Fiedler on the Roof
“Without our traditions, life would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof!”1 And it was indeed shaky for Fiedler, the now former editor of Perspectives on Psychological Science, who, in case you missed it, in violation of traditional organizational procedures to ensure due process, was summarily dismissed without a hearing on charges of violating norms and values, in a style reminiscent of authoritarian regimes.
This short entry has a single purpose: to communicate that the authoritarian mob-like behavior of academics in psychology was completely predictable. No, its not just hindsight. The reason I characterize the behavior as “predictable” is because I predicted it. Not exactly, of course, because the form is too idiosyncratic to each mobbing. It was predictable, because it has become endemic to academia.
Almost six months ago, I characterized Fiedler’s invitation of articles critical of academia’s diversity rhetoric as “dangerous” on political grounds, which was my way of saying “bigtime elevated risk.” Here is the text from my article, Diversity is Diverse (with emphasis added for this essay):
The Epistemic Consequences of Politicizing Psychological Science
Just as manifestly obvious to anyone who has been paying attention, Hommel’s point about agency2, however valid, is often on very dangerous political grounds, at least within academia. Even considering the possibility that underrepresentation in some desirable attribute stems from something about group differences (choices, culture, attitudes, skills etc.) rather than their victimhood constitutes grounds for social justice academics to denounce, mob, and ostracize (Honeycutt & Jussim, 2020; Stevens, Jussim & Honeycutt, 2020). If it is viewed as legitimate to only attribute gaps to discrimination, and, within academia, some sort of sacrilege to view them as resulting from other sources (except when those other sources are flattering to groups social justice academics deem worthy of favor), our “scientific” literature will be compromised to the point of uselessness.
[After some points about the dangers of this to psychology’s ability to distinguish fact from politically popular fancy, which I may delve into more in a subsequent essay, it then continues]:
Referring to the modern development within academia of denouncing claims that gaps and inequalities result from anything except oppression (and not referring to the Roberts et al, 2020 article per se, which did not denounce anyone3), suppression is often something sought by political activists seeking power (Stevens et al, 2020); but it is terrible for science…
[end excerpt]
That was only slightly revised from my review of Hommel’s paper, which was written in June, 2022. It is cold satisfaction to have been proven right. That academia is this predictable to anyone paying close attention testifies to how extreme the intolerance in academia has become.
For more on this general topic, see Anna Krylov’s excellent essay, “From Russia with Love.” Anna is an emigre from the Soviet Union, and a chemistry professor at USC. In the essay, she describes modern developments in the academy as echoing her experiences growing up under a totalitarian communist regime.
I thank Bill Freeza for tracking down the exact quote.
This line is from the film adaptation from 1971 - they add a bunch of framing to the story and explicate the meaning of the title. I believe Tevye says this within the first ten minutes or so. It is possible that the saying and a line similar to this is also present in the original texts written in Yiddish (Tevye the Milkman by Sholem Aleichem) or in one of the translations into English. The original story was an epistolary - letters from a fictional Tevye written to the author about his life events, whic which include a large number of folk sayings, often used to humorous effect, but it's been a while, so I'm not sure about exact language anymore.
I read your linked article about differences being due to preferences rather than bias. I agree to a large degree, but I think there’s a nuance that needs to be acknowledged; preferences themselves can be influenced by bias. What I mean by this is that it’s absolutely true that far fewer women than men choose to pursue degrees in engineering - there’s almost no question this is the reason for fewer women in engineering rather than programs actively not accepting qualified women. The question you can’t ignore, though, is why women do not prefer engineering. Is it simply, as you imply, because there are innate sex differences in the types of work people prefer? Or is it that as children, boys and girls are socialized in different ways that lead women to prefer some fields of work and men to prefer others? This is where things get complicated - teasing out which aspects of a preference are due to nature and which are due to nurture is not easily done. But if we as a society are socializing girls to prefer less lucrative fields of work, I still think that’s a problem, although not one that academia can solve in a vacuum. I think often when people refer to bias, they are referring to this, not suggesting that women (or other groups) are being actively discriminated against and being turned away from programs of study in favor of less qualified people who are not members of that group.