Scientists strip offensive, racists names, journals, prizes etc

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Gloria Emeagwali

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Jul 4, 2020, 4:51:41 AM7/4/20
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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.


Harrow, Kenneth

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Jul 4, 2020, 4:05:21 PM7/4/20
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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

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.e...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2020 12:16 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@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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Gloria Emeagwali

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Jul 4, 2020, 4:39:15 PM7/4/20
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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
 

Harrow, Kenneth

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Jul 4, 2020, 10:00:59 PM7/4/20
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my son is a physiciist, so i hear oor learn some things from him. one thing, pertiinent to this discussion, is the extent to which science, real science, science w labs and grad students, etc., all depends on one key thing. MONEY. all the europeans with talent came over to the u.s. after wwII because of the money and guns all the brains came to the u.s., except for the few russians who held on.
now we have an idiot of a president who doesn't begin to understand how he is wrecking the entire apparatus by cutting funding to u.s. science.
where it will go from here, china?
i don't know.
and what if the great discoveries are chinese? that's fine, except we know the chinese liike to keep whatever they can to themselves.
gotta go
k

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2020 4:25 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Scientists strip offensive, racists names, journals, prizes etc
 

Biko Agozino

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Jul 5, 2020, 11:54:51 AM7/5/20
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Not true that all science depends on money. When the apple fell on the head of Newton, he was away from all that money during the social isolation due to the epidemic of 1665-1666. The Germans also excluded Jewish scientists from funding for 'real' science and confined them to play in the sand box of theoretical physics, not knowing that theoretical work is the leading work in any discipline. Einstein must have cried like Brer Rabbit, oh no not the sand box, not the sand box. 

The lesson for African scientists is that we too can innovate theories even without a penny in funding by relying on the lab between our ears. It is not just the natural scientists who can theorize without a penny, where are the theoretical innovations of our sociologists, economists, political scientists, legal scholars, geographers, accountants? Are they too waiting for funding from America before following and advancing the innovations of Du Bois, Gramsci, Williams, James, Fanon, Cabral, Lewis, Nkrumah, Derrida, Hall, Davis, Soyinka, Achebe, Ngugi, Chinweizu, Gilroy, Ekwe-Ekwe, Diop, Asante, hooks, Marable, West, and many more who made innovations mostly without receiving a penny in grants while many with grants could not organize a piss-up in a brewery?

Biko

Harrow, Kenneth

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Jul 5, 2020, 12:27:59 PM7/5/20
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if not all science, almost all science depends on money.
what i was referencing was the big question, what drew physicists to the u.s.after world war two. iit was money, money for labs, to do experiments that couldn't be done in england or france, much less germany. germany was the home to physics before world war 2, and the war and hitler killed that. the russians carried on, but the physicists were in a virtual prison.

i wasn't thinking so much of the earlier periods of history when things like labs and experiments that were costly, and lab grad students etc., where less important. but even then, the "royal" societies set up in france in the 17th century and then in england, and no doubt elsewhere, were set up to promote the sciences. that was certainly capital.
ken


kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 11:06 AM
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