cab67
cab67's JournalProbably going to get in trouble here (university building names, eugenics, and Nazis)
As many of you know, Montana State University-Billings is going to rename a building named after its first president, Lynn Banks McMullen, because he is now known to have spoken in favor of Nazi eugenics policies.
Although I’m going to add some context around McMullen’s statements, I am NOT defending what he said. Not even close. It was bigoted, repugnant, and ignorant. I fully support MSU-Billings’ decision to re-name this building. Adding context, in this case, no more justifies what he said than adding context can justify slave ownership prior to the Civil War. It was wrong then, and it’s wrong now.
That being said, some context –
I’m concerned that people are focused on only one aspect of what McMullen said – namely, that he approvingly acknowledged Nazi German policies in 1935. He did, but leaving it at that oversimplifies the situation, and it does so in a way that prevents us progressives from learning an important cautionary tale – that just because anti-scientific attitudes are more closely aligned with the Republican Party today, liberals are not immune to the allure of pseudoscience, and we must remain vigilant to ensure neither we nor our political allies never again follow such a dark path. For we were once leaders on some parts of that trail.
McMullen’s comments were directed in support of eugenics – the idea that we could improve the human condition and society in general by encouraging people with desirable characteristics to have children and discouraging, or even preventing, those lacking these characteristics from doing so. This arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as acceptance of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, followed by its merger with the new science of genetics (the “modern synthesis”), began to take root in intellectual circles.
This may be a distinction without a value, but although the quotes I’ve seen attributed to McMullen decry what he saw as the mixed blessing of immigration – that not everyone who came here was good and virtuous – I couldn’t find anything explicitly anti-semitic. I’m not saying he wasn’t anti-semitic; only that I couldn’t find anything demonstrating that in what he said. It’s entirely possible he was, and that I simply haven’t found the right quote. But his support for Nazi German eugenics wasn't necessarily anti-semitic, either, because eugenics in Germany in the 1930’s wasn’t single-mindedly directed at Jewish people. Sterilization and euthanasia were being applied to those deemed mentally ill and/or physically handicapped. It’s possible McMullen was expressing agreement with this, and not with anything explicitly racist or antisemitic.
The moral repugnance of this idea is self-evident, but it also arose from a very deeply flawed assumption. When it came to such things as criminality, intelligence, mental illness, and anti-social behavior, the nature-vs-nurture pendulum was way over on the nature side. One’s behavior and intelligence were seen as largely the product of your genes. If you tended toward criminal activity, you were a born criminal. If you want fewer criminals, the reasoning went, make sure those who would pass along criminality-promoting genes didn’t contribute to future generations. Fewer children being born to criminals meant fewer criminals and, thus, less crime.
This is, of course, straight-up bullshit. A lot of what was targeted for eugenic elimination had far more to do with poverty and institutional racism than biology. But too many people at the time believed otherwise.
This almost certainly arose from the ambient bigotry surrounding those expressing these thoughts, but it also reflected the newness of evolutionary biology and genetics. They were the Next Big Thing! The internet was supposed to level the information playing field back in the 1990’s. Nuclear power was going to make energy too cheap to meter back in the 1950’s. There was no end to what electricity and magnetism might achieve in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which led Mary Shelley to suppose a collection of sewn-together body parts could be jump-started to life. Same thing.
As a result, many states passed laws intended to further the cause of eugenics. In their extreme, they mandated forced sterilizations for certain classes of people - and these sterilizations actually happened. At least three states that I know of have agreed to pay reparations to those who were forcibly sterilized under these laws.
Given the correlation between race, poverty, and the social problems arising from poverty, you’d suspect that such laws were mostly in the Jim Crow South- but they weren’t. They were passed all over the US. And this is because much of the early impetus behind eugenics came not from racists or reactionaries, but from the intellectual left.
Many of these people were operating from a sense of improving society. They either blinded themselves to the inherently racist core of their ideals or found some way to accommodate it. They might argue, for example, that by preventing people of color with criminal histories from having kids, they were promoting the progress of races often thought to be at some sort of lower evolutionary status. It’s scientific bologna, but it wasn’t an uncommon perspective for a progressive prior to the Second World War.
By no means was eugenics limited to the left. Those who openly embraced white supremacy obviously weren’t interested in improving anything beyond their own goal of keeping the white power structure in place. It also found favor among ardent imperialists and social Darwinists. (Indeed, the seeds of eugenics predate the publication of Origin of Species; Thomas Malthus, whose arguments on reproductive excess influenced Darwin, would have been called a social Darwinist had they not been published 11 years before Darwin was born.)
But it would be intellectually dishonest to pretend that, like the most virulent science denialism of today, eugenics was an exclusively right-wing concept.
Progressives did eventually abandon eugenics. Partly, it’s because the nature-nurture pendulum was moving toward nurture. But it’s also because the world saw what can happen when eugenics is taken to an extreme when the facts of the Holocaust came to light. The moral consequences of eugenics were shoved in their faces.
I actually cover this point in my large-enrollment undergraduate courses. I state that although there is nothing inherently anti-scientific about conservatism, and although there are certainly anti-scientific attitudes to be found in some liberal circles, the Republican Party is far more beholden to its anti-scientific constituents than the Democratic Party. We don’t see too much effort by Democrats to abolish all forms of animal-based research, foods made from transgenic crops, or market-based approaches to conservation and sustainable use that actually work. But laws preventing the teaching of what modern science teaches us about evolution, climate, human sexuality, and public health? From Republicans? All the bloody time.
But I also make the effort to point out that while conservatives have the harder row to hoe these days – they have to bring their party away from leaders who deny physical reality – us progressives aren’t excused from vigilance. The history of eugenics is a big part of that. It happened to us before. It can happen again.
Anyway – MSU-Billings is doing the right thing by renaming that building. But let’s understand the full context of the reason to ensure dead concepts stay dead.
ADDED ON EDIT: In case anyone accuses me of both-sides-ism, that's nowhere near what I'm saying. In fact, there's a profound difference between the kind of anti-science we see on the left and on the right. Left-wing anti-science is usually expressed as opposition to some sort of application of science. Right-wing anti-science is steeped in denial of the underlying science itself. I might disagree with a fellow progressive over the safety of GMO crops, but we would both agree on how evolution, hybridization, and gene splicing actually work. A right-wing blowhard is likely to deny that evolution even happens.
We also see more concentrated efforts on the right to distort scientific reality to support a policy opinion. Hard-core abortion opponents frequently claim, for example, that abortion increases breast cancer risk. Except that it doesn't.
And like I said, the Republican Party is wholly in the thrall of those who refuse to accept the world around them for what it is.
Ukraine is teaching the world how to do psy-ops.
I don't know if it's coordinated or if it's individual Ukraine servicemen working on their own, but their use of social media to send messages to attacking Russians, while letting the whole world listen in, takes the whole concept to a new level. It's a work of collective art.
Partly, I think it's because Ukrainians understand their enemy. We haven't understood ours since perhaps the First World War.
And Ukrainians certainly understand Russians more than Russians appear to understand Ukrainians.
language question out of curiosity
Something I've wondered for a while - are the Ukrainian and Russian languages mutually intelligible when spoken?
I realize it's not an important question.
scale modelers?
I was unable to find a subforum that seemed appropriate for this. I'd originally posted it in General Discussion, but a couple of people suggested the Lounge. (I've never posted here before.) If there’s something I missed, please let me know and accept my apology.
My primary hobby is birding, but in bad weather, I sometimes make scale model aircraft. Most of the models I’ve built have been First World War era biplanes, but I’ve started moving into other historical periods. I’m building an F-100D Super Sabre right now, partly in honor of my father, who was in Vietnam early in the conflict (1963 or 1964), albeit as a translator in the Navy.
Anyway – I semi-completed this one last month:
This is a P-47D Thunderbolt in 1/48 scale. It’s based on Tamiya’s P-47M, which can be converted to the late-version P-47D I wanted to make easily enough. (Much more easily than a kit intended to be an earlier P-47D, in fact.).
The reason I’m showing this off is the markings. They were intended to match the plane my grandfather was photographed flying sometime in 1945.
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He was a flight instructor, so he would normally have flown trainers. As far as I know, he and his friends were joy-riding in some Thunderbolts that had arrived at their base in Texas.
This is very much an incomplete experiment. The cowling that would go over the propeller is missing, I messed up on the paint job in a couple of places, and I need to resize some of the decals I printed to match the markings on this particular plane. That, and I’m not really all that talented with this.
Building this did let me use my imagination a little. My grandfather never saw combat. But - what if he had? The plane would be the same, except for armaments (which in this case includes machine guns on the wings that are absent from the plane he was photographed flying, plus a drop tank because I felt like adding one) - but it also meant there might have been nose art.
Much of the nose art of the period was notably bawdy. I obviously wasn't going to put anything like that on the nose of this plane - I really don't want my grandparents going poltergeist on me for the rest of my life. I also wanted to display this at home, where my 6-year-old daughter would see it. (I may also make copies for my cousins, all of whom have small children.). Besides, it just wouldn't be appropriate, given who he was.
I thought about a couple of classical theatrical masks - the comedy and tragedy masks - because he was a professor in theater arts after the war. But I decided to do what many pilots of the time did - put the name of his sweetheart (my grandmother) on the plane. He was absolutely dedicated to her.
The saddest part is that I’d intended to make one for my uncle. (My mother passed away several years ago.). But he died suddenly late last year, so I didn’t get the chance.
Anyway – this one means something to me. And the next one will be better.
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(As an aside – there are web sites that list every single P-47 ever built and its ultimate fate. The plane my grandfather flew ended up in the Chilean Air Force at some point. I’m sure it’s scrapped by now.)
about that figure skating doping thing
I don't actually pay much attention to the Olympics (winter or summer) - I lost interest when professional athletes were allowed to compete, and some of the shit going down belongs in the UN, not a stadium. I've also been especially leery of any event in which victory or defeat depends on the subjective assessment of judges,
But I do wonder about something:
If Russia's been banned from the Olympics because of repeated doping, why are Russian athletes still competing under the "Russian Olympic Committee" banner? I get that most of these athletes have done nothing wrong and shouldn't be punished for wrongs committed by others, and I know that many of these are among the most talented people in their sports and should, in theory, get a crack at Olympic glory (assuming such a thing even exists anymore). But if a country is banned, shouldn't it be treated as if it's, you know, banned?
I have no strong opinion about the figure skater at the center of this particular flap. She skated beautifully, and the doping took place well before she arrived at the Olympics, so I'd put heavier sanctions on the adults around her than on her. I don't know whether she should be ejected from the Olympics, and I don't actually care very much.
But I don't get that countries can be represented after they've been banned.
Just my minimally-informed thought.
question about legal proceedings against a former president.
Sitting presidents can't be taken to court. But - what if someone runs for president while under indictment? Suppose that person knows lawyers who can gum the system up for a while, delaying a trial. And further suppose that person actually won the election.
Would those legal proceedings then be put on hold? If so, would they be put on hold when he becomes president-elect or after he takes the oath of office?
Honest question here. I do NOT, under any circumstances, wish to see TFG back in the Oval Office, nor am I worried (yet) that he'd win in 2024. But the question came up in conversation, and none of us in that conversation are attorneys or constitutional law scholars.
another reason to be hacked off at denialists: the COVID generation.
Ever since this whole thing began, I've been upset that my daughter (who turns six this month) hasn't really had the kind of childhood she deserves. She hasn't been able to run and play with her friends like we used to. I thought George Carlin was right to denounce the whole concept of "play dates," and although I still think they're absurd under normal circumstances, these aren't normal circumstances. We have to choreograph online "birthday parties" and find ways to keep rambunctious toddlers and kindergartners occupied while simultaneously not living in a ruined house full of destroyed furniture.
But the real magnitude of this is really dawning on me now that the first generation of COVID-era high school graduates has finished a semester of college.
This is something we all discussed last spring and summer. Incoming fall 2021 freshmen might not be as prepared as previous classes. They'd mostly have been taking classes virtually. Some would have had fully-engaged parents who really stepped up to fortify their education, but many would not. Their educations would essentially be incomplete, and they might have lost the skills needed to function in a classroom environment.
I was already on-guard for this based on my experience during the fall 2020 semester. My large-enrollment class was online for the first time. (I hated it.) Ordinarily, for a class that size (between 150 and 200), I'd get two or three students reaching out for help because of mental health issues. But in the fall of 2020, it was more like nine or ten. I was compelled to circulate an email to the whole class explaining that we all understood it was hard - on top of the pandemic, there was the upcoming election and ongoing protests against racism and police violence. It really looked like the world was coming apart at its plate boundaries. I expressed a real willingness to help and pointed them to some on-campus resources. No idea if it did any good, but I couldn't ignore what appeared to be a general sense of despair.
So fast-forward to this past fall semester. All of our worries came true. My lectures were still online (which I still hate), but the labs were in-person, as were some of my office hours. The new students were, by and large, not really prepared. I actually rolled back on some of the details I expected students to learn, but even though the exams were easier than in previous years, averages were substantially (and, in a statistical sense, significantly) lower.
Many of them literally didn't know how to take notes or study for an exam. And boy howdy was I tarred with their anger in my evaluations - my tests were too hard, I didn't provide my notes online, I didn't provide a study guide (in college!), and I was an overall arrogant prick who expected too much.
That the lectures were online may explain a lot of this, but not all. My TA's, who taught the students in person, reported similar challenges - the students didn't really understand that they could ask questions if they weren't sure about something, for example, or that they could discuss things in groups.
I also suspect the ongoing emphasis on standardized tests continues to play a role. When I started teaching as a teaching assistant in the 1990's, I would get a lot of questions about how to study for a test. That continued to be true when I started my faculty position in 2001. But over time, I've gotten more and more questions about how to take the test. That's a very different question. And "know the material well enough to answer the questions" doesn't ever seem to be a satisfactory answer. This was also a point made by many evals - that I didn't prepare them enough for the tests, in spite of telling them exactly what format to expect, asking them questions on lab assignments that were very similar to what they'd see on the exam, giving them handouts with the exam with much of the information so they wouldn't have to memorize it, and repeating all of this exhaustively in the weeks before a midterm.
I'm not really that upset with the evals. The students had every right to be outraged. And of course they directed it at me - who else were they going to complain to? They may not have realized how unprepared they were, and when faced with something that went beyond their expected level of work, they were pissed. Knowing how I understood things when I was a freshman, I'd probably have acted the same way.
I don't think the students were lazy. Many approached me after a mediocre first exam performance with a real desire to do better, and some of them did improve their scores on the second exam. They were doing the best they could with what they brought to campus.
I don't blame the students. I don't even necessarily blame their parents or their high schools, either. The pandemic forced them out of physical classrooms for their senior years.
I do, however, put some of the blame on those who didn't take this thing seriously from the beginning. The vaccine wouldn't have made much of a difference - it really only became widespread through the spring, while high school seniors were still mostly online. But people protested the simple decency of wearing a mask in public, crying out that it was an inexcusable trespass on their rights. (Never mind that their insistence on defending their rights infringed on the rights of those who are immune-compromised.) Had they really accepted their civic duty, it's possible we could have been able to safely teach in-person after the winter holidays. This would have made a big difference.
Instead, we had schools and colleges opening for in-person instruction during the fall of 2020, only to go online again when cases among students spiked. We had parents confronting school administrators about their tyranny and blind acceptance of physical reality. We had governors who decided it was better to let people infect their communities than to protect their citizens. What could have been a much less severe situation by January 2021 was worse than when it started.
And you know what? It's not getting better. Had everyone who can get vaccinated gotten the vaccine, we might not be facing the new variants that require booster shots. There wouldn't have been nearly as many breakout cases for the simple reason that fewer people would be infected. Not sure if the whole thing would be over, but things would not be nearly so bad.
I might not be scared shitless because my class this spring is in-persn and I have a daughter who's about to turn six.
Richard Leakey
As many of you have now seen, Kenyan paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey has passed away.
There are lots of articles out there detailing his incredible life, but I have a few thoughts as someone who works with the collections he helped build and who has collaborated with the Leakey family - especially his wife, Meave, who is herself a central figure in East African paleontology and paleoanthropology.
The early humans he and his field crews collected are treated like national treasures in Nairobi - as they should be. But his groups collected more than just primates; they collected pretty much everything. Sure, they were happy to find something that would make the front pages of the newspapers of the world (which they did more than once), but their interest was much broader than that - they wanted to reconstruct the entire tapestry of human origins in the Cradle of Humanity. That meant collecting every bit of evidence they could - volcanic ash and lava for radiometric dating, sedimentary samples for geochemical paleoecology and paleomagnetic dating, and fossils of every type of organism they came across. This allowed people with unhealthy fixations on other animals - crocodiles, in my case - to contribute to the picture.
(I'm actually not that interested in human origjns per se. Mostly, I'm interested in the crocodiles, which were the largest predators our ancestors faced. My animals ate everyone else's animals.)
Paleoanthropology is as close as the scientific endeavor comes to an actual blood sport. Paleoanthropologists can be highly territorial and possessive of whatever they're working on, and given the publicity and interest drawn to the field, it can attract some highly competitive and driven people with egos large enough to exert their own perceptible gravitational pull. They sometimes just plain don't like each other. In fact, I was reluctant to start working on the East African crocodile fossil record precisely because of this.
Meave and Richard proved me wrong, at least when it came to people who view primates as someone else's scientific problem - they were both incredibly kind and generous to me and, far more importantly, my students. I won't forget it.
If you're ever in Nairobi, the National Museums of Kenya is a must-see. It's set in a green setting that can be fantastic for birds, especially before the crowds come. The exhibits are first-rate. And a lot of that reflects Richard Leakey's amazing level of energy and dedication.
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