‘Canceled’ University of Chicago geophysics professor Dorian Abbot spoke with Tucker Carlson about how Cancel Culture and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion tactics can lead to violence and individuals not being treated with dignity and respect.
Abbot explained that he began to become increasingly concerned during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.
‘A year ago I was uncomfortable with how things were going on campus and off campus,’ Abbot, a 2004 graduate of Harvard, told the FOX host.
‘I was uncomfortable with ideologies that discourage discourse because when you can’t speak with the other side, the only recourse is violence and I saw that playing out in the summer of 2020 and that made me uncomfortable.’
Along with the riots that often turned violent, Abbot also began speaking out against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at many universities around the country.
‘On campus I was uncomfortable with the variety of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion efforts that to me appeared to be discriminating against certain groups of people and I felt that didn’t treat them as individuals worthy of dignity and respect. To me that has to be the fundamentals of any moral system that we’re implementing.’
Dorian Abbot, a University of Chicago geophysicist, spoke with Tucker Carlson about the detriments of cancel culture and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) tactics
Abbot was told a planned lecture he was asked to deliver at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had been canceled due to his stance on DEI
Tucker Carlson spoke about DEI with Abbot on his show Tucker Carlson Today
Carlson agreed with the professor and elaborated on his point when he said: ‘That individuals have value as individuals distinct from their group identity.’
Abbot explained that he does believe in helping disadvantaged people and listed some of the charity work he does but ultimately said his issue is that: ‘we have to ultimately treat every person as an individual and I’m not comfortable that a university was saying well you’re an Asian student so we’re not going to give you the same chance as another student.’
Abbot is a Ph.D. in applied math who received his undergraduate degree in physics from Harvard before joining the University of Chicago in 2009 as a Chamberlin Fellow and then as a faculty member in 2011.
His research focuses on atmospheres, oceans, ice, and climate and planetary sciences and cosmochemistry.
On his University of Chicago page, Abbot wrote: ‘I practice fair admissions: I select students and postdocs on the basis of scientific ability and promise, and I do not discriminate against any applicant based on anything else. I encourage freedom of expression and the creative exploration of ideas in my group.’
Abbot’s appearance on Tucker Carlson Today comes after he published a piece on October 5 on Bari Weiss’ Substack newsletter explaining that his MIT lecture was cancelled due to his opposition of DEI tactics in admissions.
‘I am a professor who just had a prestigious public science lecture at MIT cancelled because of an outrage mob on Twitter,’ he wrote.
‘My crime? Arguing for academic evaluations based on academic merit.’ Many progressives now argue that equity – equality of outcomes – is more important that equality – giving everyone the same opportunity.’
Abbot wrote that he has been a target of ‘woke’ students since last year when he posted several videos on YouTube denouncing the rioting in Chicago that erupted in the wake of the police-involved killing of George Floyd.
The professor said that he was usually averse to speaking out about politics, ‘but the street violence of the summer of 2020, some of which I witnessed personally in Chicago, and the justifications and dishonesty that accompanied it, convinced me that I could no longer remain silent in good conscience.’
Abbot posted clips on YouTube in which he ‘argued for the importance ‘of treating each person as an individual worthy of dignity and respect’ and ‘giving everyone a fair and equal opportunity when they apply for a position as well as allowing them to express their opinions openly, even if you disagree with them.’
According to Abbot, this did not sit well with a group of graduate students at the University of Chicago’s Department of Geophysical Sciences, where he worked.
Abbot wrote that he was ‘immediately targeted for cancellation.’ One grad student organized a letter that was posted to the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program listserv, which makes it easier for an organization to send an email to a group of people.
The Ford Foundation Fellowship Program is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that touts as its mission its commitment to ‘creativity and free expression.’
The program also claims a nonprofit status that enables it to claim tax advantages from the Internal Revenue Service on condition that it does not engage in ‘political and legislative (lobbying) activities.’
The letter that was organized by the students alleged that Abbot ‘threatened the safety and belonging of all underrepresented groups within the department’.
A copy of the letter was included in Abbott’s op-ed. The students’ names have been redacted, but their pronouns were included at the end of their signatures.
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They demanded that Abbot’s teaching and research ‘be restricted in a way that would cripple my ability to function as a scientist,’ the professor writes.
But the letter failed as UC President Robert Zimmer released a statement avowing the school’s support for the right of faculty to enjoy free expression.
In August, things took a turn when Abbot co-wrote an opinion piece for Newsweek in which he argued that the ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ (DEI) initiative embraced on many college campuses nationwide ‘violates the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment.’
Abbot was denied the opportunity to give the Carlson Lecture, which is devoted to ‘new results in climate science’ and hosted by MIT’s Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. The image above shows the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Abbot published a piece on Bari Weiss’ Substack newsletter about the dangers of cancel culture after his prestigious MIT lecture was canceled
Abbot is a vocal opponent of DEI which he does not believe treats people ‘as individuals worthy of dignity and respect’
‘Equity’ vs. ‘Equality’: The woke new buzzword explained
At first glance, ‘equity’ and ‘equality’ appear to be synonymous when looking up the terms in the dictionary.
According to Merriam-Webster, ‘equitable’ means ‘dealing fairly and equally with all concerned’ while ‘equal’ means ‘of the same measure, quantity, amount, or number as another.’
But the social justice movement in the United States uses the terms to mean different things.
Whereas ‘equality’ means giving everyone the exact same resources, ‘equity’ means distributing resources based on the needs of the recipients.
Critics of the phrase equity – which is often used by President Biden – say it is used by modern supporters to push for an equality of outcomes.
They say that equality – which means giving everyone the same opportunity – is a fairer way of doing things.
DEI, according to Abbot and co-author Professor Ivan Marinovic, ‘treats persons as merely means to an end, giving primacy to a statistic over the individuality of a human being.’
Abbot and Marinovic instead proposed ‘an alternative framework called Merit, Fairness, and Equality (MFE) whereby university applicants are treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone.’
The two academics believe that MFE would ‘mean an end to legacy and athletic admission advantages, which significantly favor white applicants.’
In response to the Newsweek op-ed, critics on Twitter demanded that Abbot be denied a chance to offer science seminars and that other speakers be picked in his place.
The online campaign against Abbot escalated last month as students lobbied MIT to disinvite him from delivering the Carlson Lecture, a ‘major honor in my field,’ according to the professor.
Abbot, who was invited to give the lecture in January of last year, writes that a ‘Twitter mob’ started demanding that MIT disinvite him from giving the lecture.
‘It worked. And quickly,’ according to Abbot.
He said that the chair of the EAPS at MIT called him on Sept. 30 to inform him that the prestigious Boston university would be cancelling the annual lecture ‘in order to avoid controversy.’
Abbot lamented the fact that ‘a small group of ideologues mounted a Twitter campaign to cancel a distinguished science lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology because they disagreed with some of the political positions the speaker had taken.
‘And they were successful within eight days.’
‘I view this episode as an example as well as a striking illustration of the threat woke ideology poses to our culture, our institutions and to our freedoms,’ Abbot wrote.
‘I have consistently maintained that woke ideology is essentially totalitarian in nature: it attempts to corral the entirety of human existence into one narrow ideological viewpoint and to silence anyone who disagrees.’
Abbot’s speech was rescheduled for Princeton University, with thousands of people registering for the remote lecture given last Thursday.
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