<commit_before>---
layout: default
title: The NAS Study of Bowdoin
---
<section class="content">
  <a name="start"></a>
  <div id="pagetitle"> The NAS Study of Bowdoin College: Why Politicizing Academic Debates is Counter-productive </div>
  <p><b><i>
    Here is a lengthy critique of the NAS report: <a href="/oped/the_nas_study/critique.pdf">Download PDF</a>.
  </b>
    (please note that this is a work in progress, I will have it in final form within the next two days).
  </p></i>
  <p>
    This debate has taught me how difficult it is to have a
	constructive two-sided debate. The overall issue of intellectual
	diversity is an interesting one for the academy to consider, but
	when once the issue became politicized the goal of the debate became 
	"winning one for the team" rather than making any real progress.
	Thus, a critical role of the academia should be to engender modes
	of thought and analysis that are not politically charged or
	motivated. One obvious non-political intellectual framework would be
	be the idealized "scientific method." But more generally, I think
	that good research in history, philosophy, economics,
	and even political science, is not politically motivated.
  </p>
</section>
<commit_msg>Updated description of NAS critique<commit_after>---
layout: default
title: The NAS Study of Bowdoin
---
<section class="content">
  <a name="start"></a>
  <div id="pagetitle"> The NAS Study of Bowdoin College: Why Politicizing Academic Debates is Counter-productive </div>
  <p><b><i>
    Here is a lengthy critique of the NAS report: <a href="/oped/the_nas_study/critique.pdf">Download PDF</a>.
  </b>
    (please note that this is a work in progress, I will have it in final form within the next two days).
  </p></i>
  <p>
    This experience has taught me how difficult it is to have a
	constructive two-sided debate. The overall issue of intellectual
	diversity is an interesting one for the academy to consider, but
	when once the issue became politicized the goal of the debate became 
	"winning one for the team" rather than making any real progress.
	Thus, a critical role of the academia should be to engender modes
	of thought and analysis that are not politically charged or
	motivated. One obvious non-political intellectual framework would be
	be the idealized "scientific method." But more generally, I think
	that good research in history, philosophy, economics,
	and even political science, is not politically motivated.
  </p>
</section>

{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.0747588424437299, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 4.08997955010225, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 35, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 35, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 2, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
{'dir': 'git-commits-cleaned', 'id': '2242267', 'n_tokens_mistral': 697, 'n_tokens_neox': 660, 'n_words': 356}