Eisenhower's words echo on from 60 years ago, "...the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity."
I must say, being from your next door neighbor Nebraska, none of that surprises me. In fact, it is what one would expect looking from the outside in. Ever go to a Nebraska Colorado football game? The only college that could out do Colorado for being pure assholes and jerks, was the University of Miami. And no one wanted to be any part of that subhuman group. Except, Colorado. Great place to visit. But no place to raise children or stay to long. Are you aware of all the complications that state has now with legalization of pot? Up to and including the cartels who come from Mexico because the quality of the pot is the best any where. I've yet to hear any law enforcement person from there say legalizing was a good thing.
But I sure am glad your journey lead you to be a poster on here.
Rather than retiring consider consulting an employment lawyer. You might have a good case for constructive dismissal and be entitled to a significant award for damages.
A thought on tenure; the way to get around it is to corrupt the hiring process, such that only pliable candidates with views congenial to the political agenda even get their foot in the door. That way there is no need to wrinkle the brow trying to think of devious ways to nudge inconvenient tenured profs out the door; such docile profs will likely never become obstacles to The Cause, whatever that happens to be.
I admire how you handled yourself for those five years.
This finding puzzles me:
87% of faculty reported finding it difficult to have an open and honest conversation on campus about at least one hot button political topic.
Are 13% percent or less, making it difficult to have an open and honest conversation or are certain people among the 87% culprits on one or more subjects, while experiencing outside pressure from others on different subjects.
What is your experience, is a very small group excerpting the pressure or is it more complex?
Not being an academic, I am appalled by the lack of support from your university. I had thought that tenured professors had layers upon layers of protection that made them virtually untouchable--mainly because professors could ruffle feathers and face unjustifiable terminations. No lawyers, no union reps, no ombudsman, no mediation, no independent review--at CU, just saying, "He's a witch! Burn the witch!" is enough. And, the Boulder Faculty Assembly pronouncements are pure poppycock. Sounds like they are channeling saint GreTta Thunberg. They only need one more official statement to round the circle: "How dare you!?" Your story calls to my mind Theodore Roosevelt's description of "The Man in the Arena." Best wishes as you turn a new leaf!
Thanks for sharing this Roger. This is a chilling story but sadly, not really surprising. Godd for you for dealing with it professionalism & continued good luck with THB!
Your story is shocking. It does have similarities with Peter Ridd, at JCU in Australia, who was terminated for digressing from the JCU official view on the state of Great Barrier Reef. Knowing the Reef intimately from decades of monitoring it, his report caused him to ultimately be terminated. He won the court case against JCU, but did not get his job back. Please keep up your fantastic, balanced work, holding your head up high. The climate discussion is in dire need of sober, balanced reporting.
Roger, I don't know if this violates your request to not comment on individuals. I will try to honor that by not mentioning names. When I googled the chairs of the ENVS department I notice one of them has interests that strongly parallel those of one Roger Pielke Jr. Is this a case of eliminating competition in the department or ensuring that this important topic is covered from one perspective only?
1) cultural politics of science, climate change and environmental issues = this refers to ways that attitudes, intentions, beliefs and behaviors of individuals and groups shape (and are shaped by) the perceived spectrum of possible action in the context of science-policy, climate change and environmental issues.
2) transformations of carbon-based economies and societies (with emphasis on the interface of science and practical action) = this refers to decarbonization politics, policies and decision-making, with particular interest in how these activities find meaning in people’s everyday lives, as well as how they, in turn, feed back into science-policy decision-making. Max integrates these research and creative works with ongoing commitments to mentorship, teaching and service.
This is a very important narrative. I recall having to defend a colleague during a tenure meeting for a newly hired full professor. At the time, I argued that in Texas, a researcher who confronts the alcohol, tobacco, and meat industries needs the protection that tenure affords. Thankfully, what happened to you did not happen to her, but your experience only strengthens the case for tenure today. I find your "Honest Broker" assessments particularly compelling and have incorporated them into my graduate courses to help students develop their critical thinking skills. As a newcomer to climate change science, thank you!
"For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones."
Niccolò Machiavelli
In my career, I have been advised by friends that being a "maverick" will limit your career opportunities unless you let the comments and treatment roll off your back and you continue down the path you believe in.
In the mid 60s, at CU, my soon to be wife was journalism major. She worked hard, reported for the Daily and got C's in class. Finally, a prof told her she was good, but they didn't want women in the field. She switched majors.
I had the opportunity to take two classes from Professor Pielke as an auditor. They were two of the best classes I ever had at CU. To that point, I sent a letter to a high-ranking administrator complementing Roger and the class. Unfortunately, I can no longer locate the response but I remember it to be positive.
I remember in the spring of 2020, dropping by the office he describes. No windows, very small, loaded with his books and if I remember, no phone. He took it all in stride as we hit the ground with a senior capstone class on energy and climate. When COVID hit and we went to remote learning, he switched the class to 2/3 energy policy and 1/3 COVID with the observation that, 'what you have learned to date sets you up do almost realtime exploration of COVID'.
Reading some of the treatment that Roger describes sounds like what, many times, happens to whistle blowers. That are isolated and excluded because some people express their enmity and defenders are lukewarm in their support.
I'm looking forward to the next chapter (I actually need it mentally). I'm not really sure that the institutions can be reformed. Sure plans can be made, but the problem is too comprehensive... like a massive cancer that's already spread too far and wide. The academic institutions are "gone," and so is 99.9% of entertainment media, newspapers, journals, law/medicine, and federal/government bureaucracy. There's just so much of it, EVERYWHERE, that it becomes like a toxic poison... infecting the mind. Just today there've been stories on the news and in other substacks about the radicalization of the United Healthcare CEO shooter. This cancerous system can take a smart, well connected, aspirational young person and morph them into a murderer. Check out Dr. Matthew Wielicki's article, "Educated to Kill" via Irrational Fear as an example.
Maybe it's just my attitude this afternoon, but I'm on the side that thinks we're just going to have to form new institutions, start new media companies, found new universities. It seems to me that where this approach is attempted, it's working.
Roger, I am aware of your liberal leanings as you have made them clear in both words and thoughts. Internally for me that creates intellectual tension which I welcome. However it also must color your actions throughout what is obvious to any functioning adult as a smear and removal campaign by corrupt people. For better or worse part of the outcome of the Presidential election was due to a profound belief by people like me that the Democrat party has become subservient to illiberal interests which have corrupted the foundations of academia, government and corporate policy makers. Given the length and breadth of of your recent experience, this sounds like the COVID Stasi that sought to bend every person to a sanctified set of actions to "protect vulnerable people". Your independence was deemed dangerous and therefore scrapped. This is the new liberal stance in a nutshell and it's ownership of the levers of policy is frankly revolting.
As Tom Sowell has pointed out time and again, the reason why universities employ credentialed people who continually promote intellectually indefensible or at least questionable ideas is because just like in government, they are protected from bad outcomes of those ideas. Just as modern monetary policy wreaked havoc on inflation due to inordinate amounts of money printed by the Treasury in 2020 and '21, so too does faculty initiated activism.
I hope that you will not confine your story to Substack where it will have a brief tour through the contrarians who populate it's pages then into the ground. I understand not wanting to rock any boats, but allowing this situation to enter the memory hole merely allows it to perpetuate.
Thanks for writing this Roger. CU's behavior is shameful. At least CUs loss is our gain.
In the Dec 11, 2024, WSJ, the op-ed "UC Riverside’s DEI Guardians Came After Me" also describes the horror of dealing with, in the author's case, the university bureaucracy once it decides you are guilty of something.
Also, check out a 2015 journal article by three professors at Stanford, University of Chicago, and Harvard titled "The Political Ideologies of American Lawyers" because it also has a great graph on the political ideology of academics and other professions (page 19 in the pdf). As expected, the median score for academics is not just to the left, but to the far left. Same with the category "newspapers and print media". I presume they are worse now, nine years later.
Eisenhower's words echo on from 60 years ago, "...the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity."
"Follow the ccccash...and keep your nose clean."
Fabulous!... "boost and nudge", so much more colorful than "raising awareness" as terms for "propaganda".
I must say, being from your next door neighbor Nebraska, none of that surprises me. In fact, it is what one would expect looking from the outside in. Ever go to a Nebraska Colorado football game? The only college that could out do Colorado for being pure assholes and jerks, was the University of Miami. And no one wanted to be any part of that subhuman group. Except, Colorado. Great place to visit. But no place to raise children or stay to long. Are you aware of all the complications that state has now with legalization of pot? Up to and including the cartels who come from Mexico because the quality of the pot is the best any where. I've yet to hear any law enforcement person from there say legalizing was a good thing.
But I sure am glad your journey lead you to be a poster on here.
Rather than retiring consider consulting an employment lawyer. You might have a good case for constructive dismissal and be entitled to a significant award for damages.
A thought on tenure; the way to get around it is to corrupt the hiring process, such that only pliable candidates with views congenial to the political agenda even get their foot in the door. That way there is no need to wrinkle the brow trying to think of devious ways to nudge inconvenient tenured profs out the door; such docile profs will likely never become obstacles to The Cause, whatever that happens to be.
I admire how you handled yourself for those five years.
This finding puzzles me:
87% of faculty reported finding it difficult to have an open and honest conversation on campus about at least one hot button political topic.
Are 13% percent or less, making it difficult to have an open and honest conversation or are certain people among the 87% culprits on one or more subjects, while experiencing outside pressure from others on different subjects.
What is your experience, is a very small group excerpting the pressure or is it more complex?
Not being an academic, I am appalled by the lack of support from your university. I had thought that tenured professors had layers upon layers of protection that made them virtually untouchable--mainly because professors could ruffle feathers and face unjustifiable terminations. No lawyers, no union reps, no ombudsman, no mediation, no independent review--at CU, just saying, "He's a witch! Burn the witch!" is enough. And, the Boulder Faculty Assembly pronouncements are pure poppycock. Sounds like they are channeling saint GreTta Thunberg. They only need one more official statement to round the circle: "How dare you!?" Your story calls to my mind Theodore Roosevelt's description of "The Man in the Arena." Best wishes as you turn a new leaf!
Thanks for sharing this Roger. This is a chilling story but sadly, not really surprising. Godd for you for dealing with it professionalism & continued good luck with THB!
Your story is shocking. It does have similarities with Peter Ridd, at JCU in Australia, who was terminated for digressing from the JCU official view on the state of Great Barrier Reef. Knowing the Reef intimately from decades of monitoring it, his report caused him to ultimately be terminated. He won the court case against JCU, but did not get his job back. Please keep up your fantastic, balanced work, holding your head up high. The climate discussion is in dire need of sober, balanced reporting.
Roger, I don't know if this violates your request to not comment on individuals. I will try to honor that by not mentioning names. When I googled the chairs of the ENVS department I notice one of them has interests that strongly parallel those of one Roger Pielke Jr. Is this a case of eliminating competition in the department or ensuring that this important topic is covered from one perspective only?
1) cultural politics of science, climate change and environmental issues = this refers to ways that attitudes, intentions, beliefs and behaviors of individuals and groups shape (and are shaped by) the perceived spectrum of possible action in the context of science-policy, climate change and environmental issues.
2) transformations of carbon-based economies and societies (with emphasis on the interface of science and practical action) = this refers to decarbonization politics, policies and decision-making, with particular interest in how these activities find meaning in people’s everyday lives, as well as how they, in turn, feed back into science-policy decision-making. Max integrates these research and creative works with ongoing commitments to mentorship, teaching and service.
This is a very important narrative. I recall having to defend a colleague during a tenure meeting for a newly hired full professor. At the time, I argued that in Texas, a researcher who confronts the alcohol, tobacco, and meat industries needs the protection that tenure affords. Thankfully, what happened to you did not happen to her, but your experience only strengthens the case for tenure today. I find your "Honest Broker" assessments particularly compelling and have incorporated them into my graduate courses to help students develop their critical thinking skills. As a newcomer to climate change science, thank you!
"For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones."
Niccolò Machiavelli
In my career, I have been advised by friends that being a "maverick" will limit your career opportunities unless you let the comments and treatment roll off your back and you continue down the path you believe in.
In the mid 60s, at CU, my soon to be wife was journalism major. She worked hard, reported for the Daily and got C's in class. Finally, a prof told her she was good, but they didn't want women in the field. She switched majors.
I had the opportunity to take two classes from Professor Pielke as an auditor. They were two of the best classes I ever had at CU. To that point, I sent a letter to a high-ranking administrator complementing Roger and the class. Unfortunately, I can no longer locate the response but I remember it to be positive.
I remember in the spring of 2020, dropping by the office he describes. No windows, very small, loaded with his books and if I remember, no phone. He took it all in stride as we hit the ground with a senior capstone class on energy and climate. When COVID hit and we went to remote learning, he switched the class to 2/3 energy policy and 1/3 COVID with the observation that, 'what you have learned to date sets you up do almost realtime exploration of COVID'.
Reading some of the treatment that Roger describes sounds like what, many times, happens to whistle blowers. That are isolated and excluded because some people express their enmity and defenders are lukewarm in their support.
Good luck in your next adventure.
Thanks Roger for passing along this story.
I'm looking forward to the next chapter (I actually need it mentally). I'm not really sure that the institutions can be reformed. Sure plans can be made, but the problem is too comprehensive... like a massive cancer that's already spread too far and wide. The academic institutions are "gone," and so is 99.9% of entertainment media, newspapers, journals, law/medicine, and federal/government bureaucracy. There's just so much of it, EVERYWHERE, that it becomes like a toxic poison... infecting the mind. Just today there've been stories on the news and in other substacks about the radicalization of the United Healthcare CEO shooter. This cancerous system can take a smart, well connected, aspirational young person and morph them into a murderer. Check out Dr. Matthew Wielicki's article, "Educated to Kill" via Irrational Fear as an example.
Maybe it's just my attitude this afternoon, but I'm on the side that thinks we're just going to have to form new institutions, start new media companies, found new universities. It seems to me that where this approach is attempted, it's working.
Roger, I am aware of your liberal leanings as you have made them clear in both words and thoughts. Internally for me that creates intellectual tension which I welcome. However it also must color your actions throughout what is obvious to any functioning adult as a smear and removal campaign by corrupt people. For better or worse part of the outcome of the Presidential election was due to a profound belief by people like me that the Democrat party has become subservient to illiberal interests which have corrupted the foundations of academia, government and corporate policy makers. Given the length and breadth of of your recent experience, this sounds like the COVID Stasi that sought to bend every person to a sanctified set of actions to "protect vulnerable people". Your independence was deemed dangerous and therefore scrapped. This is the new liberal stance in a nutshell and it's ownership of the levers of policy is frankly revolting.
As Tom Sowell has pointed out time and again, the reason why universities employ credentialed people who continually promote intellectually indefensible or at least questionable ideas is because just like in government, they are protected from bad outcomes of those ideas. Just as modern monetary policy wreaked havoc on inflation due to inordinate amounts of money printed by the Treasury in 2020 and '21, so too does faculty initiated activism.
I hope that you will not confine your story to Substack where it will have a brief tour through the contrarians who populate it's pages then into the ground. I understand not wanting to rock any boats, but allowing this situation to enter the memory hole merely allows it to perpetuate.
Thanks for writing this Roger. CU's behavior is shameful. At least CUs loss is our gain.
In the Dec 11, 2024, WSJ, the op-ed "UC Riverside’s DEI Guardians Came After Me" also describes the horror of dealing with, in the author's case, the university bureaucracy once it decides you are guilty of something.
Also, check out a 2015 journal article by three professors at Stanford, University of Chicago, and Harvard titled "The Political Ideologies of American Lawyers" because it also has a great graph on the political ideology of academics and other professions (page 19 in the pdf). As expected, the median score for academics is not just to the left, but to the far left. Same with the category "newspapers and print media". I presume they are worse now, nine years later.
Here I naively thought that the point of tenure was to protect academic research from authoritarian political disagreement.
It’s a shocking and disturbing story, because it’s so similar to that of Frances Widdowson’s termination Mt Royal U in Alberta Canada.
But I have a question: do you not have wrongful dismissal or similar laws in the US? Can you really just make s—t up and destroy someone?