Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Scientists strip offensive, racists names, journals, prizes etc

Ken,

You have brought up an important dimension - the case of collusion, collaboration, victimization, ideology,

and the over all macro-political scenario

with respect to science and scientists

in specific localities and epochs.

This  unfolding movement seems to be focusing on the micro-level, on technical

issues related to terminology, 

naming etc. - in addition to the wider

political context.

GE

 

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 4:05 PM Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

the scientists were often, not always, in the service of power. maybe power to run the most racist of murderous rulers--hitler. hitler aimed to eliminate "jewish" science--meaning the physics of einstein, who escaped. later that of neils bohr, who also escaped, with much greater difficulty. at the same time, heisenberg worked for the regime to build an atom bomb, but having chased out the best of the jewish brains, lost the race. in the end, it was the japanese who paid the price--the only people in history who were victims of atom bombs.

at the same time, they killed millions of chinese, and before that koreans, so we weep and cheer in the same breath.

scientists in support of s african apartheid govts'; in support of pseudo-scientific racism in the 19th c; and in support of soviet stalinism.

yet the story goes beyond that. the greatest russian physicist of the early 20th c, jailed by stalin, and broken by him. and greats like oppenheimer or heisenberg, tarred by cold war politics in the former, by nazism in the latter case.

it is a mistake, despite all this, to judge their work simply on the bases of the monsters who ruler their societies. think about it: in russia, everyone was afraid of stalin, including musicians and artists and filmmakers and thinkers, as well as scientists. in the cold war, it was very close to the same in the u.s.

yet no one was fooled into associating the epistemology that deferred to the regime with real science. and i'd argue that is all the more the case today.

hard to say why, except that scientists actually have power, too. especially nowadays.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.emeagwali@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2020 12:16 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Scientists strip offensive, racists names, journals, prizes etc

 

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/amid-protests-against-racism-scientists-move-strip-offensive-names-journals-prizes-and

The journey has just started. Racism is

embedded in many of the text books, experiments, terminologies, the naming process,  procedures  illustrations, and  assumptions  associated with mainstream Science. The decolonization and detoxification processes are long overdue.

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