I think sheโs absolutely right here:
So my post on the liberal slant in academia has garnered what I believe to be a record number of comments, many, even most of them, pretty angry. And as I predicted, the positions are very much reversed from the normal take on such things. Conservatives are explaining how bias can be subtle and yet insidious; and liberal, many of them academics are saying that you canโt simply infer bias from statistical underrepresentation, and sarcastically demanding to know whether I really think that people are asking candidates for physics professorships who they voted for in the last election.
Theyโre all right, of course: you canโt simply infer bias from statistical underrepresentation, and yet bias can be subtle and yet insidious.
Iโve written a fair amount about racial bias (shameless plug: Iโm pitching around a book on the subject), and I think conservatives too often disregard the mountains of evidence we have that racism is still a reasonably strong force in modern America. But then again, liberals disregard the mountains of evidence we have that racial groups differ in their average abilities and preferences, and simply assume that every disparity must be attributable to discrimination โ theyโve even succeeded in implementing this notion legally, via โdisparate impact.โ






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