Over the past two weeks, the state of American science funding has been in absolute disarray. Across the NSF, the National Institutes of Health, and the CDC, thousands of grants have been frozen and unfrozen, websites have been removed, and existing funding sources have been vetted as the agencies struggle to comply with new White House directives dismantling previous diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
I work at a children’s hospital in a liberal state that’s paused gender affirmative surgeries for patients, and we’re evaluating all research for similar reasons you touched on. It gives me hope that we can continually reinvent these good fights and maybe fly in the dark a little like our spiritual forebears.
we can hope these bans are just smoke and mirrors as is what they really want is for research in certain areas to stop, ai can pick up on these attempts at re-branding. furthermore, these attempts can get so convoluted that these added layers can obscure the studies. i wouldn't underestimate them
you can't restrict ideas by restricting language. Censorship never works, people will think about these concepts, just with a slightly diff vocabulary.
This isn't directly related to research, but my parents are college professors and they had to remove all instances of "diversity," "equity," and "inclusion" from their course material and syllabi. The interesting thing about that ban is that they can still say those words in their classes, so those words are still there, and those concepts are still there in their written material. It just seems like an ineffective (in terms of what the lawmakers want) and unnecessary thing that doesn't even make sense in terms of "GET RID OF DEI!!!!1!"
They used the word "Christmas" as a catch all for all the things wrong with the "libs." Having been made to look ridiculous by their own doing on that one, in spite of its success at rage baiting, they took the concept and branched out to the words used in another fever dream bogeyman, DEI.
Wouldn't it make more sense to just refuse to comply with idiocracy? The first thing written in Dr. Timothy Snyder's book, On Tyranny, is "don't obey in advance".
Too many organizations are obeying in advance, which empowers the supposed powers that be.
This is so insightful, thank you so much for writing this! My partner is an activist. One of the things he’s doing is help rename the office of DEI to “Open Access Opportunity” or something similar. I had similar concerns about continuity for students and how they would still know about the resources. It all hinges on communication and community. People persevere. We won’t stop fighting for our rights.
Hello! I don't have a specific comment about this post. However I am a Linguistics anthropologist who doesn't have Instagram so I see your videos on Facebook. And I have been a fan and an academic supporter for a long time now. But I've never been able to comment on any of your videos because I I'm not on Instagram. So this is my long rambling way of saying hello fellow linguist and I really enjoy your content and I share it a lot!
the funny thing about linguistic censorship is that language is constructed and humans can always just construct more
Yep, just like gender
I think for forced pejoration like this it should be called the euphemism sausage mill. It certainly feels like they're turning grist into gristle.
This feels like censorship with extra steps.
I work at a children’s hospital in a liberal state that’s paused gender affirmative surgeries for patients, and we’re evaluating all research for similar reasons you touched on. It gives me hope that we can continually reinvent these good fights and maybe fly in the dark a little like our spiritual forebears.
we can hope these bans are just smoke and mirrors as is what they really want is for research in certain areas to stop, ai can pick up on these attempts at re-branding. furthermore, these attempts can get so convoluted that these added layers can obscure the studies. i wouldn't underestimate them
you can't restrict ideas by restricting language. Censorship never works, people will think about these concepts, just with a slightly diff vocabulary.
This isn't directly related to research, but my parents are college professors and they had to remove all instances of "diversity," "equity," and "inclusion" from their course material and syllabi. The interesting thing about that ban is that they can still say those words in their classes, so those words are still there, and those concepts are still there in their written material. It just seems like an ineffective (in terms of what the lawmakers want) and unnecessary thing that doesn't even make sense in terms of "GET RID OF DEI!!!!1!"
They used the word "Christmas" as a catch all for all the things wrong with the "libs." Having been made to look ridiculous by their own doing on that one, in spite of its success at rage baiting, they took the concept and branched out to the words used in another fever dream bogeyman, DEI.
Wouldn't it make more sense to just refuse to comply with idiocracy? The first thing written in Dr. Timothy Snyder's book, On Tyranny, is "don't obey in advance".
Too many organizations are obeying in advance, which empowers the supposed powers that be.
This is so insightful, thank you so much for writing this! My partner is an activist. One of the things he’s doing is help rename the office of DEI to “Open Access Opportunity” or something similar. I had similar concerns about continuity for students and how they would still know about the resources. It all hinges on communication and community. People persevere. We won’t stop fighting for our rights.
Sounds like scientists should aim to use more commonly understood language in the next round.
Hello! I don't have a specific comment about this post. However I am a Linguistics anthropologist who doesn't have Instagram so I see your videos on Facebook. And I have been a fan and an academic supporter for a long time now. But I've never been able to comment on any of your videos because I I'm not on Instagram. So this is my long rambling way of saying hello fellow linguist and I really enjoy your content and I share it a lot!