Woke culture threatens academic freedom at social sciences

Diversity policy is on the rise at the UvA. Like an octopus, the policy is nestling itself in the organisation - at the central, faculty and programme levels - through all kinds of committees. There, they are concerned, among other things, with creating awareness about ‘unconscious bias’, countering ‘microaggressions’ and ‘decolonising’ the curriculum. But no conversation is possible about the downside of these policies at the UvA.

Trojan horse

The diversity policy in its current form is a Trojan horse, bringing radical ‘woke’ thinking into the organisation and normalising it at lightning speed. While the UvA increasingly explicitly positions itself morally elevated in communications because of the diversity policy, academic freedom is teetering, under pressure from increasing political correctness and dogmatic left-wing ideology, especially in the social sciences.

I experience this myself, as an interdisciplinary social scientist working on topics such as gender and sexuality, the multicultural society and corona policy. Although I too identify as leftist and progressive, there is less and less room for the work I do and the positions I take based on scientifically based argumentation.

Pseudoscience

For example, from my expertise on androgyny, I am critical of the phenomenon of ‘non-binary’ and its obsession with ‘pronouns’ (personal pronouns). I see this phenomenon as empty hype in high-modern society, with no scientific basis in biology, psychology and anthropology. There is solid evidence for the existence of masculine women, feminine men and transgender people. But emancipating a minority group entirely outside the ‘gender binary’ is, in my view, a dangerous and pseudo-scientific aberration.

Bad person

However, the debate on this can hardly be had without me being accused of discrimination. Students and colleagues say I violate their ‘safe space’ with my views and see it as a ‘microaggression’. Of course, I don't mind people disagreeing with me in the academic arena; that is precisely part of healthy academic debate. But I am increasingly being made to feel that I am a ‘bad person’ who has no right to speak. And this is even though I take positions on which I have scientific expertise, research and publish.

As a researcher of homophobic violence in Amsterdam, I have seen for years a worrying overrepresentation of Moroccan-Dutch boys in the perpetrator group. I am now working on a new study in which I want to critically examine the role of Islam in homophobic violence. Despite the fact that I have always explicitly distanced myself from right-wing populist politicians who tried to use my research for their Islamophobic agenda, my research is quickly distrusted at the UvA. As a critic of homophobic tendencies within Islam, I have often been dismissed as a ‘gay nationalist’ - someone who would use gay emancipation for a nationalist agenda. This makes it increasingly difficult to find institutional support (guidance and funding) within the UvA for the research I would like to do.

Corona

I experienced the corona period as a new low in terms of academic freedom at the UvA. From my expertise in Science & Technology Studies (STS), I was critical of vaccination technology and the QR pass. A normal debate on this at the UvA proved barely possible. Anyone even remotely critical of the measures was dismissed as ‘wappy’, ‘conspiracy theorist’ and ‘far-right’. Solidarity had to lie with the vulnerable. There was no room for a discussion on whether the measures were actually constitutional. My critical contributions on the corona policy were so poorly received at the UvA that, among other things, I lost a position at the summer schools after almost 15 years of loyal service.

There is a firm norm on many topics at the UvA - usually dictated by the politics of established left-wing parties - that sets the frameworks within which thought and speech are allowed. Individuals who take different positions and use different arguments can quickly be accused of violating social safety or hurting minorities. Thus, the UvA's diversity policy is increasingly leading to an ideological monoculture. And that while good and healthy scientific knowledge production can only exist by the grace of radical academic freedom and all space for pluralistic debate.

Whistleblower

I find it unjustifiable that at the UvA no thought is given to how diversity policy can be reconciled with academic freedom. I have seen the atmosphere change in social sciences in recent years. Not much is left of the motley group of academics with an open attitude to the most diverse voices. The debate is narrowing and its boundaries are increasingly defined by dogmatic political ideology that can surely best be described as ‘woke’. I therefore recently reported to the Board of Governors through the Whistleblower Scheme, calling on them to investigate the worrying developments and come up with an action plan to save academic freedom.

Brave space

Of course, the UvA should be proud of its efforts to put diversity and inclusion on the agenda. Our university has also firmly institutionalised all sorts of traditional norms of whiteness, masculinity and heteronormativity. It is important that we look at that and resolve it. But a diversity policy that focuses only on hobbyhorses from the left-progressive political agenda is not sustainable, because it paradoxically excludes scientists with other convictions.

Room for diversity therefore also means room for different viewpoints, opinions and political convictions. This requires not only a ‘safe space’, but also a ‘brave space’, in which, in principle, we always bravely engage with dissenters on the basis of arguments, even if their views shock and hurt us. This is a lesson that the UvA must learn quickly now, before there is nothing left of our unique social science tradition that is precisely characterised by cross-thinkers and dissidents.

Laurens Buijs is a lecturer at Interdisciplinary Social Science (ISW) and has been running a business on diversity and inclusion since 2016.