
“I've Been Fired. If You Value Academic Freedom, That Should Worry You” - jseliger
https://quillette.com/2020/03/06/ive-been-fired-if-you-value-academic-freedom-that-should-worry-you/
======
duxup
It's not really clear to me what of any of the concerns about his tweet or
other content..... really is.

He characterizes a lot of things but but doesn't actually cite it.

Clearly he feels some of the accusations are inaccurate, so I guess I get why
he wouldn't quote that. But he kinda just alludes to some content of his own
making and never says what it really was.

The whole article seems like a dance around something.

I'm concerned about some of the incidents at universities involving free
speech, but I don't feel like the author here is being very forthcoming.

Also why does every comment posted under this story seem to disappear after a
few minutes?

~~~
db48x
He links to his most recently published article, which has a perfectly
understandable abstract (even if you would have to pay to read the rest.) I
think he makes it perfectly clear what the objections to this were, and how
those objections are inaccurate.

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throwaway68888
The way you tell these people are grifters and not serious scientists is that
they keep writing the same article every single time. But then, what could you
expect from a magazine whose pitch is literally "right-wing rejects from
academia"

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eesmith
The author is Bo Winegard.

RationalWiki at
[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bo_Winegard](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bo_Winegard)
summarizes him thus:

> Bo Winegard is an American hereditarian psychologist[2], nationalist[3] and
> pseudoscientist[4] associated with the online "race realist" community.[5]
> He writes discredited racialist pseudoscience articles for the right-wing
> online magazine Quillette[6][7][8] and surrounds himself with white
> nationalists, but complains if he is labelled one.

The section "Fired from Marietta College" says:

> In March 2020, Winegard was fired from his job as Assistant Professor of
> Psychology at Marietta College. He later wrote an article for Quillette
> stating that "many people disagree with my views about human population
> variation, about conservativism, about immigration, about economics, indeed
> about almost everything" but complained his sacking was an attack on
> academic freedom.[10]

~~~
thu2111
Are you quoting RationalWiki to back up his complaint about it in his article?
That paragraph matches his summary of what it claims about him, i.e. not
exactly 'rational' writing.

This is just one more story in a steady stream of such stories. It's pretty
clear by now that academia is basically the opposite of what it claims to be.
Not sure this new story really adds anything: the world outside of academia
already got the message that "academic freedom" is a fiction, if it ever
existed at all, and the supposed superiority of academic research is a lie -
so much of it doesn't replicate or is just outright buggy. I used to be
shocked by this sort of event but now I just wonder what these academics were
thinking? Why would anyone stay in academia if they want to explore topics the
hard-left ideologically rejects? It's obvious how that ends, now.

Also: his mistake was apologising. He shouldn't have agreed that his tweets
were badly worded or that he'd be more "strategic". If you're the victim of
this sort of attack the right strategy is to attack back, strongly. You don't
try and compromise with anonymous complainants, ever.

~~~
throwaway68888
The reason "academia" rejects him isn't because his claims are somehow
disturbing or controversial - it's because they're scientifically bogus and
there's enough reason to believe that he's not arguing in good faith.
Scientists make plenty of controversial claims and aren't afraid to be vocal
about it - see climate change, or the harmful effects of many products like
tobacco, which used to be (and in many cases, still are) largely ignored by
the general population.

------
link1922
“I’ve been fired. If you value quality control, that should thrill you.
Especially if you drive today’s cars or fly in airplanes.”

