Physics Professor and 'Proud Homophobe' Gets Owned by Washington Univ. Freshman
In his role as physics professor at Washington University, Dr. Jonathan Katz labors to explain universe through the study of its parts in motion. But when he's not in the classroom or in the laboratory, Katz's life is governed by far more worldly (and unscientific) beliefs.
Those beliefs include such statements as "the diversity movement is racist to its core" and declaring that he is "a homophobe, and proud." Both lines are found in essays on Katz's personal website, and over the years the professor's noxious views have created headaches for his employer — which can't fire him because of tenure rules — and outrage among students.
Now he's at it again. But this time, Katz's views have been rejected in a satisfyingly public fashion — with the prof getting owned by a first-year undergrad, no less, in the pages of the student newspaper.
Katz's latest tantrum involves the status of women in Washington University physics department. To Katz, a tenured professor since 1976, the fact that his department includes exactly zero women with tenure or tenure-track professorships is hardly a cause for concern, and certainly not a reflection of intentional discrimination. Instead, as he wrote in an April 3 op-ed published in the student newspaper Student Life, Katz suggests that the absence of women in physics is simply unexplainable and should be accepted as a basic fact of nature.
Read more: http://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2017/04/20/physics-professor-and-proud-homophobe-gets-owned-by-wash-u-freshman
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According to Professor Katz, we may never know why there are so few women in the physics department.
It’s one of life’s great unanswerable questions, like “what is the meaning of life?” and “how does Professor Katz still have a job?”
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From humor to seriousness:
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If we want more women in STEM fields now, simply refraining from openly discouraging girls from pursuing math and science won’t be enough. Society already quietly discourages them from doing so. We have to actively encourage girls to go into STEM and give them the kind of support that their male peers receive every time they see an all-male engineering team or take a classes taught by only male professors. We need female professors because the reason there are few female physicists now is that there were fewer female physicists a generation ago. We also need to be mindful of the fact that tomen who experience the most discouragement from entering STEM fields are women of color, especially black women. Recent comments from the head of the physics department suggest the troubling view that diversity’s a checklist—first you hire a woman, then a person of color. Not only does this perspective overlook the existence of highly qualified women of color, it promotes the idea that diversity is a chore you can get out of the way and then move on from, instead of the genuine commitment to equality that is necessary for a truly exceptional university.
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