Famous Canadian chemist Patanjali Kambhampati on the DIE motion:
My “lived experiences” as a Third World immigrant to the US has actually led me to be a lifelong defender of the practices of advantage, equity and equality — practices derived from classical liberal rules….My father was born Third World poor. [My father’s] solely hope was to realize employment as a secretary or to have the ability to take a look at into the highest engineering college in India, the Indian Institute of Science. By gaining admission to this prime college, my father was in a position to deliver his household to America, the place we obtained an excellent schooling and super alternatives.
In my father’s world, it was advantage that enabled him to advance and his household to flourish. Advantage and the apply of meritocracy are additionally classical liberal values. Advantage can also be central to the immigrant dream, and the rise of contemporary society.
…As a latest instance of widespread practices in science funding in North America, I used to be denied funding alternatives twice by Canada’s federal science foundations, each of which have been detailed in these pages, purely as a result of I stated I might rent analysis assistants primarily based on advantage, no matter their gender or ethnic or cultural backgrounds.
Over the previous yr, the encroachment of the cult of DIE into academia has solely grown. There are actually many positions which can be merely off limits to straight white males who will not be handicapped. One should pledge allegiance to those intolerant rules so as to be a practising scientist in 2022.
These are a few of the causes I’m writing about DIE in science and within the broader society. As somebody who has handled the “lived expertise” of racism, I’m right here to make the case that we have to transfer past antiquated mental racism and inept trendy anti-racism, and transfer as an alternative towards a extra individualistic strategy….I hope that my experiences can play a job in enabling others to talk and suppose freely and add worth to the unending drive for human progress and freedom.
