“Race Science” Comes Back—On the Left

If you thought the whole idea of “race science” went out of fashion with eugenics, you’d be wrong. The University of California at Santa Cruz (where Angela Davis remains a tenured professor) is currently looking to hire a professor of “Critical Race Science,” which is no doubt the best kind. Here’s some of the job listing:

Critical Race and Ethnic Studies: Assistant or Associate Professor Critical Race Science and Technology Studies

POSITION DESCRIPTION

The Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) invites applications for a an Assistant/Associate Professor of Critical Race Science and Technology Studies (STS). We seek a scholar whose research falls in any area of Critical Race STS—including scholars trained in indigenous, critical ethnic, Black, gender, and/or trans studies whose work critically engages the embedded racism, sexism, and colonial violence of science and scientific worldviews and their correlate, enlightenment humanism. A demonstrated record of research that de-centers Western scientific ways of knowing and challenges extractivist capitalist practices is especially welcome as are commitments to queer and indigenous ecologies, trans-species studies, and race-radical approaches to STEM. In addition to teaching responsibilities for the new Science and Justice minor, which CRES is developing in collaboration with the Science and Justice Research Center, this position requires a clear commitment to and willingness to lead programmatic and curricular development for the new interdisciplinary minor. Ideal applicants will demonstrate an approach to science and technology grounded in histories of and innovative methods of analyzing anticolonial, decolonizing, liberationist political thought and praxis, push the boundaries of the fields they inhabit, ask provocative questions, and relate critically and creatively to norms of knowledge production. Potential areas of research and teaching focus, among various areas of expertise, include but are not limited to environmental racism; climate justice; genomic justice; war technologies; medicine; public health; governance of science and technology; science policy; criminology, surveillance, and policing; border control; educational technologies; new media studies; critical data studies; histories of antiracism and anticolonialism in science, including the impact of grassroots collective and communal movements against racist science; and CRES engagement with the creative arts that facilitates a nexus between creative and critical inquiry.

“Genomic justice”? That’s a new one to me. Apparently it refers to worries that genetic research might reveal differences between, which will be racist, of course. And I can’t wait to see what “race-radical approaches to STEM” are, though we can guess, since math is racist.

Meanwhile, in the “Updates” Department, yesterday’s post on “Feline Marxism” got noticed by the author:

The neat part here is Quinn Slobodian showing up for duty. Slobodian has been busted for bowdlerizing quotes from Ludwig von Mises to grotesquely distort von Mises thought in a manner that ought to get him de-published and demoted (our pal Phil Magness has the receipts), but of course won’t.

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