A top University of California, Berkeley physicist resigned, saying the school discriminates against scientists who do not hold certain political views.
David Romps, director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center, resigned from his role at the university after Berkeley refused his request to invite Dorian Abbot, a professor at the University of Chicago whose lecture at MIT was canceled due to his political views, to speak on campus.
“Excluding people because of their political and social views diminishes the pool of scientists with which members of BASC can interact and reduces the opportunities for learning and collaboration,” Romps said Monday on Twitter. “Such exclusion signals that some opinions — even well-intentioned ones — are forbidden, thereby increasing self-censorship, degrading public discourse, and contributing to our nation’s political balkanization.”
MIT CANCELS PROFESSOR’S LECTURE AFTER VIDEOS AND OP-ED REBUKING EQUITY AGENDA
“Consequently, I am stepping down from the directorship at the end of this calendar year or when a replacement is ready, whichever is sooner,” he added.
Abbot faced criticism from students and faculty after expressing pro-meritocracy and anti-woke ideas in videos and opinion articles from 2020 and 2021.
Abbot wrote an opinion article in August defending freedom of expression and challenging campus diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, prompting backlash from left-wing colleagues.
“The underlying premise of DEI is that any statistical difference between group representation on campus and national averages reflects systemic injustice and discrimination by the university itself,” he wrote. “DEI violates the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment. It entails treating people as members of a group rather than as individuals, repeating the mistake that made possible the atrocities of the 20th century.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The controversy caused MIT to cancel a lecture Abbot was scheduled to give on campus.
“UC Berkeley’s administration regrets that the director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center (BASC) has decided to resign given that faculty members affiliated with the Center have/had not yet fully discussed and considered — much less decided — whether to extend an invitation to the speaker in question,” said Berkeley Assistant Vice Chancellor Dan Mogulof. “Having said that, this University believes that diversity of perspective is absolutely essential to our academic mission and public character. That belief is embedded and enshrined in our Principles of Community, which were compiled and adopted by our faculty, students, and staff. Those Principles, among other things, call for, ‘freedom of expression and dialogue that elicits the full spectrum of views” and “respect (for) the differences as well as the commonalities that bring us together.'”
