What do we value as an academic and a scientific community? Do our core values include only the pursuit of facts and inventions, to the exclusion of other considerations? Or do we accept that scientists have a responsibility to serve society beyond simply expanding the knowledge base, and should therefore concern themselves (at least in part) with how their words and actions intersect and impact the human sphere?
Does our support the important concept of academic freedom, mean we resist attempts to curtail lines of enquiry. Does that mean we must tolerate arguments that are racist, sexist, ableist or otherwise discriminatory? Loud voices on the right demand that we must, especially from the populist right wing political figures and the media. We agree with this paper that we need a responsible melding of academic freedom AND communication that is respectful and inclusive.
The same questions are also central to recent debate (1−4) regarding whether the scientific community should continue to retain “named” scientific phenomena in cases where the eponymous scientist has engaged in conduct that is inconsistent with contemporary values, even if that behavior is entirely separate from their scientific discoveries. Whether namesake buildings, lectures, and awards should be renamed is also under discussion, (5) and similar questions arise regarding a controversial personal essay that was retracted in 2020 by the journal Angewandte Chemie. (6−9) This conversation is interwoven with the emergence of historically marginalized voices within society, particularly on social media, along with the emergence and evolution of “cancel culture” as a new narrative. (10−15) Efforts to call out inappropriate speech or behavior can lead to legal, professional, or social consequences for those accused; to some, this represents “cancel culture run amok”. To critics, social media call-outs inhibit open debate and thereby threaten traditional academic freedom to express unpopular views.
In this Guest Commentary, we suggest that the aforementioned efforts by universities and scientific journals, which are aimed at promoting inclusivity, are nothing at all like the actions of a totalitarian government, as some have suggested. (2,16,17) Diversity efforts, especially those targeting faculty hiring, have sometimes been mischaracterized as exercises in “critical race theory”, but this is equally hyperbolic in our view. The question that we address is whether inclusivity efforts generally constitute unreasonable censorship and political correctness, or whether they are instead manifestations of a long-overdue reckoning about values. Below, we elaborate using several case studies before turning to broader questions related to the pursuit of diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of a path toward excellence at our universities and within our scientific community.
Herbert, JM., Martin Head-Gordon, M., Hrant P. Hratchian, Head-Gordon, T., Amaro, RE., Aspuru-Guzik, A., Hoffmann, R., Parish, CA., Payne, CM., & Van Voorhis, V. (2022) Words Matter: On the Debate over Free Speech, Inclusivity, and Academic Excellence. Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. 13(30) 7100–7104
Publisher (Open Access): https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.2c02242?utm_source=cw_reaction&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cw_newsletters
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