Week 5 blog
Yuzhe Zhang, A01
Piya Chatterjee and
Sunaina Maira’s article mentioned a serious of conflict between academia and
military. “Police in full riot gear are nose- to- nose with students who are
pushing them back”, and many of the students are prosecuted for their civil disobedience.
(Chatterjee, 2013). The authors raised a question: what can we make of this
strange coupling of the bucolic and the brutal, of storm troopers and students?
In my opinion, it is not the conflict between students and the military, but
the conflict between academia and the politics.
·
Politics can sway academic discourse, and academics often
make political concessions. It reminds me the story of Lysenko. T. D. Lysenko was an uneducated but he was
honored the Academician of the Soviet academy of sciences. He dominated the field
of Soviet science for three or four decades as a cardinal and chief scientist.
“Soviet
scientists who refused to renounce genetics were dismissed from their posts and
left destitute. Hundreds if not thousands of others were imprisoned. Several
were sentenced to death as enemies of the state. Scientific dissent from Lysenko's theories of environmentally acquired inheritance was formally outlawed in the Soviet Union in 1948.”
(Wikipedia, 2018). Under this heavy stress, many scientists dare not to
tell the truth. Lysenko had stalled the progress of science. This shows that
the influence that politics have on academia is huge.
·
Question: Does politics have a positive effect on academics?
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