Taking Diversity Beyond Reason

Back when Chief Justice John Roberts questioned how diversity would contribute an educational benefit to physics during oral argument in Fisher v. University of Texas, I argued that every discipline, physics included, would benefit from having diverse students bring their perspectives to the issue. Many here scoffed at my take, arguing that physics was physics, so different perspectives changed nothing about science.

Since then, the situation has morphed into one that wraps diversity, along with its fellow travelers inclusion and equity, up with meaningless jargon in such a way as to demonize any doubt as racist and sexist. No longer is the issue limited to the approaches that might be brought to solving a question based upon differing experiences, views and perspective, but that one’s having the ideologically correct identity makes one’s solution more valid than a white heterosexual male. What I argued was a sound approach within the limits of reason has not become dogma that ignores merit and validity in favor of the victim hierarchy. This is unsustainable.

Is a gay Republican Latino more capable of conducting a physics experiment than a white progressive heterosexual woman? Would they come to different conclusions based on the same data because of their different backgrounds?

For most people, the suggestion isn’t just ludicrous, it’s offensive.

Too abstract? Let’s bring it closer to home. You are about to have brain surgery. Would you prefer your surgeon be the best at his task or be of an “oppressed” race, gender or orientation? If surgery fails, would you want your loved ones to take comfort in knowing that you received by best care possible or at least didn’t die at the hands of a white man?

Yet this belief — that science is somehow subjective and should be practiced and judged accordingly — has recently taken hold in academic, governmental and medical settings. A paper published last week, “In Defense of Merit in Science,” documents the disquieting ways in which research is increasingly informed by a politicized agenda, one that often characterizes science as fundamentally racist and in need of “decolonizing.” The authors argue that science should instead be independent, evidence-based and focused on advancing knowledge.

To the extent that science was largely the domain of white men, thus depriving scientific endeavors of the input of others who might have cured cancer had they been given the opportunity to reach their scientific potential, lack of diversity made us all poorer for their absence. But this isn’t because their skin color made their contributions worthy, but because their skin color impaired their ability to contribute their merit to the cause. Eliminate impediments, but after that, every scientist, every doctor, has to earn his place by the strength of his merit.

Yet the paper was rejected by several prominent mainstream journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Another publication that passed on the paper, the authors report, described some of its conclusions as “downright hurtful.” The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences took issue with the word “merit” in the title, writing that “the problem is that this concept of merit, as the authors surely know, has been widely and legitimately attacked as hollow as currently implemented.”

Along the path to increasing diversity by identifying and eliminating impediments based on irrelevant factors such as race or sex, the overly zealous lost the tune and failed to realize that the goal was not merely replacing one identity with another for its own sake, but to advance scientific knowledge and the benefits they bring society by expanding the universe of brilliant minds to include everyone who might be capable of advancing science. They remember the diversity and forgot the science. If this sounds oddly familiar, it’s a lot like the legal failing of remembering the rubric and forgetting the rationale.

But whatever validity “alternative ways of knowing,” “multiple narratives” and “lived experience” may have in the humanities, they are of questionable utility when it comes to the sciences. Some defenders of positionality statements maintain that these acknowledgments promote objectivity by drawing attention to a researcher’s potential blind spots, but in practice they can have the opposite effect, implying that scientific research isn’t universally valid or applicable — that there are different kinds of knowledge for different groups of people.

Not to be glib, but the laws of physics don’t care about your sexual orientation. In the zeal to increase diversity as an inherent good without regard for merit, the point of the quest has gotten lost. Even worse, it presumes that minority identities are incapable of being as or more meritorious as straight white men, thus requiring the sciences to “dumb down” so as not to demand rigor from oppressed peoples. Are they not capable of withstanding the rigors or merit? Of course they are. Not all black people are brilliant, and not all white people are brilliant, but brilliance is the point, not race without regard to brilliance.

Of course, nobody wants to hire a racist. But that’s not what we’re talking about. For a prospective faculty member to say he is determined to treat all students equally rather than to advance diversity initiatives can be enough to count someone out of a job.

Therein lies the problem, as anyone who can’t come up with some way in which their physics experiments will advance DEI is, under the regime that’s emerged since C.J. Roberts asked the question, a racist. No doubt a well-trained academic can string together the word salad necessary to create the impression that physics can somehow be used to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion, but the cost would be the validity of physics. If so, then what’s the point?