As so many of us do, I made a (somewhat now embarrassing) New Year’s resolution. I had resolved to ‘come out’ on Twitter as a conservative to ‘the world’… or at least, the world I know as academic Twitter. I even had my introductory statement written and saved:
This message is meant for my fellow traditional- and libertarian-leaning conservative friends, colleagues, and trainees who have felt ostracized by their progressive academic colleagues for some time now. I’ve spoken to so many of you in private. I write this for all of you because I want people to know that just because people disagree with us on many things, that does not make us any less of a friend or colleague, it doesn’t make us any less capable of being good scientists or good mentors. It doesn’t make us bad or evil people.
Best laid plans do often go awry, don’t they?
The Lost Plot is my own little Neil Armstrong moment. There are a lot of things going on ‘in academia’ that are beyond what happens on traditional college campuses (discussed ad libitum by a host of better writers) that the vast majority of tax-paying Americans don’t know is happening. The sorts of things that have real ramifications. My goal for The Lost Plot is to put these topics out into the ethos. Although my main goal is to inform the non-academic world as best as possible, I do have ulterior motives for this. I want to fulfill the mission I so inelegantly wrote as the introductory paragraph of my Twitter ‘coming out’. I want to let other academics, especially biomedical and physical science academics, who see what I see but feel there’s no one else out there noticing, that we do exist. In the immortal words of Tobias Funke, “There are dozens of us… DOZENS!”
Why I am writing this anonymously.
Most of you who read this can envision how an academic might get ‘cancelled’. The person’s information is discovered and doxxed, the media (particularly the online op-ed world) blows up to crucify the person, their colleagues ostracize them, their department chair or Dean of the school (so often the Ass. Dean) refuses to defend them or worse, sells them out. And even if the person is ‘tenured’ (a tenuous distinction these days) and isn’t fired, life at said institution is made a living Hell. Look no further than the classic example of Peter Boghossian (I highly recommend his piece written for Bari Weiss’ Common Sense Substack here).
Many of the very public examples happened at traditional universities with faculty who are in social science or other liberal arts departments. Scientists in biomedical and physical sciences, especially those not contained in traditional undergraduate institutions (an extremely common occurrence in biomedical science; think MD Anderson Cancer Center), face very different issues. Let me walk you through my personal experience. I don’t teach or interact with any undergraduate students, unless they have already graduated and want to spend a couple years as a technician in my lab prior to going to graduate or medical school. My lab is made up mostly of graduate students that come from a handful of specialty programs and postdoctoral fellows who are recruited through job ad posting, networking at conferences, and more recently via Twitter. Here is how my career is ended:
1. My information is doxxed on Academic Twitter,
2. One of many highly online graduate students sees this doxxing and tells other students in the program about this. A cruel game of telephone ensues, and subsequent graduate students decide not to rotate in or join my lab,
3. Potential technicians and postdoctoral fellows see the negative attention I receive on Twitter and decide not to email me to join my lab,
4. Taken together, I have trouble staffing my lab, which leads to diminishing productivity,
5. But wait, there’s more! Almost ALL editors of almost ALL scientific journals are on Twitter. They see the negative attention, and decide it isn’t worth sending our manuscripts out for review.
6. Turns out, academic Twitter also has faculty who sit on the study sections (such as NIH study sections) that determine whether or not your research gets funding. These scientists see what I have said, and decide (consciously or unconsciously) I am not a good scientist or that our lab doesn’t deserve funding.
The net result? I have no people to staff a lab, no publications (or lower impact publications), and no funding to continue running a lab. Without these things, there is nothing keeping an institution from firing me, because we don’t teach undergraduate classes nor do we have traditional tenure. My career would be over with no obvious job prospects to follow. Needless to say, I will remain anonymous for as long as possible.
What sort of topics will I be covering?
I am not a columnist. I am a scientist. I have a faculty appointment. I have a laboratory with technicians, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows. I have to write grants, present research at conferences/invited talks, and publish our results in peer-reviewed journals. All time-consuming endeavors. But I think this is an important thing to do, too. Below is a spattering of topics I plan to write on. Beyond Topic 1, these are in no particular order, and I give no promises as to how frequently I will post these. But I do intend to write on most, if not all, of these.
Topic 1: The peril of emerging top-down DIE and URM policy for NIH grants
Topic 2: Medicine v. Public Health
Topic 3: What is diversity? (And what is really meant by 'diversity' in academia)
Topic 4: Why we should evolve Meritocracy, not eliminate it.
Topic 5: The dangers of paying lip service to 'woke' ideologies in biomedical science
Topic 6: A roadmap for building new scientific institutions
Topic 7: Why we should eliminate the CDC and replace it with a Center for Emerging Pathogens
Topic 8: The scourge that is the 'diversity statement' requirement for biomedical science faculty positions.
Topic 9: The rise of Red State biomedical science institutions
Topic 10: A Call to Republicans: Academia and biomedical research are not low stakes battlefields
So here we are. The beginning of a wonderful journey. It remains to be seen if this is a Lord of the Rings-style journey or a The Hobbit-style journey (the movies, not the books). Who knows, maybe this will turn out to be The Silmarillion… time will tell.
- The Burke Abides
Haha you said Ass. Dean.
I’ll follow your Substack with rapt fascination. My father was one of the few openly (and proudly) conservative professors on his campus. There were others (Dozens!). But also a number who were fairly quiet about their conservative views. He taught politics, so he couldn’t exactly hide it, but the apple didn’t fall far from the tree: I spent my childhood arguing politics with his liberal colleagues liberal children (some of whom are friends of mine).
You’re definitely not the first person to use the closet/coming out framework to talk about being politically conservative in academia.
Here’s hoping it turns into the Silmarillion! David French is right: that might be Tolkien’s best work!