It may be true that higher education is losing the public’s trust, but this article “has to be read to be believed. No, strike that, I’ve read it(*) three times, and I am still struggling to convince myself that it’s real” [(*)Not only that, but also some of the misrepresented paywalled references] What is particularly “bizarre” and “clueless” is the author’s obsession with the question of whether or not sex is binary(#) – and whether or not it would be appropriate for an anthropology conference to include a panel advocating study based on the assumption that it is.
Of course it may be appropriate for anthropologists to look at how the false belief that sex is a binary characteristic affects the development of some cultures, but since many cultures do not make that mistake it would be wrong for anthropologists themselves to take the binary perspective so it may have been perfectly reasonable to reject the workshop.
It also may be true that the explanation of the rejection given in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education was not optimal, and that the academic world as a whole has done a poor job of explaining complex (and sometimes counter-intuitive) things in simple terms. But a more credible article would have made some effort to identify how the explanation might have been improved.
(#) The fact that the joint distribution of several human characteristics is strongly bimodal may justify the claim that there are just two clearly identified “sexes”, but the existence of individuals who (for a whole variety of different reasons) do not clearly fall into either of those makes it immediately obvious (except in societies where the acknowledgement of such individuals is actively suppressed) that there is not a binary classification of all humans as one or the other.
Source: Opinion | Higher education is losing the public’s trust – The Washington Post