👓 Last Week at Wellesley | Alice Domurat Dreger

Read Last Week at Wellesley by Alice Domurat Dreger (alicedreger.com)

The photo above was taken by my Wellesley College Freedom Project host, Mustafa Akyol, just after we came out of my lecture last Tuesday night. I’m the person second from the right. Everyone else was apparently there to protest my speaking.

Seeing this remarkable scene, I asked Mustafa if he would take that photo for me, and if we could please stay and talk with these folks rather than just leaving, and he said of course. When I then asked these students what they wanted to talk about, the apparent leader said they all didn’t want to talk to me. I asked why they’d be there if they didn’t have something to say. The leader responded with something like, “We don’t owe you anything!”

I stayed anyway, and students started to talk, to question, to challenge. We ended up staying and talking with them for about 45 minutes.

An interesting take on popular culture on college campuses in addition to a variety of other things.

Published by

Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.

One thought on “👓 Last Week at Wellesley | Alice Domurat Dreger”

  1. Bookmarked Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science by Alice Domurat Dreger (Penguin)

    An impassioned defense of intellectual freedom and a clarion call to intellectual responsibility, Galileo’s Middle Finger is one American’s eye-opening story of life in the trenches of scientific controversy. For two decades, historian Alice Dreger has led a life of extraordinary engagement, combining activist service to victims of unethical medical research with defense of scientists whose work has outraged identity politics activists. With spirit and wit, Dreger offers in Galileo’s Middle Finger an unforgettable vision of the importance of rigorous truth seeking in today’s America, where both the free press and free scholarly inquiry struggle under dire economic and political threats.

    This illuminating chronicle begins with Dreger’s own research into the treatment of people born intersex (once called hermaphrodites). Realization of the shocking surgical and ethical abuses conducted in the name of “normalizing” intersex children’s gender identities moved Dreger to become an internationally recognized patient rights’ activist. But even as the intersex rights movement succeeded, Dreger began to realize how some fellow progressive activists were employing lies and personal attacks to silence scientists whose data revealed uncomfortable truths about humans. In researching one such case, Dreger suddenly became the target of just these kinds of attacks.

    Troubled, she decided to try to understand more—to travel the country to ferret out the truth behind various controversies, to obtain a global view of the nature and costs of these battles. Galileo’s Middle Finger describes Dreger’s long and harrowing journeys between the two camps for which she felt equal empathy: social justice activists determined to win and researchers determined to put hard truths before comfort. Ultimately what emerges is a lesson about the intertwining of justice and of truth—and a lesson of the importance of responsible scholars and journalists to our fragile democracy.

    hat tip: Last Week at Wellesley

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