by Rose Laoutaris
Princeton University, located in Princeton, New Jersey, is ranked as the number one university in the United States. Because of this, one may assume that they would not offer the ridiculous gender studies courses that other universities do; however, that is not the case. Princeton has a Gender and Sexualities Studies program and offers many crazy courses. One of these courses offered last year is titled, “Science After Feminism.” The course description reads,
Science is commonly held to be the objective, empirical pursuit of natural facts about the world. In this course, we will consider an array of theoretical, methodological, and substantive challenges that feminism has posed for this account of science, and for the practice of scientific knowledge production. In the course of this survey, we shall engage a number of key questions such as: is science gendered, racialized, ableist or classist? Does the presence or absence of women (and other marginalized individuals) lead to the production of different kinds of scientific knowledge?
In this course description alone, there are already multiple obvious issues with the course.
Why would feminism be challenging science if it is an “objective, empirical pursuit of natural facts around the world?” Either the professor who created this course does not realize this obvious contradiction, or he or she truly believes that science should no longer be about facts and objectivity. Either way, it is disappointing to see the social justice agenda creep its way into the elite universities through these gender studies degree programs.
The next issue is that the course asks if science is “gendered, racialized, ableist or classist.” The course itself defines science (or at least “old” science) as objective, so how can it be sexist, racist, ableist, or classist when to be any of these, it would need to be subjective? Facts cannot be racist, sexist, or any of these adjectives because they are objective. Moving away from facts so that science can work with feminism would only cause it to stray from objectivity.
This course also asks whether or not “the production of different kinds of scientific knowledge” is affected by the presence or absence of women and other individuals it claims to be “marginalized.” It is ridiculous to claim that women are marginalized in the science fields in America. Women are widely encouraged to work in STEM fields today. One example can be seen at another Ivy League school, Cornell, where women are preferred 2:1 over men for STEM faculty positions. It is equally foolish to assert that the more an individual is oppressed or marginalized in the eyes of a leftist, the more he/she will contribute to scientific discovery. Gender, race, and other factors should not be considered when choosing scientists; their scientific abilities should. Feminists, by their dictionary definition, claim to want equality, but they seem quite happy to take opportunities away from qualified and deserving males- which is not treating them equally. If they really stood for equality, they would not even consider these factors when hiring scientists.
Science and feminism are not compatible. Science is based on facts and objectivity while feminism is a political movement and ideology. Trying to combine the two in the name of political correctness only hurts scientific advancement. Hopefully Princeton realizes this and leaves feminism and gender studies out of science.
If you want to learn more about how feminism and gender quotas are hurting the sciences, click here to watch Heather Mac Donald’s September CWN speech.
Rose Laoutaris is a 2018 Fall Intern.