Clearly the last place you want to go to get ideas discussed nowadays is a university. Yesterday it was Glasgow:
The University of Glasgow has been accused of capitulating to “wokeism” after it called off a talk by an academic whose research was said to be “eugenicist”.
Gregory Clark, professor of economics at the University of California, was due last week to deliver a seminar at the Adam Smith business school on the effect of genetics on social outcomes.
The talk, entitled For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls: A Lineage of 400,000 Individuals 1750-2020 Shows Genetics Determines Most Social Outcomes, was postponed after a backlash by students.
Clark, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, claimed that the university asked him to change the title of his lecture. It is a reference to The Bell Curve, a controversial 1994 book co-written by Charles Murray, a social scientist who has claimed that black and Latino genetics are linked to intellectual inferiority.
The historian and author Niall Ferguson, who was born in Glasgow, tweeted: “As if to illustrate my warnings about wokeism at UK universities, Greg Clark’s talk at the University of Glasgow was just ‘postponed’ because of objections to the title.”
Ferguson, a senior fellow of Stanford University in California, dismissed criticism of Clark on campus, claiming that it had originated from “woke elements in the sociology department”, adding: “To call Greg Clark a ‘eugenicist’ is grotesque. He is a brilliant and original economic historian, whose books I highly recommend.”
Clark, who was raised in Scotland, said that his event had coincided with the publication of the university’s report Understanding Racism, Transforming University Cultures, setting out an action plan to create “an inclusive space for all”.
He said: “My talk was regarded as a provocation in this situation. I had a half-hour Zoom meeting with the dean. He would reschedule the talk if I agreed to change the paper title to not have any reference to ‘bell curve’. I have refused.”
Today it's Melbourne.
Associate Professor Dr Holly Lawford-Smith set up a website, No Conflict, They Said, as a place for women to tell their stories about "the impacts on women of men using women-only spaces, including but not limited to: changing rooms, fitting rooms, bathrooms, shelters, rape and domestic violence refuges, gyms, spas, sports, schools, accommodations, shortlists, prizes, quotas, political groups, prisons, clubs, events, festivals, dating apps, and language. If we can't collect data, we can at least collect stories. Please tell us how your use of women-only spaces has been impacted. All stories will be published anonymously." This is in response to Australian legislation designed to be inclusive to transgender people, but which, she claims, replaces sex with gender identity - with potentially disastrous consequences for women.
The result? Some 100 academics have written demanding that the University of Melbourne take "swift and decisive action" against what they claim to be a transphobic site, in breach of the university's guidelines on research integrity and inclusion.
There's a good eight-minute interview with Lawford-Smith here, where she expresses her bafflement at how so many modern feminists are now trying to be maximally inclusive, "making feminism this thing that’s really about not hurting men’s feelings than actually protecting women”. All that's needed is for men to state that they're now women, that trans liberation is the next progressive thing, and claim that as trans women they're being uniquely oppressed, and these new feminists just roll over - undoing all the brave work by previous generations of feminists.