexuality [more prominent in queer and trans activism than CRT, but characterizing lack of attraction to certain features as racism and attraction to them as exoticization and fetishization] Control your clothing and hairstyle [cultural appropriation, decolonizing hair and fashion] Exploit you financially [“…here’s my cashapp for all this emotional labor,” make sure you donate to the cause in these approved ways and we’re compiling a list (through contribution matching, say) of people who do and don’t] Restrict your leisure time activities [demands to use leisure time in “critical self-reflection” and reading anti-racist materials or be accused of racism]

Require you to seek permission for major decisions [cultural appropriation, can get far worse (recall college president George Bridges at The Evergreen State College asking to go to the bathroom and being told to hold it by student activists)] Require you to spend major time on group indoctrination and rituals, including self-indoctrination on the internet [“do the work,” post the hashtag, black out your image, read these resources, share these articles, retweet these accounts] The I is Information Control Deliberately withhold and distort information [decolonize the curriculum, remove “white” sources from the canon and education, characterize disagreement as “privilege-preserving” or ��race-traitorous”] Forbid you from communicating with ex members and critics [cancel culture, conservatives and liberals are Nazis]

Restrict access to non-cult sources of information [Those resources are written from a racist position in order to uphold white supremacy] Compartmentalize information to insider vs outsider doctrine [Same as above] Use information gained in confession sessions against you [Confess that you complicit in racism, then use this against the person by saying they’re a “known” or “confessed racist”]

Gaslight to make you doubt your own memory [Black Lives Matter is just about the fact that the lives of black people matter too, these protests are peaceful and the riots just the voice of the silenced finding room to breathe] Require you to report your thoughts and feelings to superiors [forced confessions of complicity in racism or else one suffers white fragility] Encourage you to spy and report on others’ misconduct [cancel and dox culture]

Use “Big Brother” surveillance methods [everyone has a camera in their pocket and will load any racist behavior they can find onto the internet in a heartbeat] The T is Thought Control Teach you to internalize to internalize group doctrine as “Truth” (a la Robert Lifton’s “sacred science”) [Lived experience is the best arbiter of “lived realities”;

Critical Race Theory is sociology, race research, or even “science,” real science suffers white biases and isn’t to be trusted, Critical Race Theory uses emotion and stories and thus is authentic, disagreement with Critical Race Theory is always ideologically and politically motivated by white supremacy; you need to forward black and brown voices; believe black (women); disagreement is false consciousness/internalized racism/willful or white ignorance]

Instill Black vs. White, Us vs Them, and Good vs. Evil thinking [racist versus anti-racist; there is no not-racist; choosing not to be anti-racist is choosing racism; there is no neutral; brown complicity is a form of anti-blackness that is pushed upon brown people by white supremacy and upholds it]

Change your identity, possibly even your name [Ibram X. Kendi’s real name is Ibram Henry Rogers, for example, but the demand to change the victims’ names is not yet prominent in CRT; it does require adopting a Woke activist identity, such as “politically Black” or “queer” however]

Use loaded language and clichés to stop critical/complex thought [all of the words “racist,” “antiracist,” “fascist,” “antifascist,” “Nazi,” “alt-right,” “sexist,” “misogynist,” “homophobe,” “transphobe,” “ableist,” “fatphobic,” and so on and endlessly so forth are clear examples; others include “white fragility”; “sounds about white”; “check your privilege”; “somebody’s triggered”] Teach thought-stopping techniques to prevent critical thinking and reality testing [“oh, look, another white man giving his opinion on Critical Race Theory”; disagreement is a means of “privilege-preserving epistemic pushback” just meant to maintain one’s privileged status]

Reject rational analysis, critical thinking, and constructive criticisms [all engagement that isn’t critical engagement is inauthentic, supports racism, comes from false consciousness, internalized dominance, internalized racism, willful ignorance, white fragility, biased, privilege preserving] Use excessive meditation, singing, prayer, and chanting to block thoughts [“Antiracism is a commitment to a lifelong and ongoing process of self-reflection, self-criticism, and social activism”; protest chants]

The E is Emotional Control Instill irrational fears of questioning/leaving group [cancel culture, dox culture; accusations of being branded a racist and shunned or fired; you won’t be part of “the community”] Make you feel elitist and special [“you’re on the right side of history”; “you’re in solidarity with the Truth”]

Promote feelings of guilt, shame, and unworthy [“good white people”; “I define as a white progressive any white person who thinks they are not racist or less racist” and they are the worst for upholding white supremacy culture] Elicit extreme emotional highs and lows [“you’re on the right side of history”… “you did it wrong, centered yourself, you’re still racist”] Label some emotions as evil, worldly, sinful, or wrong [“white women’s tears are political and uphold white supremacy more than anything”; emotional outbursts show a lack of “racial stamina” and “racial humility” and are thus “white fragility”]

Teach emotion stopping techniques to prevent anger or homesickness [Same as above, really, plus reminding that the white home is the place where white supremacy begins and takes root first] Threaten and harass your friends and family [cancel and dox culture; they’re racists] Shun you if you disobey or disbelieve [cancel and dox culture] Teach you there is no happiness or fulfillment outside the group [everyone else is complicit in racism and upholding the status quo; there is no neutral, only a choice between antiracism and racism] An additional trait of CRT that likens it to cult environments is the hyper-attentive focus on the central idea of the cult doctrine: systemic racism, which is believed to pervade everything, be “ordinary,” and is considered permanent.

According to many CRT advocates, including the bestselling Robin DiAngelo, racism is present in and relevant to every interaction and circumstance. The question, she says, must move away from “did racism take place?” to “how did racism manifest in this situation?” For her, every situation and interaction contains racism, and the devotee of her program is to focus obsessively on finding it and calling it out.

Moreover, CRT establishes an identity cult, as opposed to, say, a cult of personality around some charismatic figure. Under CRT, every Critical Race Theorist who is also a racial minority becomes his or her own cult personality. It therefore proceeds with an “identity first” model that says “I am Black,” for example, means something more and more important than “I am a person who happens to be black.” The capitalized B in “Black” here indicates the CRT-defined politically Black identity that is key to cult identification and cult participation. Under CRT, then, race is expected to be given ultimate social significance and racism is believed to pervade every possible occurrence and interaction.

Thus, race and racism are always of central relevance to CRT thought, which dramatically increases and focuses the control-based elements of the BITE model. All behavior must be CRT-appropriate. So must the information one takes in and communicates, the thoughts one has, and the emotions one expresses because anything else signals racism that must be “interrogated” and “dismantled.” To care that racism is reduced in reality therefore necessarily means taking the fight against racism out of the hands of the Critical Race Theory advocates. Not only do they operate in bad faith—meaning from the Critical Theory approach—and do so using cult mind control language; they’re also deforming the institutions that are the foundations of our society. In attributing all differences between different racial groups to racism, they’re proposing univariate solutions to multivariate problems. This means not only is their project is doomed to fail and leave many black people stuck at the bottom of the socio economic ladder, it will do so only after wildly alienating the majority of the country. Moreover, “systemic racism” is intentionally vague enough to be quasi-spiritual in nature.

It is, as James Lindsay has described it, “racism of the gaps” that can continually be appealed to as the cause of problems or disparities even when there is no evidence of discrimination or strong evidence against discrimination. To pick just one example of how CRT’s oversimplification provides incorrect diagnoses and solutions to what’s driving systemic inequality in the black community, consider a line from “Black Lives Matter’s” manifesto. We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. Notice the word missing from that phrase? Fathers. Research on family structure is crystal clear: families with an active father in them have far better outcomes for children. Families without fathers produce children with less impulse control and more assertive/violent behavior. That’s not a formula for success in either school or life.

Moreover, the concept of disruption of family structures can readily lead to the kind of psychological states and isolation necessary for cult indoctrination. In the black community in the US, 70% of children are currently being raised by single parents, almost all single moms, the highest single-parent proportion by far of any other group. If BLM gets its way, that number would be 100%, because the nuclear family needs to be “disrupted,” and active dads are an irrelevant variable in successful child raising. Except we know they’re not, and what is really needed in black America are more active dads, not fewer. Critical Race Theory is not a recipe for racial progress, but unmitigated strife and ultimate disaster for black America and the broader America of which it is a part. This is why we need to turn our backs on this cult.

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dipulb3 · 4 years ago

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Opinion: The pandemic could push 49 million Africans into extreme poverty. Here's how other countries can help

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/opinion-the-pandemic-could-push-49-million-africans-into-extreme-poverty-heres-how-other-countries-can-help/

Opinion: The pandemic could push 49 million Africans into extreme poverty. Here's how other countries can help

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, rising cases and the imminent threat of a second wave have caused countries across Europe and Asia to move toward new restrictions and partial lockdowns.

There are multiple hypotheses as to why and how Africa has escaped the worst-case predictions, ranging from the demographics of a young population to climate and potential resistance due to exposure to other Covid strains. Across a diverse continent, the true answer is likely to be a combination of factors, but we lack sufficient scientific evidence at this stage to reach final conclusions.

However, if Africa has escaped the worst of the pandemic in health terms, the same cannot be said of Covid-19’s economic impact, where the collateral damage has been huge.

Foreign direct investment has declined 40%, some 30 million jobs are expected to be lost and up to 49 million more Africans could be pushed into extreme poverty as they lose their livelihoods in the informal sector working as street vendors, taxi drivers and the like. Interruptions in health services and supplies due to Covid-19 are also expected to worsen broader health outcomes. HIV, tuberculosis and malaria deaths may rise by around half a million people.

As countries reopen, there is an urgent need to assess the scale of the collateral damage caused by lockdowns, both within Africa and globally, so leaders can make the best choices about how to rebuild their countries’ economies.

As they do that, African leaders must maintain their commitment to containing Covid-19 by continuing to test and isolate. Here, the West should show some humility and acknowledge that while the full set of drivers behind Africa’s lower mortality will not be known for a while yet, its systems, institutions and leaders have, in many cases, made a critical difference.

After their first confirmed case, the average Sub-Saharan African country imposed more stringent containment measures, and did so more quickly than the average European Union country and the United States. Most African countries have also adopted comprehensive contact tracing policies and some, such as Sierra Leone, have gone so far as to supervise the isolation of all contacts, regardless of whether they are symptomatic, for 14 days after exposure.

African governments have built and adjusted contact tracing and isolation policies that fit with their contexts and cultures, applying a key lesson from previous battles with Ebola and other diseases on the importance of ensuring community buy-in and acceptance of measures. While this hasn’t been done perfectly, many African governments have been far more successful at ensuring isolation of high-risk contacts than other governments, including the UK.

Unfortunately, despite lower case numbers and, in many cases, tighter control measures than other countries on European or UK safe fly lists, African countries have paid the price of disconnection from the rest of the world, with the majority of its population being unfairly treated as a single, risky entity.

EU countries and the UK have put in place 14-day quarantines and other medical travel restrictions for all arriving passengers from Africa except for Rwanda (which is on the EU safe travel list) and the Seychelles and Mauritius, which have safe travel corridors with the UK. (The US lacks a common national approach to quarantines and the situation is less clear cut there.) These measures risk exacerbating the economic damage their countries have already sustained.

African economies are highly dependent on global trade and travel — whether for the import of essential goods, the implementation of critical infrastructure and aid projects or for tourism and business travel. As a result, these measures risk exacerbating the economic damage their countries have already sustained.

Although African GDP is not expected to fall as much as that of other advanced economies’, its rapid population growth, large informal employment sector, governments’ inability to boost economic activity by increasing state spending and weak social welfare systems mean its population — especially the poor — will take a larger hit, undoing a decade’s developmental progress.

Reconnecting with the world and recovering economically will require verifiable proof of vaccination or negative tests.

It will mean ensuring equity in vaccine development and distribution. The COVAX initiative led by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Global Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) and The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is working to ensure African countries can gain access to vaccines.

In addition, the current model of supplying Africa with vaccines produced elsewhere has to be reconsidered. African leaders must play a part in the development of new vaccines, have a stake in vaccine manufacturing and be allowed to deploy the right vaccine strategies for their population. The climate and geological characteristics of places like Africa and Asia mean they are most likely to be the source of new viral species. Investing in research and manufacturing of vaccines in these places therefore builds resilience for the entire world, not just those continents.

I have long argued that the West needs to reframe its relationship with Africa from one of aid and extractive trade, where the West largely dictates the terms, to one of partnership. This partnership should be based on developing African nations in areas like trade and investment that add value and create jobs locally and that enhance Africa’s security. This reframing can be one of the positive outcomes of the pandemic.

We should establish such a relationship now, in the struggle against Covid-19, drawing on the experience, resources and energy of African countries as valued partners, not mere beneficiaries, ensuring the continent is not left behind as the world reopens. By doing so, we would not only bring the pandemic to a swifter and more complete conclusion, we would lay the foundations of a safer, more prosperous world.

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shirlleycoyle · 6 years ago

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The Christchurch Terror Attack Isn’t an ‘Internet’ Terror Attack

Forty-nine people died and forty-eight people were injured in an Islamophobic terrorist attack on Friday morning which targeted the Al Moore mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand. It’s the most severe terror attack in the nation’s history.

Media outlets have been quick to call attention to the fact that the shooter appeared to have been radicalized online, and that online spaces played a big role in his attempt to control the narrative surrounding the attack. To a certain degree, this is fair. The shooter even broadcasted the attack on Facebook Live. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube alike have been struggling to wipe this violent footage of the attack from their platforms.

Media outlets also pointed out that the shooter announced his intention to commit an act of terrorism on a notorious online message board that’s known for being welcoming to racists, sexists, pedophiles, and Islamophobes alike. They pointed out that the killer’s manifesto used the language of trolling and argued that it was designed for the internet, specifically with the intention of going viral.

Whether that is true or not, this internet-centric narrative of the attacks misses the point. Madihha Ahussain, a spokesperson for Muslim Advocates, told Motherboard that terror attacks like the one in Christchurch are a part of a larger, global fabric of Islamophobic violence.

“It is important to consider these both on and offline threats and acts of violence,” Ahussain said. “I think we have to consider them together and recognize that this is all a part of a broader challenge and the system of bigotry that has really proliferated over the years.”

Islamophobia far predates the internet. Islamophobia on the internet reflects Islamophobia, cultural violence and literal violence, and structural white supremacy that is embedded in the very fabric of countries (especially former colonizing countries) like New Zealand, and for that matter, the United States, and Australia.

Online spaces host casual instances of Islamophobia that make extremist sects of the internet possible. Casual, unchecked bigotry on major platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms have pushed the envelope in what type of hate is acceptable online. It’s this behavior that provides a path toward radicalization, and makes extremist sects of the internet able to thrive.

Whitney Philips, a professor of communications at Syracuse University, said that the ideas that we choose to tolerate on the internet is a result of the forces of the masses, not just the actions of people on fringe corners of the internet. If the kind of attack we saw at Christchurch could be neatly blamed on a small, white supremacy forum alone, it would be a far less difficult problem to solve. Sadly, the reality is much more complicated.

“The shifting of the Overton window is not the result of just a small group of extremists,” Philips said. “The window gets shifted because of much broader cultural forces.”

In an article for Motherboard co-written with College of Charleston professor communication Ryan Milner, Philips wrote that online extremism is able to proliferate, in part, because of a larger ethical crisis online. We can think of extremists online like “apex predators” in a food chain pyramid. In order to exist, apex predators rely on an entire ecosystem, including grass, insects, eventually to smaller mammals. Without all of these other organisms, apex predators would not be able to exist. In the same way, a steady-state of bigotry, hate, and Islamophobia makes it possible for extremists to flourish. This steady state of bigotry exists both online, and offline.

The internet is important as a medium because it enables this bigotry to exist on an international scale. Shahed Amanullah, a former senior advisor for technology at the US State Department, told Motherboard that Islamophobic terror attacks have always been thought as “domestic” and isolated, even when it’s quite clearly not.

“Here, you literally have somebody who spelled out that it is a transnational phenomenon, that it is rooted in ideologies that have been cultivated online, it’s rooted in a historical narrative that’s reinforced,” Amanullah said. “These people are positioning themselves as players in this global struggle. We took it seriously when Osama Bin Laden did it. When this guy did it, we need to take it seriously too. This is not an isolated incident.”

For this reason, we can make a connection between the violence in Christchurch, New Zealand and violence in the US.

“It is very important for us to think about [the Christchurch attack] in the context of what’s been happening around the world, but obviously here in the US, and how individuals are targeted on a regular, on a daily basis,” Ahussain said.

Ahussain told Motherboard that violence against Muslim-Americans have reached epidemic levels in the past few years. Two men burned down a mosque in Austin, Texas in January 2017. A mosque was burned down in Jacksonville, Florida in January 2017. Three men who tried to bomb Muslim immigrants in Garden City, Kansas were arrested in April 2018. Two men planned a massacre on a mosque in Bloomington, Minnesota in late 2018. A man burned down a mosque in Bellevue, Washington in March 2018. A man burned down a mosque in Victoria, Texas in July 2018. Men who planned a terror attack on Islamberg, New York were arrested in January 2019.

“The reality is that hate crimes against so many of the communities of faith that are already vulnerable have continued to increase over the years,” Ahussain said. “We need to think about this within the broader context of bigotry and hate violence that has already been challenging our communities for years.”

Christchurch isn’t an “internet” terrorist attack. We can’t prevent future attacks by translating the internet-speak in a killer’s manifesto, or tweaking a platform’s algorithm. The attack in Christchurch can only be understood is part of a global problem with Islamophobic violence. Local, smaller-scale instances of hate and bigotry are crucial in supporting and enabling larger-scale instances of terrorist violence around the world where people’s lives are taken.

In order to address this global social epidemic of Islamophobia, we need to take every single instance of Islamophobia seriously—both online and offline.

“If it was just a problem of the platforms, we would be in great shape,” Philips said. “The technologies themselves, they exacerbate existing tensions. The underlying problem is structural white supremacy… Structural white supremacy is something that’s more in the air, that people just breathe.”

The Christchurch Terror Attack Isn’t an ‘Internet’ Terror Attack syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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careergrowthblog · 7 years ago

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Art-Science and other positive tensions that fuel great teaching.

One of the key ideas that I’ve tried to capture in this blog and in my book, The Learning Rainforest, is that great teaching can emerge from the numerous tensions and contradictions that surround us. Not by dismissing them or by seeking to resolve them and not by picking a side – but by recognising them, embracing them and trying to making sense of them.

When you look at this image, what do you see: a grid surrounded by a cloud or a cloud with a grid inside?

Of course it is both of those things. However, different people will see this differently. Some people are more cloud; they embrace ambiguity; they are more comfortable where there is less structure even while seeing structures as a necessary. Others are more grid; they prefer things to be ordered; they seek to reduce ambiguity even while acknowledging that there is room for it. The challenge is to see structure and ambiguity as having a symbiotic relationship; they need each other; each is poorer, less healthy, diminished without the other.

How does this translate to teaching? Here’s a quick run-through:

Art: Science.

There is a science to learning; it’s not magic. Our brains behave in certain ways that suggest some teaching approaches are more likely to be effective than others in given contexts. We can form models of learning processes that stand up to scrutiny and there’s a massive body of research that coheres around some common concepts.

At the same time, teaching does not consist of a series of discrete, isolated testable strategies. There’s a multi-layered complexity of interactions and decisions driven by the reality of having a class of individuals to teach at the same time. Teaching is nearly always a blend of multiple factors: relationships, behaviour routines, instructional techniques, questioning, practice – all interacting with the specific elements of the curriculum content. As evidence-informed as we might be, the process can feel more art than science: we are busking, responding, riffing, exploring, creating… Some teachers need to work on their science; some need to develop their art.

System: Culture

Schools are awash with systems – for behaviour management, quality assurance, assessment and feedback, professional development. At the same time, schools are also a complex mix of cultures and subcultures: among groups of staff and students, in each classroom. You can’t simply wish a ‘high trust culture’ into being – there won’t be a trust culture if the systems are heavy-handed and communicate something more like: we don’t trust you. You can’t talk about a ‘culture of learning’ unless you are doing specific things that provide a structure of that culture to come into being. At the same time, as we all know, the reality of school life is all about human interactions and, because we are not machines, systems only work if the culture is there to sustain them – so people do the right things right when nobody is looking because they believe in them or at least fully accept them.

Spirit: Letter

If we try to break down an aspect of teachers’ practice – like strong behaviour management or effective formative assessment – identifying specific identifiable tasks to codify ‘effectiveness’, we end up with what might be a checklist of ‘things everyone should do’. However, very often, the sum of the parts doesn’t seem to add up to the whole.

You might find a teacher who is ‘doing the right things’ to the letter, but the spirit is missing. This means that they might not be sustaining the practice or responding intuitively to events or adapting the approach to secure better responses from students. They might be OTT with students in the way they enact routines for classroom discipline, misjudging the spirit of a behaviour code even if they would argue they are following it to the letter. They might consider that a few set-piece activities constitutes ‘doing formative assessment’ rather than seeing it as a broader approach that influences every interaction.

I’ve always felt it is important to avoid boiling things down to reductive tick lists wherever possible; the letter of a policy is a guide but the spirit is what really matters. For example, a ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum can’t be boiled down to some knowledge organisers and related quizzes. That would be missing the point entirely. Knowledge-rich has implications for a whole set of values and practices that inform every lesson every day. However, sometimes an idea is too intangible to implement effectively without some definable concrete elements for people to work on. You need to start somewhere. The ‘spirit’ can be a nebulous hope in the absence of something solid.

Tacit: Explicit

This is an area I feel needs more attention. It has echoes in Martin Robinson’s Trivium 21c where the dialectic has value alongside grammar. A great curriculum contains knowledge gains through experience: authentic, real-world, hands-on experience. In science for example, there is declarative knowledge to gain about how a motor works; there is procedural knowledge you can gain through practising rearranging equations to determine measurable quantities – but all of that makes a lot more sense if students have tacit knowledge gained through experience of handling motors, making motors, exploring the electromagnetic and mechanical variables involved. The same goes for chemical reactions or growing plants. There is value in putting your face into a meadow of grass to see the world of life that lies within… tacit knowledge about plant and bug-life that makes the theory of ecosystems come off the page.

Tacit knowledge is vital – and is often assumed; taken for granted. The same goes for poetry, history, music,… any subject. In maths, ‘playing’ with numbers, patterns and shapes informs procedural, operational routines. Very often, students with low confidence in maths have very weak schema for numbers at the tacit level – that sense of scale, pattern, sequence that good mathematicians have an intuition for. Unless we pay attention to that concretely, we’re building on very weak foundations. Knowledge elements can seem isolated and arbitrary until they take shape in a wider schema held together with a glue of tacit knowledge gained from experience. We need to make sure the opportunities for children to gain those experiences are built into our enacted curriculum within and beyond the classroom.

Knowledge: Emotion

This links to the art:science and tacit: explicit axes but adds another dimension. As highly emotional beings, our memories and the relative value we give to elements of knowledge are shaped by the way we feel about them. Every person, every teacher I know has passions. Great teachers communicate enthusiasm for the knowledge they have; it’s not neutral information. The idea that joy, awe and wonder are somehow icing on the knowledge cake doesn’t quite work for me – the icing is melted into the cake; it runs through it..(metaphor mixing ,sorry). For me, when we’re teaching, there is power in always exploring why any element of knowledge matters. This isn’t some lame functional idea of ‘relevance’ that leads us down a utilitarian path. Far from it. It’s about exploring our emotional connection to the stories that unfold the more our knowledge grows – and the more our awareness of how much more there is to know grows. This is how curiosity and creativity develop – through knowledge linked to emotions. For me, the image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field can bring tears to my eyes if I think about what it means: it’s just so deeply profound.

I put ‘Awe’ in amongst my 10 features of ‘great lessons’ . Knowledge can be functional; dry; prosaic; ordinary. But it can also be earth-shatteringly beautiful. What’s the point or learning X? There is always a point, a purpose, a reason that goes beyond the purely functional.

Values: Evidence

Finally, there is an axis around the interplay between our values and evidence in relation to what makes teaching effective and in the decisions we make in designing the curriculum. I’m a firm advocate of teachers developing ‘evidence-informed’ wisdom so that they are best placed to make good decisions in the heat of the complexity of classroom interactivity. We need to understand about schemas and cognitive load theory; that retrieval practice works for strengthening recall; that fluency requires practice; that spaced practice is important for long-term memory – and so on. I firmly reject the idea that ‘anything goes’.

However, we also need to understand that wisdom comes from experience – and includes knowledge of our students and ourselves. We are who we are; we can all improve but in seeking to teach like champions, we will always have personality and our own values; our hearts on our sleeves. If I want you to stand up and read poetry by heart- there is no evidence that tells me this is ‘an effective strategy in order to secure deeper understanding’ .. No. I am asking you to do it because, guided by my values and experience, I believe this to be a ‘a good thing that will enrich your soul’.

As evidence-driven as schools should be, it’s always part of the contract between schools and parents that “teachers will impose their values on your child”. We have no choice; it’s going to happen. The thing is to be explicit about what these values are and to seek as much alignment within a school community as possible. As a Head I used to say things like “at this school we teach that evolution is a fact…because it is!” I wanted this to be very clear. I would also make statements about work ethic and discipline and the curriculum much of which would values-driven more than evidence-based. Values matter – they are not some wishy-washy notion that impedes the flow of evidence; they are always part of how evidence is sought, filtered and mediated. The important thing is to recognise the bias-fest that constitutes research-engagement and be honest about it.

Along every axis, there is a context-specific sweet spot where the right balance is struck. But neither end is ‘right’ or ‘good’ compared to the other. It’s never either/or; it’s never a choice – it’s always both; always a blend; always a symbiotic synthesis. Not resolved but in tension; in equilibrium. Let’s embrace that. It’s what makes teaching so great!

Art-Science and other positive tensions that fuel great teaching. published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege

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kershmaru-blog · 7 years ago

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Is there still a gender bias in STEM? The perspective of a non-feminist

As I explained in two previous blog posts, I am not a feminist. I am absolutely in favor of equality and vehemently oppose inequality and discrimination based on superficial characteristics beyond anybody’s control, like sex, race, sexuality, and gender.

I include this information here mainly to caution you against any bias I might hold. I am not in principle opposed to the idea of sexism, not even of systemic bias. But I also know that it is close to impossible for a human being to rid themselves of bias and presupposition. Bear that in mind.

My critiques of feminism are mainly with their dogmatic assertions about the nature of our world, its dismissal or cooption of male issues as well as with what I perceive to be shortsighted or even counterproductive political policy.

I could go into more detail here. But I feel the blog will be long enough without doing so. For more information, see my earlier - and maybe future - blogs.

But there are indeed fields in which some form of bias might exist. I am talking about the STEM (=Science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields. There are numerous factors at work here, and I don’t want to go on a tangent about the earnings gap - I already superficially talked about that and plan to go into more detail in a future post.

Just for clarity’s sake, here is the TL; DR from my first blog post about the gender wage gap.

It exists, there are multiple factors involved, the most significant one I see being differences in risk aversion between the genders. Those seem to be biological, but at the same time to be reinforced by cultural and societal norms. In my view, both strictly biological and strictly socially constructed worldviews lack merit.

But enough of me. The Subject of this blog are women in science.

In a 2017 article

https://www.wired.com/story/why-men-dont-believe-the-data-on-gender-bias-in-science/

on the matter, Professor of Physics Allison Coil quotes four peer-reviewed papers:

1. Wennerås & Wold https://www.nature.com/articles/387341a0

(A fascinating paper about the number of women leaving science despite having the qualifications, investigating whether the peer review process in Sweden controlling academic grants has a gender bias. It strongly suggests that this is indeed the case and that there may be a problem with nepotism even if the affiliated committee member recuses themselves; the paper is applying a methodology I can find no fault in. Bear in mind that I am no statistician, and my expertise with scientific papers is limited by my own experience - or rather lack thereof - due to my young age and standing merely at the beginning of my career. I have my qualms about using number of publications, first authorship, and journal of publication as the sole metric for scientific merit, but that is a subject for another article or blog. My only critique of the paper used is that the used dataset is over twenty years old, and therefore may no longer represent reality. A lot can and likely has changed in the last twenty years. That is by no means an excuse for earlier or potentially present discrimination. Another petty grievance is the addition by Nature that the paper had been reviewed by three men.)

2. Moss-Racusin et al. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full

(A Yale university paper addressing the discrepancy in reactions to identical CVs for a labor manager position by universities in the US. CVs by “women” were viewed as less qualified than identical ones by “men.” Male applicants were offered a higher starting salary and more mentoring opportunities. The participants believed that they were giving feedback which would help or hinder a real student. Again, I found no problems with the paper’s methodology or use of statistics. The only thing I could object to is the use of the modern sexism scale, but my criticism here would be due to my lack of knowledge wheater this scale accurately measures sexism.)

3. Milkman et al. http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/apl-0000022.pdf

(A Paper examining how race and gender influence the pathway to academic positions. Fictional Students contacted professors to discuss research opportunities before formally applying. Professors were more responsive to white males than to all other groups collectively, especially in high paying and private institutions. It observes, interestingly, that representation didn’t improve the observed trends. I see no obvious problems with methodology here. Statistically one might critique the scope of the study, and that it would be more meaningful if it contained fewer variables between the applications, i.e., only tested white males against white females. However, the sheer mass of data circumvents problems that could otherwise occur.)

4. Hadley et al. http://www.pnas.org/content/112/43/13201.full

(A paper testing the acceptance of gender bias research in the broader public and within the members of STEM. It concludes that men view gender bias research less favorably than women, especially within STEM. They did so by showing true and altered research, one version - the true one - reporting on gender bias, whereas the altered one purports that no such bias existed. Again, there were no obvious problems in methodology or statistics. My biggest caveat is one they mention in their discussion section: the evaluated research papers were mere abstracts and not full texts. People might react differently to the research in its original context and full scope.)

(since I accessed those through the hospital library in Vienna, where I currently am treated for depression, I cannot guarantee that the .pnas links will work for you. If they don’t, replace .full with .abstract to see the abstract at last. If you have access to a university library, you might be able to access them through computers there or remote access. Academic paywalls are a significant and IMO unfair hurdle for interested laypeople)

Each of these concludes that there is a problem in scientific fields, with women needing more effort and distinction to gain the same amount of recognition. In her article, she also mentioned, based on study number 4, that male scientists devalued real research asserting gender bias while falling for fake research that purported no such bias existed.

The article is striking in its argumentation. Disregarding the earnings gap, there may well still be a problem about women in tech. I expressed, in a previous blog post, specifically, in my blog post about rape culture, that I believe that it may be necessary to let “gatekeepers” - people in positions of power abusing it - die off, or face scandal and the justice system. The same might be required for STEM. I don’t know. I apologize to the reader that I am so indecisive and unopinionated on the matter, but this is relatively new information to myself, and I haven’t had time to form an educated opinion on the subject.

Fact is, if there is still a culture of discrimination in STEM, that is something I would like to see rectified.

But I am not sure what the correct path towards this goal is, whether this problem persists or if there are only isolated cases left, and whether there is a path. I guess greater minds than mine will have to prevail and come up with possible solutions.

I encourage each and every one of my readers to read my sources with an open mind, and draw their own conclusions, think their own thoughts, make up their own minds.

The significant question here is whether there is or can be a systemic gender bias in STEM. And there might be.

I am not saying this is due to a perception that woman make better or worse scientists. Such a bias might be influenced by a lot of factors, like the evidence-based dropout rate of women scientist. In layman's terms, a scientist or scientifically minded person might observe the dropout rate and conclude that women are less likely to stick to their guns, thus directly contributing to the drop out rate that was found in the first place. In this way, through a positive feedback loop, a bias may reinforce itself.

Another question is lifestyle choices. Are these pursued freely, or influenced by discrimination or negative experience? Are women merely better at taking care of their own wellbeing and therefore dropping out at higher rates? Does this effect play into the negative perception of women by academic professionals and create a positive feedback loop? Those are but some of the questions we need to consider.

In an effort to gain an outside perspective, I asked the following of several women scientists:

I would like you to share how you feel about feminism in general, in your own words, and whether you self-identify as a feminist.

I had a discussion long ago with Nr. 1 (My cousin and the first scientist I interviewed) about a co-worker of hers, who semi-jokingly said that she didn't believe that many of the women present would stay in science. As far as I remember she was irate. Would you mind sharing what you think about that, and why?

You are a female scientist. What drove you to science?

The data shows that women leave science more often than men do. What reasons do you see for that?

Last question. Do you believe that work-life balance is easily achievable for a scientist in general, and a female scientist in particular?

You will see their answers in my next major blog post next week.

I asked these questions to gain some insight into what women in stem actually think and feel. Each of the women answering was given the option to do so anonymously, or under their name and had access to an earlier draft of this blog post as well as my minds.com account. But there are things we can discuss today before the interviews are completed.

The dropout rate, for example, might be influenced by yet other factors. A superficial search on PubMed surfaced, i.e. this paper https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4943602/ , which points to a lack of confidence in mathematical skills as a potential culprit. Personally, I do still believe that biological differences - again, aggravated by cultural and societal norms - undermine female self-worth and self-confidence.

Those differences in self-image exist. Wheater they are cultural or biological is, ultimately, inconsequential. The question is how to address them. I am generally in favor of offering noncompulsory workshops to teach women to be more assertive and confident in their own skills.

I believe that gender inequality based on bias, unconscious or otherwise is a problem. Though I don’t think there will ever be parity between the genders - due to my belief in biological difference - I am ready to concede that certain fields haven’t yet reached their natural balance point, and there is work to be done. I think some of the policies advocated by feminists - diversity quotas, “positive” discrimination to name the most outrageous offenders - are, ultimately misguided, addressing symptoms instead of problems and might well prove to be counterproductive. But I believe in strengthening women’s self-worth and assertiveness. Other measures addressing unconscious bias may be warranted. Otherwise, the above described positive feedback loop will continue to propagate itself.

One way to do this is by showing them positive female role models. While I personally don’t think it is strictly necessary for your role models to share superficial characteristics like sex or gender with you, I am not a girl dreaming of being an astronaut or a firefighter and being repeatedly told that she cannot because women don’t do that. I am open to the idea that especially for young people it might be crucial to know that it isn’t so. There are women in every walk of life holding their own and succeeding as much as men do. Sometimes more. They can offer a differing viewpoint on some matters due to their lived experience which can be enriching for their team.

I yesterday attended an event honoring and subsidizing female scientists, amongst others my cousin. I was very proud and honestly quite starstruck by the people there, their research and stories. In all honesty, I wished my own sister, sometimes plagued with self-doubt - she is on a STEM path too - attended. While I oppose some measures of feminism I observe as being counterproductive, I want women working hard in these fields to succeed. If that means living in a world where female scientists have a spotlight shone on them for being potential role models, so be it. I wished I lived in a world where such measures are no longer necessary, where people are perceived as equal. What I desire most of all is open dialogue and discussion on how to move forward. Only together can we move towards a more open and equitable society and address the “leaking pipeline” of women leaving STEM.

In a video I can’t seem to find again - otherwise, I’d source it - several erstwhile female scientists speak about their experiences. One describes her ouster out of STEM as “death by a thousand paper cuts.” Here is where I will disagree with a lot of people I personally respect, even admire.

While I can sympathize with everybody plagued by self-doubt and depression, this is something every one of us experiences. I am not asserting women on average don’t face more doubters or naysayers. They might well face precisely what Professor Coil implies: A culture that victimises and places undue burdens in a multitude of ways on women in STEM. I am saying this is ultimately an irrelevance. Whether they do or don’t, they need to face their demons, like I do. Like all men do. If criticism - due to bias or otherwise - makes you leave the most competitive field on the planet, then I am sorry, you may not be cut out for it. And I am saying that as a man terrified of his own future.

Here I need to say again that I am not opposed to women in science. I welcome them with open arms, as the invaluable contributors to humanity’s collective potential they are. And I think the most significant step is to teach girls and young women that barriers, to somebody both competent and confident, are ultimately in the mind. All of us are our biggest critics.

Bigotry, in all its forms, is but a hurdle, not an insurmountable obstacle. If somebody rejects you for any reason, apply again with a bolstered CV and more papers under your belt. If your paper is rejected first on some bullshit reasoning, write it again. Three times. Ten times.

On a sidenote, I have my own gripes with peer-reviewed papers and impact factor, most of all how students and fellows are peer pressured into quoting papers that have little to nothing to do with the subject matter to inflate a publication’s or paper’s impact factor- a rudimentary metric how significant they are, based on how often they are quoted. Also, I have a massive problem with how inaccessible scientific publications are made, both by overuse of technical language that can make a paper hard or impossible to interpret by anybody but experts in the field and by academic paywalls. I also have Issues with the current structure of ethics boards - among other things, the inclusion of a representative of the majority religion of the country, thus moving the debate from pure ethics to religious dogma - and the accepted definitions of what is ethical or moral. I might write an article on the matter on minds. Lastly, I, as a creative writer have problems with the stringent format scientific papers take. But I digress. I merely wanted to express that there are indeed areas where the scientific process might improve, and if gender bias is amongst them, I am all in favor of taking steps to ameliorate the problem.

The question is, what to do about it? I am of the opinion that the first instance of peer review, as well as the approval for research grants, as well as application for posts in STEM, should be done in an anonymous fashion; that would also affect nepotism.

That way, one could be reasonably sure that unconscious bias didn’t play a significant role in the selection process. Not entirely, because interesting algorithms like “apply magic sauce” https://applymagicsauce.com/ show that it is indeed possible to predict a lot about the author of a given piece of writing, amongst other things their probable gender.

That, the unconscious cataloging of a writer as male or female, along with their publication history - which may reasonably be included in an application - may still influence a potentially biased decision maker.

I would recommend to include relevant papers and letters of recommendation in an anonymized fashion, but if the decision maker in question has already read them, which isn’t an altogether absurd notion given the narrowness of expertise most scientists necessarily have, they might remember the gender of the author and be influenced by that.

And indeed, just anonymizing papers, in general, is unthinkable in the modern process. Too much of a scientist’s work and, dehumanizing as it may sound, worth is reflected in what and where they publish.

Above all else, I would avoid teaching girls and young women that they are not qualified or suitable for given fields, or that they will face insurmountable odds. Unfair as it may be, others walked the stony path before them. Successfully.

What are your Ideas to close the gender gap in STEM? Do you think there is a problem there in the first place? Why/Why not? I welcome your thoughts and criticisms. The declared goal of these blogs of mine is to provoke a fruitful dialogue between what now are, but don’t have to be, hardened fronts. Discussion may help us to navigate the legislative minefields in front of us and avoid making long-reaching and shortsighted decisions.

Next week I will hopefully bring you some interviews I am organizing with amazing female scientists I had the pleasure to get to know a bit in my academic career, private life, my treatment for depression and over my cousin, who is also the first of the scientists I plan to interview.

#feminism #anti-feminism #discussion #women in stem #women in science #work life balance #leaking pipeline

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careergrowthblog · 7 years ago

Text

Art-Science and other positive tensions that fuel great teaching.

When you look at this image, what do you see: a grid surrounded by a cloud or a cloud with a grid inside?

How does this translate to teaching? Here’s a quick run-through:

Art: Science.

System: Culture

Spirit: Letter

Tacit: Explicit

Knowledge: Emotion

Values: Evidence

Art-Science and other positive tensions that fuel great teaching. published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege

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