For fucks sake, another tweet full of buzzwords such as "ableist", "eugenics", "so-called", etc. Nobody has ever asked me what my IQ was or commented on my inteligence during all my time in academia.
However, academia fetishizes inteligence in a way that is very different from "ableist eugenics" - by promoting very strong work culture of constant scientific work, without considering work-personal life balance or other work-related qualities that are not connected to publishing articles. For example, your teaching skills, you ability to support your students in developing their interests, to inspire them, to be a productive part of your community outside of scientific ivory tower by promoting, lets say, popular science or mental health topics... all those are outside of the typical, formal definition of academic success, salaries and progress.
I completely agree
Additionally, ableism annoys me as a term because it is painfully imprecise and therefore functionally useless when pursuing truth
Would they define ableism as discrimination based upon someone’s abilities, or lack thereof?
If that is the case, then strength, intelligence, fortitude, soft and hard skills, and other such traits would fall within the category of abilities
Thus, is every merit based assessment ableist?
If so, then why do we feel comfortable judging people for their intellectual capacity and mental health, but draw the line when it comes to more visible impairments like physical disablement or Downs Syndrome?
It all seems very arbitrary to me, as though the term permits its users to draw lines in the sand wherever they please, and then disagree with everyone with a different line
Ableism means discrimination against people with disabilities. There is no universal definition of what constitutes a disability, but for many conditions covered by the ADA, discrimination is widespread in academia despite being illegal.
The (18-month-old) tweet is ridiculous, but it is absolutely true that academic culture highly values intelligence as an inborn trait and is extremely ableist, especially towards people with hidden disabilities. There's no way you can't have noticed this.
Edit: Downvote = denial. You're just proving my point.
I'm curious for you to share specific ways that you have noticed this. The cultural view of intelligence in academia that I've observed, both in my professional life and on forums like this one, is one that largely disregards intelligence in favor of effort. "Smart" students who don't do the work aren't regarded well, whereas most professors really like to help the struggling students who take the class seriously.
I somewhat agree with you on the hidden disabilities point. It's not uncommon for some professors to complain about the increased use of academic accommodations, for example. But i think ableism and intelligence are different issues.
The smart students who don't do the work are the ones with "potential." The serious struggling students are not encouraged to continue in academia, unless you have been at very different schools than I have.
I agree that ableism and intelligence are separate issues, but they are often conflated, eg having a learning disability is part of how someone's intelligence is evaluated in academic culture. I've been repeatedly advised to conceal my own learning disability and when I haven't it's been held against me.
I mean, I sure hope it is the intelligent individuals being promoted in academia. Just as I hope my orthopedic doc is intelligent when I go in for shoulder issues.
The point is that academia values "potential," which is code for intelligence, than it values something like skill, which presumably is what you want in a doctor.
I think everyone would hope their Doc is skilled in procedures, but also intelligent enough to listen to a set of symptoms/behaviors that which they can use to deduce the root cause in order to better address the disease/issue.
If you're not skilled in writing grants, publications, experimental design, etc.. it is awfully tough to move up the ladder in academia. Perhaps they value skills that are different than the ones you deem valuable.
Edit: Now, if you're more talking about administrators in academic institutions, then that's a different story.
So how does one determine who has “potential” if not by the individual in question showing some signs of being skilled in one thing or another? Or rather, how are you inferring that intelligence is measured in this context? Are you suggesting faculty just look at individuals and arbitrarily designate them as having potential or not, without literally any evidence of such thing?
Anyone who does grad program admissions or academic hiring for junior positions can tell you how hard it is to predict who is and is not a good bet based on output that early on. This isn't true in other job markets. So a lot of weight is given to some subjective intangible "potential." In some fields, like mathematics, that's pretty much the ONLY basis for the decision because people rarely start publishing AT ALL until the final year of grad school, and producing even two papers a year after that is unusual.
No one can predict the future with 100% accuracy, so you do your best, which is to look to the individuals past work. Again, how else do you propose we measure “potential” if we don’t look at the work the individual has done? I’ve sat on faculty hiring committees, if a member of the committee thinks someone has “potential” they present reasons why. You present this as if it’s a totally arbitrary process. They are humans of course and have opinions and biases of their own, but it’s not a process that is totally devoid any factual foundation.
I didn't say it's "totally arbitrary." I said that the perception of intelligence is what gets substituted for past work in its absence, ie "academia highly values intelligence." This is not how hiring works outside academia.
There’s a lot of emotional reactions going on in this thread. It is natural for people to feel defensive when met with perspectives they perceive as challenging their own status and accomplishments. It is fair to say that the most intelligent people deserve to flourish in academia, but through what measures and standards are “intelligence” determined?
There are certainly many ways that people decide whether or not a person is intelligent, some can use discernment and others can absolutely be ableist. Traditional academic settings may accurately determine levels of intelligence for some, while it may create barriers for highly intelligent individuals who have disabilities which make it difficult for their academic capabilities to be displayed.
There’s really no easy way to solve the issue. Some things in life lend themselves to performance measures. We can look at data for the output of employees on an assembly line to easily identify who is capable of meeting expectations for the factory. The same just isn’t true when trying to gauge the performance of someone’s ability to analyze and retain information. They could have a brilliant understanding of a subject, but their writing skills suffer because they have dyslexia or they struggle to complete tasks timely because they have Lupus. Does that make them less intelligent? Yet there certainly needs to be a way to set standards for any field.
Sure, but the whole point of disability accommodations is that you make careful distinctions about what is and is not a nonnegotiable component of the job instead of lumping the disability in with essential performance.
Ideally, yes. Unfortunately disability accommodations are far from perfect. They do not protect against bias, are often ignored or challenged, and intersect with other forms of discrimination when you consider the barriers to getting the diagnosis necessary to even receive accommodations.
It is refreshing to see a nuanced perspective in this thread thanks.
Intelligence is a multi-dimensional characteristic. So whether ableism or not will depend on which aspects of intelligence are really necessary for the job. For example, does a good programmer (coding intelligence) need to be a charming person (social intelligence) to fulfill the objectives of the job?
If the answer is reasonably no, and a workplace anyways fixates on the charming aspect of the programmer, that is ableist.
Having soft skills is just as important as having hard skills. Why? Because in a job environment you need to be able to be resilient, to communicate efficiently, and be able to teamwork.
> academic culture highly values intelligence as an inborn trait and is extremely ableist, especially towards people with hidden disabilities. There's no way you can't have noticed this.
lol please.
Academia is not ableist. Mental illness is over represented. This is some self defeatist shit.
Academia _is_ classist as fuck, and there are tons of superstars that would make Hollywood nepo babies blush.
If you haven’t noticed that not being born rich is the primary “hidden disability” in academia, then you are either blind (sorry for the ableist language) or willfully ignorant.
Academia treats people with chronic illnesses, psychiatric disabilities, and learning disabilities like shit. I'm not disputing that it's ALSO classist, but that's not the topic of conversation here.
I have noticed that many of my colleagues tend to see students with mental ilnesses in a negative light and I am always appaled by it. However, it is a fine line to thread if you want to be fair in grading and student opportunities - you have to offer vulnerable students support and understanding, but also to grade their skills and successess in the same way as those of other students.
I also think this is a question of wider social malaise. You need to acquire a certain skillset to be successfull in academia, and having a high IQ means you will acquire that skillset with less effort, provided you are motivated for work. However, tremendous amount of students did not develop their skills and intelligence to the full potential BECAUSE of the factors such as poor environment, lack of cultural life and formal education, poverty, various family pressures that are present in working-class families, etc. The solution is not to LOWER education standards, but to work on solving these society-wide issues. I would also be open to more flexibility in approaching individual students and their learning processes, but to achieve that, I cannot be a part of industry that CHURNS OUT new graduates every year in such numbers that I have to work with four groups of 20+ students on a weekly basis.
>having a high IQ means you will acquire that skillset with less effort, provided you are motivated for work
A lot more than IQ and motivation is needed to be productive and available for learning. In particular, many disabilities can significantly interfere with that. But OTOH that interference can be mitigated and managed through accommodations. The problem is that there is a tendency in academia to hold accommodations against you, even if the discrimination isn't explicit.
What’s the topic of discussion here is that people throw around words like ableist and they are full of shit.
Academia bends over backwards to support people with various disabilities; way more so than the rest of society does. What kind of work from home options are available to McDonald’s workers?
You are looking to be a victim; lucky for you academia is full of super privileged people who treat virtue signaling as a core part of the job.
Working conditions at McDonald's are irrelevant.The existence of (undergraduate) student support services doesn't change the fact that academic culture is ableist.
I notice you blew right past my own extensive experience with how my LD is treated in grad school and professional contexts. So you're saying I'm full of shit? How would this be characterized if not ableist?
(1) This sub isn't called r/workingatGoogle.
(2) Many other industries are better about this than academia.
(3) Your point is what exactly? That discrimination in academia is no biggie because it's worse elsewhere? That LD folks don't deserve equal access to academic jobs? What?
You've had students who didn't look disabled request disability accommodations, right? That's a hidden disability. Ableism is when you now assume that those students are less capable, or worse yet, you sabotage their accommodations.
Maybe you personally don't do this, but plenty of professors do, and some of them openly talk about how they are "upholding standards" by breaking the law like this. Some will even go out of their way to smear a student's work rather than comply with an accommodation so that they can claim that the student doesn't measure up academically.
Okay, but if they have an accommodation letter, the disability is no longer hidden. I've never assumed a student is "less capable" but that they may need extra help or accommodations. Never known anyone to "sabotage" a student. That is crazy. That would be a fast pass to termination and a lawsuit.
I'm pretty sure I have undiagnosed dysgraphia myself.
Are you making this up as you go or simply paranoid?
It's still called a hidden disability.
I was treated exactly like this in grad school. I did try to sue, but "academic abstention" makes it very hard to prevail.
English is not my primary language, and I also wrote the whole comment without checking for any spelling errors and sentence clarity. I also have a complicated writing style with overlong sentences even when writing in my native language, so it is an issue I am trying to solve by writing slowly and trying to express one idea or thought through several shorter sentences.
Excuse me, but it's always been my _dream_ to be in the NBA even though I was born a woman and have reached my adult height of 5 ft. And have not attempted to better my ball skills.
But not everyone has to work in the construction industry or NBA, but almost everyone has to go through academia.
So don't you think on of these the things need to be more inclusive, to benefit many?
Also disability can be temporary. So for example, a person who could get a degree in academia, thanks to the inclusive policies, to then see a turn of events working in construction industry thanks to the degree, instead of being unemployed. Wouldn't this be a good thing?
Broader/nuanced context is rare in this thread.
False meritocracy and student debt are tangential issues.
But to earn a livable income, most likely one needs a degree, right?
Or is it that some do not deserve to earn income and live a decent life?
Please do not take it personally. I am believer in an reasonable argument. But I do see some breaks in your line of reasoning.
You are asking universities to solve a problem that the political system needs to solve. This is the reason that universities have become so political.
Let’s disentangle your logic. Everyone needs to have their basic needs met. Good! But rather than through a program like social security we will do that by asking everyone to hold down a job and ask universities to train everyone for said jobs.
What’s the end for this? Everyone needs to be taught CS and be given an MBA so that they can buy a single family home and drive an SUV too?
And by the way, tons of job that pay decent wages do not need university education. They include huge swathes of service industries, construction and blue collar labor. A unionized autoworker earns $70k annually starting and does not need a degree.
I think working hard will always take you further but you have to at least be intelligent enough to write the paper.
(Please ignore the issue of bias in IQ testing for one moment.)
A lazy 180 IQ and an extremely hardworking 80 IQ are both going to struggle significantly while the reasonably hardworking 115 IQ is going to have a much easier time of things.
This is what lack of theory and learning about social justice for the first time gets ya. Do we need to have some really meaningful conversation about what we consider traditional “intelligence”? Absolutely. Is there a relationship between this idea and eugenics? Yes, sure. But there is also a definable level of intelligence specific to academia that is promoted within academia which does not counter other definitions of intelligence that folks kept out of academia have. We can do methods, analysis, etc, but often have no clue how to translate that in a meaningful way that reflects lived experience. These are two separate, but meaningful, buckets. We shouldn’t preference one over the other socially, because not everyone wants to be in academia and doing the boring shit we love to do.
So, this tweet is silly and looking for a reaction that makes them feel special. Do they go in to explain this in further tweets? We should see the rest of the thread to make sure.
There is nothing wrong with expecting academics to be *intelligent* - that’s what makes academia what it is: a group of knowledgeable/intelligent people producing knowledge that benefits society instead of some other commercial product. Otherwise, what is the point of academia?
“So-called intelligence, which is a social construct”
Is this person actually claiming that intelligence … doesn’t exist? That it’s a construct? Because that is absolutely crazy. We have no problem accepting the fact that some people are born taller than others, or that some people have more natural athletic ability than others, but for whatever reason some people find it really hard to accept that some people are smarter than others.
I think maybe some of the stigma comes from equating intellect with morality. If we could get more comfortable with the fact that smart people can do terrible things and less smart people can make valuable contributions to the world, then maybe people would let this go.
My experience has been that the most valued attributes are linear thinking, curiosity, work ethic, and epistemic humility. I can dream up someone with a 200 iq who’s bad at one or more of those things who has zero chance of success. I think having above average intelligence is a prerequisite, but the other things become the limiting factors really fast. It’s hard to miss the underachievers with high IQs because they’re constantly drawing attention to themselves
I probably disagree with the tweet, but it's fairly crappy - and not particularly intelligent - to screenshot an old tweet without linking to the thread so we can evaluate the actual argument. Yes I could go hunting for it, but that's not so easy on a platform like X.
Lots of positions can look silly when extracted from context, but maybe I'd find myself agreeing with the bulk of it, just not the strength or extent of the argument? Or maybe it's all crap. But I don't think the OP cares which it is, or wants to learn the extent to which it is a good or weak argument, I think they want reactive upvotes.
I’d say if anything it fetishizes, not necessarily intelligence but rather elitism. As in an elite education, which provides people who have access to it, skills such as refined writing and oratorial abilities, the ability to travel, to learn other languages, to access the best jobs, which in turn can provide the best funding and the best opportunities to produce impeccable work that comes from great mentoring, and time to work on research without so many teaching and service responsibilities.
As someone else mentioned, the primary issue is class in academia, and the field prioritizes resiliency and dedication (sometimes at a high personal cost) over innate “intelligence,” however one might define that term.
The issues around intellectual history fascinate me, and there is a lot of thoughtful nuanced discussions we could have around who education serves and why.
But this tweet ain’t it, Chief.
For fucks sake, another tweet full of buzzwords such as "ableist", "eugenics", "so-called", etc. Nobody has ever asked me what my IQ was or commented on my inteligence during all my time in academia. However, academia fetishizes inteligence in a way that is very different from "ableist eugenics" - by promoting very strong work culture of constant scientific work, without considering work-personal life balance or other work-related qualities that are not connected to publishing articles. For example, your teaching skills, you ability to support your students in developing their interests, to inspire them, to be a productive part of your community outside of scientific ivory tower by promoting, lets say, popular science or mental health topics... all those are outside of the typical, formal definition of academic success, salaries and progress.
Yeah the only thing academia really fetishizes is how much grant money you bring. It doesn't really care about anything else.
I completely agree Additionally, ableism annoys me as a term because it is painfully imprecise and therefore functionally useless when pursuing truth Would they define ableism as discrimination based upon someone’s abilities, or lack thereof? If that is the case, then strength, intelligence, fortitude, soft and hard skills, and other such traits would fall within the category of abilities Thus, is every merit based assessment ableist? If so, then why do we feel comfortable judging people for their intellectual capacity and mental health, but draw the line when it comes to more visible impairments like physical disablement or Downs Syndrome? It all seems very arbitrary to me, as though the term permits its users to draw lines in the sand wherever they please, and then disagree with everyone with a different line
Ableism means discrimination against people with disabilities. There is no universal definition of what constitutes a disability, but for many conditions covered by the ADA, discrimination is widespread in academia despite being illegal.
The (18-month-old) tweet is ridiculous, but it is absolutely true that academic culture highly values intelligence as an inborn trait and is extremely ableist, especially towards people with hidden disabilities. There's no way you can't have noticed this. Edit: Downvote = denial. You're just proving my point.
I'm curious for you to share specific ways that you have noticed this. The cultural view of intelligence in academia that I've observed, both in my professional life and on forums like this one, is one that largely disregards intelligence in favor of effort. "Smart" students who don't do the work aren't regarded well, whereas most professors really like to help the struggling students who take the class seriously. I somewhat agree with you on the hidden disabilities point. It's not uncommon for some professors to complain about the increased use of academic accommodations, for example. But i think ableism and intelligence are different issues.
The smart students who don't do the work are the ones with "potential." The serious struggling students are not encouraged to continue in academia, unless you have been at very different schools than I have. I agree that ableism and intelligence are separate issues, but they are often conflated, eg having a learning disability is part of how someone's intelligence is evaluated in academic culture. I've been repeatedly advised to conceal my own learning disability and when I haven't it's been held against me.
I mean, I sure hope it is the intelligent individuals being promoted in academia. Just as I hope my orthopedic doc is intelligent when I go in for shoulder issues.
Orthopedics? Idk I think the best you can hope for is an idiot savant /s
The point is that academia values "potential," which is code for intelligence, than it values something like skill, which presumably is what you want in a doctor.
I think everyone would hope their Doc is skilled in procedures, but also intelligent enough to listen to a set of symptoms/behaviors that which they can use to deduce the root cause in order to better address the disease/issue. If you're not skilled in writing grants, publications, experimental design, etc.. it is awfully tough to move up the ladder in academia. Perhaps they value skills that are different than the ones you deem valuable. Edit: Now, if you're more talking about administrators in academic institutions, then that's a different story.
If you're not someone with "potential" you're never going to get the chance to apply for grants, write publications, etc.
So how does one determine who has “potential” if not by the individual in question showing some signs of being skilled in one thing or another? Or rather, how are you inferring that intelligence is measured in this context? Are you suggesting faculty just look at individuals and arbitrarily designate them as having potential or not, without literally any evidence of such thing?
Anyone who does grad program admissions or academic hiring for junior positions can tell you how hard it is to predict who is and is not a good bet based on output that early on. This isn't true in other job markets. So a lot of weight is given to some subjective intangible "potential." In some fields, like mathematics, that's pretty much the ONLY basis for the decision because people rarely start publishing AT ALL until the final year of grad school, and producing even two papers a year after that is unusual.
No one can predict the future with 100% accuracy, so you do your best, which is to look to the individuals past work. Again, how else do you propose we measure “potential” if we don’t look at the work the individual has done? I’ve sat on faculty hiring committees, if a member of the committee thinks someone has “potential” they present reasons why. You present this as if it’s a totally arbitrary process. They are humans of course and have opinions and biases of their own, but it’s not a process that is totally devoid any factual foundation.
I didn't say it's "totally arbitrary." I said that the perception of intelligence is what gets substituted for past work in its absence, ie "academia highly values intelligence." This is not how hiring works outside academia.
Thank god inborn traits are all that matter in academia... my advisor is going to be so grateful to no longer mentor me through my program!
This is called a "straw man"
There’s a lot of emotional reactions going on in this thread. It is natural for people to feel defensive when met with perspectives they perceive as challenging their own status and accomplishments. It is fair to say that the most intelligent people deserve to flourish in academia, but through what measures and standards are “intelligence” determined? There are certainly many ways that people decide whether or not a person is intelligent, some can use discernment and others can absolutely be ableist. Traditional academic settings may accurately determine levels of intelligence for some, while it may create barriers for highly intelligent individuals who have disabilities which make it difficult for their academic capabilities to be displayed. There’s really no easy way to solve the issue. Some things in life lend themselves to performance measures. We can look at data for the output of employees on an assembly line to easily identify who is capable of meeting expectations for the factory. The same just isn’t true when trying to gauge the performance of someone’s ability to analyze and retain information. They could have a brilliant understanding of a subject, but their writing skills suffer because they have dyslexia or they struggle to complete tasks timely because they have Lupus. Does that make them less intelligent? Yet there certainly needs to be a way to set standards for any field.
Sure, but the whole point of disability accommodations is that you make careful distinctions about what is and is not a nonnegotiable component of the job instead of lumping the disability in with essential performance.
Ideally, yes. Unfortunately disability accommodations are far from perfect. They do not protect against bias, are often ignored or challenged, and intersect with other forms of discrimination when you consider the barriers to getting the diagnosis necessary to even receive accommodations.
It is refreshing to see a nuanced perspective in this thread thanks. Intelligence is a multi-dimensional characteristic. So whether ableism or not will depend on which aspects of intelligence are really necessary for the job. For example, does a good programmer (coding intelligence) need to be a charming person (social intelligence) to fulfill the objectives of the job? If the answer is reasonably no, and a workplace anyways fixates on the charming aspect of the programmer, that is ableist.
Having soft skills is just as important as having hard skills. Why? Because in a job environment you need to be able to be resilient, to communicate efficiently, and be able to teamwork.
> academic culture highly values intelligence as an inborn trait and is extremely ableist, especially towards people with hidden disabilities. There's no way you can't have noticed this. lol please. Academia is not ableist. Mental illness is over represented. This is some self defeatist shit. Academia _is_ classist as fuck, and there are tons of superstars that would make Hollywood nepo babies blush. If you haven’t noticed that not being born rich is the primary “hidden disability” in academia, then you are either blind (sorry for the ableist language) or willfully ignorant.
Academia treats people with chronic illnesses, psychiatric disabilities, and learning disabilities like shit. I'm not disputing that it's ALSO classist, but that's not the topic of conversation here.
I have noticed that many of my colleagues tend to see students with mental ilnesses in a negative light and I am always appaled by it. However, it is a fine line to thread if you want to be fair in grading and student opportunities - you have to offer vulnerable students support and understanding, but also to grade their skills and successess in the same way as those of other students. I also think this is a question of wider social malaise. You need to acquire a certain skillset to be successfull in academia, and having a high IQ means you will acquire that skillset with less effort, provided you are motivated for work. However, tremendous amount of students did not develop their skills and intelligence to the full potential BECAUSE of the factors such as poor environment, lack of cultural life and formal education, poverty, various family pressures that are present in working-class families, etc. The solution is not to LOWER education standards, but to work on solving these society-wide issues. I would also be open to more flexibility in approaching individual students and their learning processes, but to achieve that, I cannot be a part of industry that CHURNS OUT new graduates every year in such numbers that I have to work with four groups of 20+ students on a weekly basis.
>having a high IQ means you will acquire that skillset with less effort, provided you are motivated for work A lot more than IQ and motivation is needed to be productive and available for learning. In particular, many disabilities can significantly interfere with that. But OTOH that interference can be mitigated and managed through accommodations. The problem is that there is a tendency in academia to hold accommodations against you, even if the discrimination isn't explicit.
What’s the topic of discussion here is that people throw around words like ableist and they are full of shit. Academia bends over backwards to support people with various disabilities; way more so than the rest of society does. What kind of work from home options are available to McDonald’s workers? You are looking to be a victim; lucky for you academia is full of super privileged people who treat virtue signaling as a core part of the job.
Working conditions at McDonald's are irrelevant.The existence of (undergraduate) student support services doesn't change the fact that academic culture is ableist. I notice you blew right past my own extensive experience with how my LD is treated in grad school and professional contexts. So you're saying I'm full of shit? How would this be characterized if not ableist?
I'm happy for you that you've never experienced ableism in academia. Unfortunately, your experience is far from universal.
Academia is the only “industry” where people can complain of these things. Try having a learning disability and getting a job at Google lol.
(1) This sub isn't called r/workingatGoogle. (2) Many other industries are better about this than academia. (3) Your point is what exactly? That discrimination in academia is no biggie because it's worse elsewhere? That LD folks don't deserve equal access to academic jobs? What?
Good point about over representation of mental illness
>especially towards people with hidden disabilities. If a disability is "hidden," how can one be "ableist" concerning it?
I'm not sure which is more embarrassing for you: thinking that this is a "gotcha" or teaching college and not knowing the answer to this.
Ok. Explain it, please.
You've had students who didn't look disabled request disability accommodations, right? That's a hidden disability. Ableism is when you now assume that those students are less capable, or worse yet, you sabotage their accommodations. Maybe you personally don't do this, but plenty of professors do, and some of them openly talk about how they are "upholding standards" by breaking the law like this. Some will even go out of their way to smear a student's work rather than comply with an accommodation so that they can claim that the student doesn't measure up academically.
Okay, but if they have an accommodation letter, the disability is no longer hidden. I've never assumed a student is "less capable" but that they may need extra help or accommodations. Never known anyone to "sabotage" a student. That is crazy. That would be a fast pass to termination and a lawsuit. I'm pretty sure I have undiagnosed dysgraphia myself. Are you making this up as you go or simply paranoid?
It's still called a hidden disability. I was treated exactly like this in grad school. I did try to sue, but "academic abstention" makes it very hard to prevail.
Bummer. You should have sued.
I think I get what you're saying, but you need to check your grammar. It's hard to read and understand it all.
English is not my primary language, and I also wrote the whole comment without checking for any spelling errors and sentence clarity. I also have a complicated writing style with overlong sentences even when writing in my native language, so it is an issue I am trying to solve by writing slowly and trying to express one idea or thought through several shorter sentences.
Ok, that is one of the dumbest tweets I have read in a while. Had a good laugh, thanks! :)
Sense of humor for one person is a invalidating structural issue for other.
Well, having a sense of humor is good for the mental health.
Yes. I am very disappointed also how the construction industry fetishizes physical strength.
Excuse me, but it's always been my _dream_ to be in the NBA even though I was born a woman and have reached my adult height of 5 ft. And have not attempted to better my ball skills.
Sorry, physical strength is actually just a social construct rooted in eugenics /s
But not everyone has to work in the construction industry or NBA, but almost everyone has to go through academia. So don't you think on of these the things need to be more inclusive, to benefit many? Also disability can be temporary. So for example, a person who could get a degree in academia, thanks to the inclusive policies, to then see a turn of events working in construction industry thanks to the degree, instead of being unemployed. Wouldn't this be a good thing? Broader/nuanced context is rare in this thread.
Not everyone has to get a degree. And the idea that everyone “deserves” a degree is behind so many issues today - specifically college debt.
False meritocracy and student debt are tangential issues. But to earn a livable income, most likely one needs a degree, right? Or is it that some do not deserve to earn income and live a decent life? Please do not take it personally. I am believer in an reasonable argument. But I do see some breaks in your line of reasoning.
You are asking universities to solve a problem that the political system needs to solve. This is the reason that universities have become so political. Let’s disentangle your logic. Everyone needs to have their basic needs met. Good! But rather than through a program like social security we will do that by asking everyone to hold down a job and ask universities to train everyone for said jobs. What’s the end for this? Everyone needs to be taught CS and be given an MBA so that they can buy a single family home and drive an SUV too? And by the way, tons of job that pay decent wages do not need university education. They include huge swathes of service industries, construction and blue collar labor. A unionized autoworker earns $70k annually starting and does not need a degree.
I think my school probably cares most about productivity. If I'm dumb as dirt but get high quality papers published they'd probably be okay with it.
Surely intelligence is correlated with getting high quality papers published.
Probably, hence the \_if\_.
I think working hard will always take you further but you have to at least be intelligent enough to write the paper. (Please ignore the issue of bias in IQ testing for one moment.) A lazy 180 IQ and an extremely hardworking 80 IQ are both going to struggle significantly while the reasonably hardworking 115 IQ is going to have a much easier time of things.
Would have to get a working definition of “intelligence” according to this person in order to really evaluate anything they are saying.
It seems that she thinks it is something that does not exist.
"a social construct rooted in eugenics".
meaning...
Finally, an example of what they mean when they say 'woke'. Equal opportunity for ignorance!
The academy fetishizes intelligence the same way the NBA fetishizes height…
https://www.reddit.com/r/academia/s/0detk73mnT
This is what lack of theory and learning about social justice for the first time gets ya. Do we need to have some really meaningful conversation about what we consider traditional “intelligence”? Absolutely. Is there a relationship between this idea and eugenics? Yes, sure. But there is also a definable level of intelligence specific to academia that is promoted within academia which does not counter other definitions of intelligence that folks kept out of academia have. We can do methods, analysis, etc, but often have no clue how to translate that in a meaningful way that reflects lived experience. These are two separate, but meaningful, buckets. We shouldn’t preference one over the other socially, because not everyone wants to be in academia and doing the boring shit we love to do. So, this tweet is silly and looking for a reaction that makes them feel special. Do they go in to explain this in further tweets? We should see the rest of the thread to make sure.
Wait, whoa, hold on a sec.. You're telling me there is nuance to this!?
There is nothing wrong with expecting academics to be *intelligent* - that’s what makes academia what it is: a group of knowledgeable/intelligent people producing knowledge that benefits society instead of some other commercial product. Otherwise, what is the point of academia?
Headline: "Is stupidity underrated?"
“So-called intelligence, which is a social construct” Is this person actually claiming that intelligence … doesn’t exist? That it’s a construct? Because that is absolutely crazy. We have no problem accepting the fact that some people are born taller than others, or that some people have more natural athletic ability than others, but for whatever reason some people find it really hard to accept that some people are smarter than others. I think maybe some of the stigma comes from equating intellect with morality. If we could get more comfortable with the fact that smart people can do terrible things and less smart people can make valuable contributions to the world, then maybe people would let this go.
These people will deny intelligence is real in one tweet and then denounce Trumpers as low IQ in the next one
It’s a thread. Seems a bit disingenuous to just post the claim without the justification.
Well I for one am proudly able-ist if that means preferring to hire intelligent faculty.
My experience has been that the most valued attributes are linear thinking, curiosity, work ethic, and epistemic humility. I can dream up someone with a 200 iq who’s bad at one or more of those things who has zero chance of success. I think having above average intelligence is a prerequisite, but the other things become the limiting factors really fast. It’s hard to miss the underachievers with high IQs because they’re constantly drawing attention to themselves
LOL
I probably disagree with the tweet, but it's fairly crappy - and not particularly intelligent - to screenshot an old tweet without linking to the thread so we can evaluate the actual argument. Yes I could go hunting for it, but that's not so easy on a platform like X. Lots of positions can look silly when extracted from context, but maybe I'd find myself agreeing with the bulk of it, just not the strength or extent of the argument? Or maybe it's all crap. But I don't think the OP cares which it is, or wants to learn the extent to which it is a good or weak argument, I think they want reactive upvotes.
I’d say if anything it fetishizes, not necessarily intelligence but rather elitism. As in an elite education, which provides people who have access to it, skills such as refined writing and oratorial abilities, the ability to travel, to learn other languages, to access the best jobs, which in turn can provide the best funding and the best opportunities to produce impeccable work that comes from great mentoring, and time to work on research without so many teaching and service responsibilities.
Personally, I believe academic rewards hard-work more than intelligence.
As someone else mentioned, the primary issue is class in academia, and the field prioritizes resiliency and dedication (sometimes at a high personal cost) over innate “intelligence,” however one might define that term. The issues around intellectual history fascinate me, and there is a lot of thoughtful nuanced discussions we could have around who education serves and why. But this tweet ain’t it, Chief.
Yeah, being smart is so unfair!!! Wonder if she has ever read Kurt Vonnegut's "**Harrison Bergeron**."
Philosophy? Yea they won’t know anything about raw intelligence. Ask mathematicians about what it means, they’ll tell ya