https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/maajid-nawaz/woke-cancel-culture-isaaac-newton-removal-from-syllabus-comedic/
Isaac Newton may have laid the foundations of modern physics, but professors at Sheffield University reportedly think he benefited from “colonial-era activity,” and the engineering curriculum should be “decolonized” as a result.
Newton’s discoveries are not controversial, yet if the documents are to be understood correctly, the fact that they were made during a time of European colonialism makes them suspect. The “historical context” that should be added to lessons is left unexplained, and it is not clear how Newton may have benefited from “colonial-era activity.”
So should the NNSA labs follow suit and start to "decolonize" their science and engineering?
Do you think that China is going to follow suit with this stuff?
Comments
4/26/2021 6:06 PM
In case you forgot this stuff is very relevant to the national labs. Back in September an employee at Sandia raised concerns about teaching Critical Race Theory. In his presentation he showed that they use terms like decolonize, white privilege, how science is tainted by western culture. In fact this was picked up by several news organization and the employee was placed on leave. Not to long after that Trump banned this kind of training Federally funded institutions. So yes this is very relevant to the labs. I have not seen the return of CRT at the labs but it could certainly happen. I am rather surprised that you would not be aware of the events at Sandia and its ramifications not just for the NNSA but all of the US science/engineering institutes. Even at LANL there is a lab wide anti-racism seminar seminar series. The speakers are highly political types and many of the seminars have elements of CRT in them. At this point the seminars are voluntary and since they are on-line I doubt they cost very much, but the talks themselves are ridicules and not based on any scientific approach.
By the way foundation of CRT is
Believes racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, and every interaction. If you buy this theory than yes the NNSA labs by definition must be racists and
support a racists systems.
Look it up the stuff is totally nuts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
What I do not get is how you you call this stuff a theory, it does not meet any scientific definition of theory. I would contend the first thing to ask "is it falsifiable". It really cannot be since if you buy into the ideas of a scientific method comes from Western culture so it is problematic so any idea of that something is falsifiable is also a Western idea.
At LLNL the Director put some screed about stopping anti-Asian attacks. I am all for that but could anyone please point out who is in fact behind these attacks? You would figure the lab director might have at least a minor understanding of statistics.
Like it not the labs are still coupled to the political environment of the United States so these issues are relevant to the labs. If you are not than just go to another thread that matches your fancy such whistleblowers, benefits, NIF, quality of the workforce ect.
Also could please explain how any of this sophomoric or laughable?
To argue that something is invalid because of events going on elsewhere means that any and everything is subject to cancelation at the slightest whim of whoever has been appointed this week's censor.
I agree with 6:06 about this being the work of a troll. We already hashed over the topic - it's without merit.