Welcome to the Conformity Gauntlet!
I am excited to announce that an adapted chapter (with a ton of new data) from Rikki Schlott and my book ‘The Canceling of the American Mind’ will be the cover story at Reason magazine next month. It describes what we call the Conformity Gauntlet — the incredibly difficult road you have in academia if you step out of line or question the ideological orthodoxy.
As in the phrase “running the gauntlet,” the process involves a series of hurdles, challenges, and setbacks you must overcome to reach your goal. In the Conformity Gauntlet, however, these trials have nothing to do with your level of skill, intelligence, or competence, but rather your rigidness in adhering to the ideas and behaviors of the academic ruling class. The idea is to keep dissenters out or at least make them extremely hesitant to dissent, and it works very well.
In the first part of the piece, Rikki and I explain the research which shows that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements function as political litmus tests. I mean, of course they do, but Nate Honeycutt at FIRE has done some really interesting experiments proving what should be obvious.
We then take the reader on an imaginary tour of academia from the point of view of an independent-minded highschooler and demonstrate how many conformity pressures he or she will face on their way to becoming a scientist. Layering the threats to free speech and conformity pressures on top of each other is key to really understanding how the Conformity Gauntlet works, because no single case really conveys how bad it’s gotten for freedom of inquiry and freedom of thought on campus on a systematic basis.
