Only 37% of Remainer Academics would lunch with a gender critical colleague !

[GrimDamnFanjo]

order-order.com/2020/08/03/major-report-reveals-academic-freedom-is-in-danger-at-uk-universities/

Guido has the story on the research but is focussing on the remainer/leave/right/left angle and not the gender critical results.
I'm very shocked by this. What a state our universities are in.

Link to research paper: policyexchange.org.uk/publication/academic-freedom-in-the-uk-2/

Ugh, that is fucking tragic. And the way the question was phrased! - not just "a GC colleague" but someone "who opposes admitting transwomen to women's refuge centres". Refuge centres!

It was in the Times too. I was bloody shocked.

Well, I can confirm that my colleagues are still willing to have lunch with me, despite knowing my views on this! In fact, many of them quietly share my views.

What I find worrying about the data is just how out of step academics are with the rest of the country.(p55 of report). It's been obvious for a long time that this is the case, and it's not going to end well for our sector. I can see certain disciplines being completely decimated when the savage cuts that are obviously coming take place. The public will applaud, and who can blame them?

Sorry, p. 53.

The Times today

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/right-wing-academics-forced-to-hide-views-jftvx3mtp?shareToken=fec6cc237d2b60d60c2b4e5bdf1a5f41

And comment:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/academics-feel-forced-to-self-censor-0tt2jfw5l?shareToken=cf931989bc2da540b786fbbbeaa0e417

Only 54% of remainers would be comfortable lunching with someone who supported Leave, falling to just 37% with someone who opposes admitting transwomen to women’s refuge centres

I mentioned on another thread Chris Beckett's new book Two Tribes.

I'm a remainer and I'm very uncomfortable about "my tribe" now. The vitriol coming from some of them is shocking.

I'm also not sure how informed my tribe were. E.g one academic whinging about the EU funding she will lose. The UK contribution was more than it got back- the money still exists.

I thought the questions re remain and GC were separate, not linked as the title suggests but maybe I misread?

I'm a remainer and I'm very uncomfortable about "my tribe" now. The vitriol coming from some of them is shocking.
Me too. The complete refusal to even try to understand a different point of view, the self righteous arrogance of people who are only superficially tolerant.

I have the Times right here and the actual passage reads:

"Left leaning respondents were most likely to censor their critical perspectives towards transgender issues. Only 37% of respondents said they would feel comfortable lunching with someone who opposed admitting trans women to women's refuge centres"

NO mention at all of "Remainer academics".

Should also point out that Eric Kaufman, one of the authors, has an extremely poor reputation when it comes to manipulating statistics to suit his own agenda. So I'd take this with a very large pinch of salt until the paper has been reviewed properly.

As in:

twitter.com/jdportes/status/1290060308195635201

The report also features this little gem advising us to assume good intentions behind people conducting research to prove that black people are intellectually inferior.

twitter.com/jdportes/status/1290260155758649344/photo/1

Sorry, but if a tweet by Prof. Portes is all in terms of evidence for Eric Kaufman's "poor reputation" (one of three authors), then I'd like to see more. Not saying that this isn't true but hearsay on twitter isn't evidence.

Only 54% of remainers would be comfortable lunching with someone who supported Leave, falling to just 37% with someone who opposes admitting transwomen to women’s refuge centres

It doesn't actually say this.

"Left leaning respondents were most likely to censor their critical perspectives towards transgender issues. Only 37% of respondents said they would feel comfortable lunching with someone who opposed admitting trans women to women's refuge centres"

It doesn't say this either. I've quoted the relevant paragraphs from the original report here:

1. Self-censorship is even greater when it comes to sharing political beliefs with colleagues. For current SSH faculty (mainly Remain-supporting), only 3 in 10 think a Leave-supporter would be comfortable expressing their beliefs to colleagues, whereas 9 in 10 (86%) feel a Remain-supporter would be. Among current Leave-supporting academics, just 3 in 10 (28%) say a Leaver would be comfortable expressing their views to colleagues.

2. Dissenting academics also face problems with collegiality, a key aspect of most academic workplaces. While 86% of those surveyed reported that they would be comfortable sitting next to a Remain supporter, this falls to 54% for sitting next to a Leave supporter and just 37% for lunching with someone who opposes admitting transwomen to women’s refuge centres. Gender-critical scholars may thus face more discrimination than conservatives and Leavers.

So out of all respondents ('of those surveyed'), whatever their views on Leave or Remain or any other political views, 37% didn't want to socialise with people who oppose admitting transwomen to women's refuge centres.

They say it's 820 academics, then say that 330+ are retired which makes one wonder about the age demographic of the respondents. That's 40% of the respondents not currently working in academia and possibly retired for many years!

63% of academics are uncomfortable socialising with someone concerned for sex based safeguarding in women's refuges, don't understand the needs of women fleeing male violence, and don't understand or support sex based exemptions outlined in the Equality Act.

So much for education broadening the mind.

I don't understand why materialist, class-based analysis of sex and gender based issues is seen as a right-wing position. I get that GC views are less popular among left-wingers but while it doesn't really make sense framed as a left vs. right issue at all, to me it makes even less sense in the normal context of "left wing" and "right wing" to categorise the more individualist reading of the issue as leftist and the class-based as right wing.
Likewise leave/remain positions don't necessarily indicate right/left leanings just because the move to leave was Conservative-led, I know plenty of left-wing leavers and right wing remainers.
I voted Remain but I feel like I'm missing something with how emotionally invested I'm apparently supposed to be in it. I mean, tbh I do think it's going to be fairly shit and we're going to belly-flop out of the EU uselessly with no plan and end up spending shitloads of money for no real reward, but I don't think people who voted to Leave had bad intentions so I don't see why I'd hold it against them

OK the source of this is on p60 of the report:

policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Academic-freedom-in-the-UK.pdf

just 37% [of the academics surveyed would feel comfortable] lunching with someone who opposes admitting trans-women to women’s refuge centres. Even a majority of Leave supporters would not be comfortable doing so

So there is NO huge Remain/Leave divide here.

I'm a dedicated academic who is 100% committed to my students and my research. I've always loved my job. But of late I increasingly see the UK HE system as FUBAR. It's not just the increasingly censorious climate. There are other reasons, including those behind the recent spate of UCU strikes, as well as a toxic culture of bullying and micromanagement and the shocking mistreatment of women. And it's everywhere. Most summers I meet fellow-academics from my field in conferences up and down the country and overseas, and most of them have similar stories to tell. The frequency with which I've heard reports of sexual harrassment or misconduct is depressing, and the further tales of sweeping those incidents under the rug is frankly terrifying. These abusers - and that's what they are - know they're untouchable. There are few women academics who don't have at least one such incident to relate. Fewer of us still worked in a climate where they could safely report the situation and rely on our employers' protection.

I'm Gen-X. My time doesn't go far enough back to have participated in the heady days of second-wave feminism, but I was certainly around to see most people united against the kind of endemic, systemic misogyny that pervades the system from the outside in. It's an attitude I suspect has always existed but we had (I thought) reached a point where it was frowned upon to articulate it. In terms of progress it feels as though we are back in the inter war years. And regressing fast.

For the first time ever I could happily turn my back on academia tomorrow and not particularly miss it. Just three short years ago I'd have felt that if that were to happen, everything (bar family) I've ever cared for would have been taken from me. As of now, I've been giving serious thought to what other skills I have and what else I might be able to do professional, as unfortunately for me I have years to go until retirement.

It's a sentiment I thought I could never entertain. But we've gone so far backward in so short a time that I really don't see how it will ever improve.

I read the part of the report which is about the survey and its findings.

It's hard to see what statistical methods they used, at least on first reading, and some of the sentences suggest to me that at least the person writing those sentences didn't quite understand the methods. But I may be mistaken. They may just not have bothered to spell it all out.

I am not a great fan of the YouGov way of getting subjects to the studies for several reasons, mostly statistical, but yes, it's not particularly good that the survey sample has so many retired individuals if the goal is to learn about the situation today.

how out of step academics are with the rest of the country

I'm afraid I would say this is true. I've a lot of friends & family who are in academia - it just doesn't seem very related to the rest of the world; the rules are different, and incredibly homogenous. Seems to be self perpetuating, too - I get the strong impression that parts of academia are quite happy to be in this bubble of a clique, insulated from the exigencies and realities of life for most of the population.

Bluntly, academics are mostly privilged and quite happy to stay that way while seeing themselves somehow removed from the social norms others have to navigate. I wonder if all the recent importing of US social issues is a way of keeping an appearance of being socially engaged, while conveniently not having to face up to actual relevant issues in the UK? Hobby activism. All that 'aint it awful' and emotional petition-signing (I'm as guilty of this as the next person, I'm not mud-slinging) as a substitute for the often very dull, time consuming and pretty prosaic work involved in trying to effect real change.

37% of academics are happy to socialise with someone who opposed admitting transwomen to women's refuges. That is: 63% insist that abused women fleeing male violence are obliged to be exposed to males in a refuge. I find that quite shocking.

And clearly I'm so ill educated I can't even spell privileged.

NB. I'm leery of the statistics being banded around by that side of this discussion. But judging by the number of email signatures announcing pronouns, I don't suspect my own position illustrates a majority view.

The 'weaponising trauma' objection is one that sticks in the craw more than most. Aside from the fucking offensive notion that men have raped, stalked and assaulted me and are now taking the liberty of explaining to me how I should respond to that trauma, it leaves women in an even more precarious position far as sexual harrassment in the workplace is concerned.

To oppose women's rights under such circumstances makes about as much sense as a female anti-suffragist opposing her own right to autonomous citizenship and a vote. (Sadly these attitudes from servants to the patriarchy have always existed, and they've always been just as unfathomable).

Apologies for the pessimism, but today I'm travelling down the line of thinking that it's all fucked.

@Thelnebriati

63% of academics are uncomfortable socialising with someone concerned for sex based safeguarding in women's refuges, don't understand the needs of women fleeing male violence, and don't understand or support sex based exemptions outlined in the Equality Act.

So much for education broadening the mind.

This. When you frame it in reality, the entire ivory tower needs razing to the ground. However, the fact that more than a third of respondents are retired is quite bizarre.

The reason why 63% of academics would not have lunch with a gender critical person could also be because now guilt works through association.

As an aside, I noticed in the relevant graph that while the percentage willing to sit down with a gender critical person rises as we move from far left to far right, women of all political persuasions are slightly more willing to do so than men of all political persuasions.

Interesting - and not surprising.

I'm an academic with generally left leaning views, who's highly skeptical of the EU (e.g., for its inherent racism, and due to how it keeps developing countries subordinate via trade deals), and who thinks we need single sex spaces. Needless to say, these are very unpopular views.

I have learned to keep schtum. I have also learned to think of what we term "education" as largely indoctrination. For instance, what Oxbridge teaches us, in the main, is to be intellectual gatekeepers.