Half the Answer #9: Language, Identity, and Anti-Woke Academic Slander
Trent and Caitlin talk with Dr. Aris Clemons, an Assistant Professor in Linguistics, about the various slanders and misapprehensions that plague her field of study. We discuss language ideologies, the illusion of objectivity, the futility of being “apolitical” in a political institution, ethnography and lived experience, “other ways of knowing,” and other concepts that get weaponized in attacks on the academy from the right and the center.
Half the Answer can be heard on Spotify, on Apple, on YouTube, on Amazon, and elsewhere via its RSS feed.
References:
Aris’s book chapter: https://academic.oup.com/book/56269/chapter/445192927
Universities as business entities: https://jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1gk07xz?turn_away=true
Science and subjectivity are compatible: https://iaphs.org/sciences-objectivity-conundrum/
A brief history of measurement: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-objectivity/
James Watson was no master of objectivity: https://vox.com/2019/1/15/18182530/james-watson-racist
Research has always been political: https://bioethicstoday.org/blog/the-folly-of-apolitical-science/
“Apolitical” science treated humans like objects https://thoughtco.com/u-s-governments-role-sterilizing-women-of-color-2834600
“Institutional Neutrality” https://chronicle.com/article/institutional-neutrality-is-censorship-by-another-name
