How Woke Critical Theory is Destroying Science

Increasingly, Americans question academic expertise. Last week, we got a reminder of why, when the publisher of a major psychology journal forced a highly accomplished scholar to resign as editor after the scholar dared to accept for publication criticism of a paper written by a black American professor.

As recently as the late 20th century, power in U.S. academia was limited by common rules of conduct, written and unwritten. Contending researchers argued over which theories best fit a complex world, with the winners determined not by intimidation but by empirical tests. Intellectual losers lost status, to be sure, but they kept their livelihoods. We did not know it then, but the late 20th century was a high-water mark for academic freedom.

In recent years, younger faculty have been socialized into a culture, not of academic freedom, but of “social justice.” Critical Theory, an intellectual offspring of Marxism and Postmodernism, grew via various identity “studies” fields. Critical Theory questions the existence of objective truth, viewing “expertise” as a ruse to gain power, as Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay explain in “Cynical Theories.” 

Critical theorists rarely engage foes intellectually. They rely on Twitter mobs, professional societies, and supportive administrators in ever-larger campus bureaucracies to intimidate their critics.

They used such tactics to attack Klaus Fiedler, editor of Perspectives on Psychological Science. Fiedler accepted for publication the article “Racial Inequality in Psychological Research,” whose lead author was Stanford professor Steven Roberts. Fiedler’s “racist” crimes? Requesting that Roberts make a revision before publication—something most editors ask—and to accept for publication critiques of Roberts’s paper by other scholars, including a coauthor of this piece (Jussim), who are considered white, as is German national Fiedler. (Coauthor Jussim was also called racist for using an analogy from “Fiddler on the Roof,” saying that critical theorists had sold a horse but delivered a mule—although he had no idea that in the early 20th century “mule” was used sometimes as a racial epithet.)

Days later, 1,200 scholars signed an online petition denouncing Fiedler’s “racism,” and the journal’s publisher told Fiedler to resign or be fired. The German Psychological Association argues that Fiedler should receive due process, rather than mob justice from Twitter activists. Unless this request is granted, we may never know the full story.

Some professors told us that they signed the petition denouncing Fiedler out of fear, knowing that refusing to do so could damage their careers. Yet many young scholars probably signed willingly. A national survey of over 1,300 faculty conducted by Nathan Honeycutt found that 40% identified as radicals, activists, Marxists, or socialists—with higher percentages among the young. A survey by political scientist Eric Kaufmann finds that just 8% of U.S. academics over 50 but a whopping 33% under 35 say that they would support disciplining a scholar whose empirical work found that demographic diversity harmed organizational performance. This activist minority is loud, aggressive, and skilled at ginning up the type of online outrage that got Fiedler fired.

In short, many professors now consider criticism of Critical Theory inherently racist, particularly when a white scholar, even a powerful one, critiques a left-leaning person of color.

Science is supposed to work through what Karl Popper described as constant, self-correcting conjectures and refutations. Scientific knowledge is diminished when Twitter mobs and online petitions censor controversial ideas and punish their proponents.

How can we save academia from itself? Maybe we need a bureaucracy to beat a bureaucracy. In Britain, a new law empowers an academic-freedom directorate to counter equity bureaucracies, just as public defenders check rogue prosecutors. The new directorate will have the power to cut budgets.

In the U.S., a first step might involve extensive congressional hearings establishing the depth of academia’s free inquiry problems and ideological capture. Such hearings could prove less partisan, more popular, and more important than most of what Congress does.

Science has long been one of America’s greatest strengths, and freedom is a core American value. But, if left unchecked, academia’s persecution of free inquiry will destroy the country’s academic and scientific potential.