Scientists horrified that Trump wants to require universities to honor free speech
This is not a Babylon Bee story. An article today in the science journal Nature actually expressed outrage and concern about President Trump’s executive order last week tying the grants a university gets to its willingness to protect the free speech of all its students and teachers.
What evil thing did Trump’s order require of these universities? To quote the Nature article itself,
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on 21 March that requires universities to certify that they protect free speech, or risk losing federal research funds.
Public institutions will have to certify that they are following free-speech protections laid out in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, and private institutions must promise to follow their stated policies on free speech, a White House official told reporters on 21 March.
The order applies to 12 research agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and NASA. It affects only money for research, not financial aid for students.
O the horror! The universities will have to show that they support free speech! What a travesty!
The Nature article then proceeded to find quotes from a number of scientists and organizations who oppose Trump’s action. One even claimed that Trump was not trying to protect free speech, “but the enhancement of conservative voices.”
In other words, to these scientists, there is plenty of free speech in academia. Liberals and leftists are all free to say whatever they want. However, any attempt to allow conservatives the right to speak is clearly a biased threat to freedom and must be stopped at all costs. And to threaten their funding because of this? The nerve of that bad orange man!
The intellectual dishonesty exhibited here is mind-boggling. And for it to come from scientists, whose entire field is built on the need for brutal intellectual honesty at all times, is quite appalling.
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This is not a Babylon Bee story. An article today in the science journal Nature actually expressed outrage and concern about President Trump’s executive order last week tying the grants a university gets to its willingness to protect the free speech of all its students and teachers.
What evil thing did Trump’s order require of these universities? To quote the Nature article itself,
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on 21 March that requires universities to certify that they protect free speech, or risk losing federal research funds.
Public institutions will have to certify that they are following free-speech protections laid out in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, and private institutions must promise to follow their stated policies on free speech, a White House official told reporters on 21 March.
The order applies to 12 research agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and NASA. It affects only money for research, not financial aid for students.
O the horror! The universities will have to show that they support free speech! What a travesty!
The Nature article then proceeded to find quotes from a number of scientists and organizations who oppose Trump’s action. One even claimed that Trump was not trying to protect free speech, “but the enhancement of conservative voices.”
In other words, to these scientists, there is plenty of free speech in academia. Liberals and leftists are all free to say whatever they want. However, any attempt to allow conservatives the right to speak is clearly a biased threat to freedom and must be stopped at all costs. And to threaten their funding because of this? The nerve of that bad orange man!
The intellectual dishonesty exhibited here is mind-boggling. And for it to come from scientists, whose entire field is built on the need for brutal intellectual honesty at all times, is quite appalling.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
The truly frustrating thing is that you only have to walk about 10 feet on a public university campus in America to encounter a student who has had to endure a professor who grandstands and berates one particular point of view. The stories are ubiquitous and faculty are often aware of who abuses their privileges. BUT as soon as someone outside their intellectual inbreeding calls them out, THEY are the problem.
It’s just like the poet who says that only poets can write poetry and critique their own. Well who decides whose a poet? The poets of course…
The self-interest and parochialism of universities is a big part of the problem with American higher education.
conservative speech allowed…the horror
Of course the crowning irony is that “The New Left” began in 1964 at Berkley with “The Free Speech Movement”.
This wouldn’t be necessary if Mario Savio was still alive. /sarc
What horrifies the campus researchers is the threat to their grant money. What horrifies them even more is that, in order to save their grant money, they will have to oppose the neo-Red Guards who now effectively run much of academe. This should be interesting.
quelle horreur!!
They are terrified that now the students can raise challenges to their quack “science” teachings with papers by better scientists in the field. At this time you either Kow Tow to the prof and his or her views or you flunk or get kicked out of the class. It is not all of them of course but the most egregious ones are at the big name universities which are _supposed_ to be providing world class education not indoctrination.
Of course the Liberal Arts colleges are the worst, but they probably get a small percentage of the research money compared to physics, chemistry, engineering, etc.
Small community colleges have instructors which push atheistic relativity and defiance of definitions.
Maybe free speech is rocket science, after all.
Nature is a British magazine. They can sod off.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
“Port Huron Statement”
(June 15, 1962)
https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111huron.html
No “scientists” were mentioned by name in the article. Only a political philosopher. Weird.
Don’t you just hate it when the constitution is required to be followed?
True scientists do no oppose free speech.
Well, who would know better than universities how easy it is to influence young people’s minds?
They know that an hour or two of listening to a conservative speaker’s common sense can undo years of liberal propaganda.
The university commies are right to be afraid of the truth, it will wipe out years of their efforts at Marxist brainwashing out youth.
What is the opposite of diversity?
University!
Brett: The journal is still one of the premier science journals in the world. For it to publish such crap is significant, as it shows us that the science community worldwide is seriously corrupted. They are allowing their partisan politics to influence their publication.
This must not be dismissed.
Sorry Mr Zimmerman but there is no quote from any scientist in the Nature article. I suggest you read it before luxuriating such indignation.
schmoozle: The entire article is a quote from scientists. As one of the two most important scientific journals, Nature represents the scientific community, and what it thinks is important.
You can try to rationalize this problem away, but that won’t change it. The scientific community has become increasingly partisan, dedicated to Democratic Party politics. This article illustrates this.
Why of course most scientists are against it. Ask yourself, where do most scientists work and where do they get their money? It’s called government grant research money. It’s how they can say “The science is settled and all scientists agree” even tough in fact the statement is a lie.
This is Nature a once prestigious journal that in the past published extraordinary scientific breakthroughs now laid low by PC and the cult of SJWs. Truly one despairs. Perhaps as I sometimes think the whole edifice of the West is starting to tumble down like a pack of cards.
Nature morphing into the Little Red Book of political speak.
You can have freedom of speech. Just don’t dare say that Climate Change (or whatever they are calling global warming this week) is NOT settled science. Don’t say that a born baby laying on the delivery room table and breathing on it’s own is a human worthy of having it’s life protected. And DO NOT say that “All Lives Matter”!
Open-mindedness, right? Open on only one side. I haven’t paid taxes for almost 60 years and didn’t serve in the US Army so that we could hear only one side of the story. It has gotten so one sided that I have stopped making ANY contributions to my alma mater and now delete their emails without reading. No matter me complained when the previous President issued direction that essentially denied the right to representation and the presumption of innocence (both guaranteed by our Constitution) to students accused of any sexual harassment complaint but now they are incensed when they are required to allow students to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech. These people should relocate to any one of the many countries that operate without these protections!
Thank you Thank You !
Finally someone to put the whiner milinials in their place being in college does not necessarily mean you are mature or open minded someone has to teach you your opinions arent the only ones that count