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For Tablet, Stanford University Professor John Ioannidis wrote a thought provoking essay about how a changing attitude towards the philosophy of science during the course of the pandemic has led to the polarization and politizatition of data, which has, in turn, confused the already complicated conversation surrounding COVID-19 prevention and treatment. Ioannidis says that:

Anything any apolitical scientist said or wrote could be weaponized for political agendas. Tying public health interventions like masks and vaccines to a faction, political or otherwise, satisfies those devoted to that faction, but infuriates the opposing faction. This process undermines the wider adoption required for such interventions to be effective.

Ioannidis believes that the unsung heroes of this pandemic have been scientists who stuck out their necks and followed the data, especially when they were contradicting popular political narratives on either side. He writes:

Many excellent scientists have had to silence themselves in this chaos. Their self-censorship has been a major loss for scientific investigation and the public health effort. My heroes are the many well-intentioned scientists who were abused, smeared, and threatened during the pandemic. I respect all of them and suffer for what they went through, regardless of whether their scientific positions agreed or disagreed with mine. I suffer for and cherish even more those whose positions disagreed with mine.

Read the full article here. 

In FAIR Advisor Bari Weiss’ Substack, Common Sense, high-school senior Daniel Idfresne wrote an insightful essay about his imperviousness to certain illiberal ideologies that have proliferated on college campuses over the last decade. He explains that while he is a “proponent of equality and pluralism,” he does not believe or partake in the “self-aggrandizing” and “virtue signalling” tendencies that are common among his peers.

Idfresne attributes his “inoculation” from these ideologies, in part, to being raised by his Haitian immigrant parents who instilled in him from an early age a set of values that include “charity, civility, responsibility, and tenacity.” He worries that young people today are not being taught to use the tools they need to “answer the questions that really matter” such as “What is truth? What is justice? And what is the purpose of life?” He states:

When acceptance is the highest value, when avoiding condemnation online is worth more than the truth, the truth will be swiftly discarded... My generation’s been told that truth or justice are merely assertions of power. Except here’s the thing: The square root of 64 is 8, the Moon is nearly 239,000 miles from the Earth, and you do not need to believe in God to see that goodwill is a force for positive change. Believing in that is the ultimate immunization against nihilism.

Idfresne is now working alongside FAIR to help set up a network of “FAIR at School” clubs for K-12 students. He will also be one of the panelists at our upcoming Mental Health Webinar. For more information, see the “Upcoming Events” section at the end of this newsletter.

Read Idfresne’s full article here.

For Tablet, Andrew Fox wrote a compelling essay on issues with conformity and the need for tolerance. Fox argues that we ought to be more neighborly, not only to those who are actually next door (although that is also recommended), but also to strangers online. Fox claims:

[T]he social media venues of our current Age of Conformity allow for the split-second gathering of faceless, nameless online mobs whose impact on individual lives and careers are no less devastating than McCarthy-era blacklists.This speeding up of commentary and cutting out of face-to-face engagement abets an easy, frictionless dehumanization of one’s opponents.

Fox describes the current state of “cancel culture” and censorship as being rather more like a kind of Censureship, which he describes as “attempts to apply focused, massed social opprobrium to psychologically punish and socially isolate the target, or to inflict economic damage by rendering the target so socially radioactive that his or her employer fires the individual or withdraws from a contract.”

Fox impels us all to try and “seek commonalities with those around us” instead of “retreating to the defensive shelter of opposing conformist tribes.” By focusing on our shared interests as Americans instead of defining ourselves by our disagreements, he hopes we can prevent the further deterioration of our public discourse.

Read the full essay here. 

For The Hill, Rachel Scully reported the positive news that the approval of interracial marriage in America is at an all time high of 94 percent, according to the most recent Gallup poll. Scully writes:

The figures are up 7 percentage points from polling in 2013.Gallup first began polling Americans on the question in 1958, when the country was nearly universally opposed to interracial marriage. At the time, just 4 percent of U.S. adults approved.

On Twitter, FAIR Advisor Melissa Chen said these data suggests that, “we have, as a society, never been less racist. But the narratives that dominate our cultural institutions keep saying otherwise.” 

We at FAIR celebrate this news, and will continue to stand up firmly for pro-human values, and challenge all who seek to divide us.

Read the full article here. 

For UnHerd, FAIR Advisor Ayaan Hirsi Ali reflected on the future rights and well-being of women and girls in Afghanistan following the United State’s recent withdrawal. She explained that “A generation of girls was raised without knowing life under Taliban control. And they soared.” For instance, the numbers of women attending university rose nearly seven-fold between 2013 and 2018, life expectancy increased by almost 10 years, and their literacy rate doubled. Hirsi Ali writes:

Their successes were awe-inspiring. They were also a source of pride for Americans. They were, in part, America’s girls — girls raised to know a certain level of freedom, with their rights secure and protected, thanks to the U.S.-led intervention prompted by 9/11.

In the wake of the Taliban’s take-over, Afghan universities are being segregated by sex, and women are now required to cover their faces to attend. Women are not being included in the new administration, nor are they allowed to play sports. Some women are not even allowed to work. Despite all of this, Hirsi Ali ends with a case for optimism:

The women of Afghanistan will fight back. They’ve already begun. Protests are erupting across the country. Women of all ages are standing firm against the Taliban…The Taliban cannot undo the last 20 years. These women and girls are refusing to submit to a new Dark Age. That glimmer of hope, sparked after 9/11, has not been extinguished. Even with the Taliban in control, America’s girls aren’t going to give up.

Read the full article here.

Last week, in City Journal, FAIR Advisor Christopher F. Rufo unearthed concerning materials from tech giant Google’s “antiracism” initiative. The documents reveal that Google employees are being taught that America is a “system of white supremacy” and that all Americans are “raised to be racist.” In addition to these lessons, employees were made to participate in the process of “deconstructing their racial and sexual identities,” which were then used to rank them in terms of their power and privilege.

In a widely shared internal document created by Google’s diversity, equity, and inclusion lead, Beth Foster, one graphic claimed that things like racial “colorblindness,” “whiteness,” and even the notion of “American exceptionalism” were manifestations of “covert white supremacy.”

According to Rufo, “There is no doubt that racism is a social evil, but instead of tackling it head-on, some employees at Google appear to have succumbed to the latest pernicious academic fads” that support the idea of collective guilt and essentialize people based on the color of their skin.

Read the full article here, and view the contentious Google “antiracism” documents here.

For Newsweek, FAIR Advisor Maud Maron wrote a reflective and personal piece about the costs to both individuals and society for staying silent in the face of divisive falsehoods.

Maron reflected on her silence when Harry Potter author JK Rowling received blowback for speaking out about what she perceived as a regressive ideology surrounding issues of sex and gender. Despite being sympathetic to Rowling’s position, Maron initially chose to remain silent, fearing that she too would be unfairly maligned and threatened for speaking up. 

Maron says that we all have a duty to speak honestly and respectfully with our fellow Americans about ideas that matter, such as on ideologies and language that she believes “erases the reality of biological women.” She holds that these ideas, no matter how well-intentioned, “[do] not, and cannot, require me to lie or teach a generation of children a falsehood.” She concludes that:

If America is to remain a place where we have the freedom to speak simple truths out loud, we must remove the penalties attached to rejecting...orthodoxy... [I]f your ideas have merit—as some do—then convince your fellow Americans of your points; don't bully them into silence.

Read the full article here.

In The New York Times, FAIR Advisor and Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker was interviewed on a number of topics, including his latest book, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (available September 28th). 

Fundamentally, Pinker is an optimist. He believes that, despite the challenges we face—as individuals, as nations, and as a species—we are better off now (in 2021) than we have been at any time in history. According to Pinker, “It’s not irrational to identify genuine threats to our well-being,” however, “It is irrational to interpret a number of crises occurring at the same time as signs that we’re doomed.”

When asked whether he believes that making comparisons to past levels of suffering minimizes present day oppression, Pinker insists this criticism is based on a fallacy: 

It can be true both that there are fewer poor people, fewer oppressed people, fewer victims of violence and that there are still poor people, oppressed people and victims of violence. We want to reduce that suffering as much as possible. The fact that there has been progress helps us identify what drives down poverty and violence and illness.

Read the full interview here.

FAIR Spotlight

FAIR Spotlight is where we share the reasons our members give for supporting FAIR’s pro-human mission. If you would like to share the reasons you support FAIR, please do so by emailing [email protected].

This week we are spotlighting excerpts from an email sent to us by FAIR member Henry Gonzales.

*     *     *

My name is Henry. I am a husband, a father, a human.

I was born in Caracas, Venezuela. My early youth in a developing country taught me that life is hard and full of suffering—I’ve seen abject poverty first-hand. I am also keenly aware that the societal ills of intolerance and racism are not unique to the United States, nor endemic only to those labeled as “whites”—it is a human frailty.

Emigrating to the United States as a teen in the mid 80’s was difficult. It opened my eyes to the reality of what it is like to be an outsider in society; to not be adept at speaking the native language and to be subjected to ridicule because my accent.  Sometimes, looking a certain way led to feeling stripped of my unique, individual nationality and being lumped in with other peoples, not American, not always in a favorable way...

Continue reading Henry's essay on the FAIR Community forum here. 

Upcoming Events

On September 22nd from 8:00pm-9:30pm EST, FAIR will be hosting a Mental Health Webinar titled “A Path Forward: Protecting Students’ Mental Health in a Divisive World.” 

The panel will include FAIR members and former educators Paul Rossi and Dana Stangel-Plowe, psychoanalyst, parent coach, and author Erica Komisar, LCSW, and healthcare expert Dr. Carrie Mendoza, MD, and Brooklyn Technical High School senior Daniel Idfresne. Panelists will discuss how ideologies that fixate on immutable traits contribute to childhood anxiety and depression, the ways human psychology is being manipulated to push illiberal ideas, the psychological impact of shaming and silencing speech, and much more.

Register for the event here.

Please join our Educator Curriculum Webinars on September 16th, 23rd, and 30th from 7:00pm-8:00pm EDT, where we will be introducing the FAIRstory curriculum principles, standards, lesson plans, and resources. Separate Parent Curriculum Webinars will be taking place on September 17th, 24th, and October 1st from 12:00pm-1:00pm EDT.

Register for an Educator Curriculum Webinar here.

Register for a Parent Curriculum Webinar here.

Every two weeks, FAIR will be hosting several Grassroots Advocacy Training Workshops for members. Go here learn about each session and how to register.