Developments down-under – specifically, from a press release by Australia’s national science research agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation: 

The 64-metre telescope is located on Wiradjuri country in central west New South Wales, approximately 380km west of Sydney. It received the name Murriyang, which represents the ‘Skyworld’ where a prominent creator spirit of the Wiradjuri Dreaming, Biyaami, lives.

It remains unclear whether the radio telescope, which relayed mankind’s first steps on the Moon, will be able to detect aboriginal creator spirits, rainbow serpents, celestial emus, or Barraiya, the aboriginal deity who, as you’ll doubtless be aware, created the first vagina.

Executive Manager of CSIRO’s Office of Indigenous Engagement, Louisa Warren, said giving the telescopes traditional names acknowledges and pays respect to the astronomical knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The particulars of that “astronomical knowledge,” also referred to as “ancient wisdom,” and its bearing on modern radio astronomy, are, alas, not shared in the press release. We are, however, told that the “telescope naming project,” which involved CSIRO staff, Wiradjuri Elders, the NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group and various other bodies, required “over two years” of work. Readers intrigued by the promise of astronomy being enhanced with, and perhaps superseded by, ancient aboriginal wisdom can partake of this cosmic bong rip.

Update, via the comments:

Janice Fiamengo on inclusive, decolonised, anti-rational academia:  

This is probably now the top hot-button issue at Canadian universities – the move to replace ‘European-based knowledge’ as exclusionary, inadequate and subjective, and to replace it in some cases with “indigenous knowledge,” and even something called “indigenous science”… what some might say is superstition or magical beliefs… The idea that “indigenous knowledge” is not to be questioned, that it has value equal to supposedly ‘European’ science… is an incredibly worrisome and strange idea.

Do watch in full for the anecdotes about the realities of so-called “affirmative action,” and the faculty lounge response to hearing of the 9/11 atrocities. If you’re new here and unfamiliar with Professor Fiamengo’s observations on campus culture, I recommend watching this. 

Somewhat related, scenes from Cape Town’s decolonised academia, where “science people” are scolded for “disrespecting progressive space” – specifically, for doubting the claim that Africans can throw lightning at their enemies.

Lia Eustachewich on Harvard’s woke racism: 

A Harvard University dean testified that the school has different SAT score standards for prospective students based on factors such as race and sex — but insisted that the practice isn’t discriminatory… [Dean of admissions, William Fitzsimmons] said Harvard sends recruitment letters to African-American, Native American and Hispanic high schoolers with mid-range SAT scores, around 1100 on math and verbal combined out of a possible 1600… Asian-Americans only receive a recruitment letter if they score at least 250 points higher — 1350 for women, and 1380 for men.

The words that come to mind are systemic and institutional. See also this and this. 

Our beloved state broadcaster brings tidings of intersectional joy: 

Reading about quantum physics has really helped me understand my queer identity… It is in this model of space-time as a series of entanglements that I’m able to piece together all of the fragmented sects of my identity – being able to identify as British and Iraqi, as queer and Muslim, as someone of many genders and potentially no genders at all.

Readers may wish to imagine the faces of, say, Erwin Schrödinger or Max Planck on hearing their field being compared with the staggering intellectual heft and rigour of “queer theory.” By a chap with blue eyebrows, fake boobs and voluminous pink acrylic hair.

Via sk60.

Via Herb Deutsch, Heather Mac Donald on identitarian dogma versus scientific proficiency: 

Yale has created a special undergraduate laboratory course that aims to enhance minority students’ “feelings of identifying as a scientist.” It does so by being “non-prescriptive” in what students research; they develop their own research questions. But “feelings” are only going to get you so far without mastery of the building blocks of scientific knowledge. Mastering those building blocks involves the memorisation of facts, among other skills. Assessing student knowledge of those facts can produce disparate results. The solution is to change the test or, ideally, eliminate it. A medical school supervisor recently advised a professor to write an exam that was less “fact-based” than the one he had proposed, even though knowledge of pathophysiology and the working of drugs, say, entails knowing facts.

Note too the claim, by the National Science Foundation, that progress in science requires a “diverse STEM workforce,” seemingly regardless of how this goal is arrived at. And as if the insufficiently “diverse” scientists previously supported by the NSF, and who between them have racked up a mere 200 Nobel Prizes, were somehow under-performing due to antiquated expectations of actual competence.

Also at Yale, this. Because an “emotional support guinea pig” is now a thing that exists.

Noah Rothman on the cost of universities’ administrative bloat: 

In the 20-year period from 1985 to 2005, the number of administrators increased at universities by 85 percent while the number of students and faculty increased by only 50 percent. In that same period, the number of administrative staff ballooned by a staggering 240 percent. It is no coincidence that in nearly the same period… the cost of achieving a higher education exploded. Between 1985 and 2011, the cost of a four-year degree increased by 498 percent while consumer inflation rose by just over 100 percent.

And Toni Airaksinen smells more money being burned in the name of wokeness: 

The University of California-Irvine Esports programme is looking to help promote “social justice” in the competitive gaming industry. 

Consequently, computer-games enthusiasts will be “required to undergo ‘diversity and inclusion’ trainings.”

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

According to Cheryl E. Matias and Paul T. Le, both of the University of Colorado at Denver, the belief that the apprehension of, and substance of, scientific discoveries is independent of whatever one’s skin colour may happen to be, is a problem. One that results in the spread of “whiteness ideology,” and thereby “white supremacy.”  

Nikita Vladimirov pokes through the mental wreckage: 

According to Matias and Le, “our science is out of touch with the experiences of our students of Colour and, instead, represents post-colonial discourses of White power and control.” “Whiteness embraces White ideology, and because Whites are at the apex of the racial hierarchy, whiteness becomes normalized and is invisible to those who benefit the most from it,” the scholars observe. “This is particularly troubling because the normality of whiteness means that Whites do not believe that they are actively investing in White supremacy or racism, which keeps oppression intact.”

And Kafkatrapping, apparently, is the apex of woke scholarship.

Because if you demur, or suggest that the laws of electromagnetism don’t dramatically alter depending on the melanin levels of the person doing the maths, then you just don’t care about “students of Colour” being “victims of deculturalization” and being “invalidated.” Indeed, you are “erasing the values and culture of indigenous people,” and are bolstering “post-colonial discourses of White power and control over people of Colour via forcing the internalization of Western science knowledge.” Instead, all people of pallor must denounce themselves as oppressors, embrace “other ways of knowing” and “re-imagine what science education spaces can look like.”

Sadly, however, and despite the assertions above, the aboriginal alternatives to Maxwell’s equations and commutative algebra remain oddly unspecified.

Somewhat related. 

Update: