EA - Smart Movements Start Academic Disciplines by ColdButtonIssues

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Smart Movements Start Academic Disciplines, published by ColdButtonIssues on September 25, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Cross-posted from Cold Button Issues. There’s a lot of academic disciplines out there. And sometimes new ones emerge. I have a semi-defensive philosopher friend who likes to explain how many of today’s independent academic disciplines are just offshoots of philosophy. Sometimes a new discipline (like biochemistry) emerges out of old disciplines due to increases in knowledge and specialization. Sometimes individual departments or whole disciplines rebrand to seem more current or generally applicable- such as the transformation of many forestry schools into schools of the environment and sustainability studies. Other times, new disciplines are created due to political activism. And once created they can be a huge asset to the movements or ideologies that spawned them. The Left and Its Disciplines Sixty years ago there were no Women’s Studies departments in the United States. There were no Black Studies departments either. Now they’re commonplace. Other ethnic studies programs have flourished as has queer studies. While none of these are common majors, they’re entrenched in both red states and blue states. Looking at the political skew of today’s colleges maybe the spread of these disciplines doesn’t seem that impressive but this was not inevitable. The political climate of US campuses when such disciplines began was not as friendly to leftwing identity politics as campuses typically are today. And there are still some universities and colleges that have refused to grant these newer disciplines their own department. Harvard does not have an ethnic studies department. How did this happen? A lot of activism. The Third World Liberation Front, at UC Berkeley, led a lengthy strike, occupied offices, and organized protests until the university acceded to their demands to establish ethnic studies at UC Berkeley. The establishment of the discipline of women’s studies was driven by the women’s liberation movement and the establishment of the first few programs depended on extensive activism, organization, and consciousness-raising. These disciplines didn’t just happen, they were fought for. Once a discipline is closely affiliated or established by an ideology and that discipline is widely established across American academia, it nearly guarantees the representation of that ideology even at institutions that are hostile to it. Departments of that discipline become commonplace, even expected. Take women’s studies or gender studies a field that is “inherently activist.” There are women’s studies or gender studies at many Christian colleges that have a reputation for ideological and theological conservatism. Calvin University- Dutch Reformed- has a gender studies program. Wheaton College- evangelical- offers a certificate in gender studies. Baylor University- Baptist- has a program. This means that even at relatively conservative schools there are professors who receive institutional funding to conduct feminist scholarship. That seems like a big win for the left! The Right Just Has Centers In American academia, there aren’t really right-wing disciplines, just less left-wing ones. At some colleges, conservative donors and activists have created academic centers designed to champion conservative beliefs, especially on economic issues. Sometimes they have names that don’t indicate a political affiliation, the Salem Center at UT-Austin. Sometimes their name makes their perspective pretty clear like the Bruce D. Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado. I assume these centers do deliver some advantages for the right. Donors fund them- they must think they provide some benefit. And I can think of impressive academics and ...