Science

Did you spot the horned “toad” this morning? Robert Lang sent two reveal photos; I’ve put them below.  You can see how camouflaged they are!

Thanks to a comment from Frau Katze (great name!), I found this article and have also stolen her title. It’s not only Newton in the crosshairs, but Carl Linnaeus, the “Father of Taxonomy.” The issue? Their connection with the slave trade, which, at least according to the Science article below, seems a bit tenuous. It’s not that they overtly supported slavery or owned slaves, but that Linnaeus used specimens that were sent to Europe on slave ships, and may have been collected by slaves. . Not only that, but many private natural history specimens were sent on slave ships, with some being collected by slaves (who were apparently paid for each specimen.

In Newton’s case, it appears his sin was just to use data on tides collected in a place that was a port for some slave ships.

This article (click headline below to read) isn’t as bad as others that seek to ruin the reputations of people because of behaviors we consider bad today, nor does it call for removal of all the specimens shipped this way.  It simply asks for understanding and giving the historical context for collections. And that is fine—except that we hardly know the provenance of any of the natural history items collected so long ago. And you know how these things go: if you got specimens sent on a slave ship along with other goods shipped from South America or the Caribbean to Europe, the next thing you know you’ve called an enslvaver yourself, and then the reputation of people like Linnaeus and Newton are besmirched, and then they get erased. (I can’t imagine, however, that Newton could even be faulted for what he did.)

There seems to be a whole genre of historians who try to draw these connections, and I don’t mind their efforts so much, up to the point where they try to cancel people for what is a very tenuous connection to the slave trade.

We all recognize, of course, that slavery was horrible: one of the worst acts you can commit on a person. People were ripped away from their homes, families were separated and people were transported far away under horrible conditions. If they survived, they were turned into unpaid laborers—considered possessions of the slaveowner.  There’s no doubt about the odious nature of what happened.  But the less closely you were connected to this trade, the less guilt your reputation should bear. Linnaeus and Newton, it seems, are relatively guiltless, at least compared to those who captured slaves, transported them, or took possession of them.

Click to read an article about this in Science:

The problem is provenance. One of the big purveyors of natural history specimens was James Petiver, a London apothecary described this way by Wikipedia:

James Petiver (c. 1665 – c. 2 April 1718) was a London apothecary, a fellow of the Royal Society as well as London’s informal Temple Coffee House Botany Club, famous for his specimen collections in which he traded and study of botany and entomology. He corresponded with John Ray and Maria Sibylla Merian. Some of his notes and specimens were used by Carolus Linnaeus in descriptions of new species. The genus Petiveria was named in his honour by Charles Plumier. His collections were bought by Sir Hans Sloane and became a part of the Natural History Museum.

The issue, as the Science article notes, is how the specimens were transported:

Although he rarely left London, Petiver ran a global network of dozens of ship surgeons and captains who collected animal and plant specimens for him in far-flung colonies. Petiver set up a museum and research center with those specimens, and he and visiting scientists wrote papers that other naturalists (including Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy) drew on. Between one-quarter and one-third of Petiver’s collectors worked in the slave trade, largely because he had no other options: Few ships outside the slave trade traveled to key points in Africa and Latin America. Petiver eventually amassed the largest natural history collection in the world, and it never would have happened without slavery.

One quarter and one-third of the collections “worked in the slave trade,” mostly, it appears, as ship’s surgeons who were tasked with collecting specimens. This already makes much of the provenance of the specimens slave-ship free, yet there’s no way of knowing which specimens are “good” and which are “bad.” Specimens of both types are in London’s Museum of Natural History and are apparently still being used. (The collections were mostly ferried on British slave ships, though some Spanish ones were used as well.)

That’s the gist of the story, and here’s how Linnaeus and Newton were involved. I quote from the story:

Linnaeus (already mentioned in the excerpt above).

[Petiver] and visiting scientists wrote papers that other naturalists (including Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy) drew on.

Some historians now refer to those private and institutional collections as the “big science” of their day. Scholars studied those centralized repositories and then circulated accounts of their research to other scientists. Linnaeus drew on such accounts when putting together Systema Naturae in 1735, the book that introduced his famous binomial naming system for flora and fauna.

And that’s it for Linnaeus: he wrote paper and did analysis of specimens that were described by other scientists, specimens transported on slave ships (with some specimens possibly connected by slaves). This is quite a tenuous connection between Linnaeus and slavery, and in itself seems something that shouldn’t tar his reputation.

Newton

Even a field as rarefied as celestial mechanics benefited from slavery. When developing his theory of gravity, Newton studied ocean tides, knowing that the gravitational tug of the moon causes them. Newton needed tide readings from all over the globe, and one crucial set of readings came from French slave ports in Martinique. Delbourgo says, “Newton himself, who’s really the paradigm figure of an isolated, nontraveling, sitting-at-his-desk genius, had access to numbers he wouldn’t have had access to without the Atlantic slave trade.”

Newton’s connection to the slave trade is even more tenuous, as it consists of his using “one crucial set of readings” from a French slave port. Were the data collected by slaves? I doubt it. Is it just that it was a slave port that indicts him? I have no idea. This is really the only mention of Newton beyond saying later that Petiver “he succeeded Newton as president of the Royal Society (which itself invested in slaving companies),” which is not a serious indictment—unless you want to make every member of the Royal Society culpable.

So the accusations against Linnaeus and Newton, at least, bear little weight.  At the piece’s end, Kean ponders what we should do about the connection between collecting data and specimens and the slave trade. He cites historians urging mention of how specimens were gathered, which is absolutely fine with me. If they were gathered illegally, as apparently some of them were, that should also be mentioned, for now collectors must have permission to remove specimens from a country.  But it goes a bit further:

The connections between science and the slave trade could also feed into ongoing debates about reparations and the historical legacies of slavery. Like some U.K. organizations, U.S. universities such as Yale, Georgetown, and Brown have acknowledged how they benefited from slavery. For the most part, Murphy says, those conversations are framed “in terms of just dollars and cents, pounds and pence. Yet [the profits] can also clearly be measured in specimens collected and papers published.”

It’s not clear how the data, especially since we don’t know which specimens were transported on slave ships or collected by slaves, are to feed into these debates. Of course we can and should acknowledge this fact somewhjere, but I’m not sure about what sort of “reparations” are to be made. Who would get them? Readers may wish to weigh in here.

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Three days ago I reported that Northwestern University successfully bargained with the pro-Palestinian protestors who were encamped on its campus. As Zach Kessel reported in the National Review at that time:

After five days of anti-Israel demonstrators occupying Deering Meadow on Northwestern University’s campus, Northwestern president Michael Schill and the rest of the university’s leadership decided to accede to several of the protesters’ demands.

While not committing to divesting its endowment from companies that do business in Israel and ending partnerships with Israeli institutions, the university released a list of concessions in a celebratory statement Monday afternoon in exchange for the removal of the encampment on the lawn.

Most notable among those concessions is a promise to offer full-ride scholarships to Palestinian students and guaranteed faculty jobs for Palestinian academics.

“The University will support visiting Palestinian faculty and students at risk (funding two faculty per year for two years; and providing full cost of attendance for five Palestinian undergraduates to attend Northwestern for the duration of their undergraduate careers),” the document reads. “The University commits to fundraise to sustain this program beyond this current commitment.”

A pdf of these “concessions” can be found here. I find it sickening. What isn’t mentioned is that Northwestern also commits to this (“MENA students” are North African and Middle Eastern students):

• The University will provide immediate temporary space for MENA/Muslim students.
• The University will provide and renovate a house for MENA/Muslim students that is conductive to community building as soon as practicably possible upon completion of the Jacobs renovation (Expected 2026)

Now, as Kessel reports again, Northwestern’s promises may in fact be illegal, and there is already considerable pushback from Jewish organizations. The problem is that this is a concession to only one side of the controversy a concession designed simply to stop a disruptive protest, and it also earmarks both studentships and professorships for residents of a particular foreign territory. That’s a form of discrimination by nationality.

Click the link in first sentence of last paragraph, or go below to the archived version.

First, a chest-puffing announcement by Northwestern’s craven President, Michael Schill:

Schill released a video Tuesday in which he addressed the agreement with encampment organizers, saying he was “proud of our community for achieving what has been a challenge across the country: a sustainable de-escalated path forward.” He also noted the antisemitic posters, saying such messages should be “condemned by all of us.”

What he achieved was to give in to the pro-Palestinian students’ demands, while paying only lip service to anti-Semitism. Yes, Schill met the challenge by caving in to the protestors’ demands. But all is still not well, and for two reasons (Kessels’s words are indented):

The legal problem:

While Schill’s agreement with the encampment organizers has drawn condemnation, legal experts told NR that there is a great deal of uncertainty as to whether the measures to provide scholarships for Palestinian students and faculty positions for Palestinian academics are lawful.

Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told NR that, though Schill did not explain all the details of the press release, the scholarships and faculty positions may violate Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights act, respectively.

Title VI stipulates that entities receiving federal funding must not allow discrimination, exclusion, or denial of benefits on the basis of race, color, or national origin, while Title VII protects against employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.

“Even if they eventually paper the Palestinian scholarship in such a way that it purports to be something else, the fact that this is how they announced it will be very strong evidence of the intent behind the program,” Morenoff told NR. “And given that Title VI is primarily — or, as the Supreme Court has said, exclusively — a disparate-treatment statute focused on the intent of a program, it certainly looks like this is a violation.”

Morenoff said he could imagine the university arguing that Title VI applies to programs rather than scholarships but pointed to a 1994 United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruling stating otherwise.

On the Title VII issue, Morenoff said it is “very hard to see how having national origin-defined positions as part of this negotiation could be compliant.”

And the pushback:

In a joint statement published Tuesday, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Brandeis Center, and StandWithUs urged Schill to step down from his leadership position.

“For days, protesters openly mocked and violated Northwestern’s codes of conduct and policies by erecting an encampment in which they fanned the flames of antisemitism and wreaked havoc on the entire university community,” the three organizations wrote. “Their goal was not to find peace, but to make Jewish students feel unsafe on campus. Rather than hold them accountable — as he pledged he would — President Schill gave them a seat at the table and normalized their hatred against Jewish students. It is clear from President Schill’s actions that he is unfit to lead Northwestern and must resign.”

The three groups wrote that if Schill does not resign, they expect the board of trustees to “step in as the leaders the University needs and remove him.”

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) president Morton A. Klein went a step further, arguing in a Wednesday statement that Schill, provost Kathleen Hagerty, and vice president for student affairs Susan Davis should each be relieved of their duties.

“President Schill, Provost Hagerty, and VP Davis should be fired immediately for this disaster — and this dangerous agreement must be rescinded,” Klein wrote. “If a group of white supremacists took over Deering Meadow and chanted for the deaths of blacks, the white supremacists would be immediately removed from the campus — not rewarded with scholarships, professorships, buildings, power over vendors, and investment powers. The same standard should apply here. The Northwestern officials who negotiated and entered into this agreement must be fired, and their agreement must be thrown in the dustbin. The student and faculty trespassers and promoters of anti-Jewish violence should be arrested and expelled or fired.”

There is more in the article, but the archived link will give you the details.  Still, there’s one more looming threat for President Schill:

Meanwhile, a group of Northwestern students met with members of the House Education and Workforce Committee, including Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) and Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) in Washington, D.C., Wednesday afternoon.

A committee aide told NR that the agreement between Northwestern’s leadership and the encampment organizers poses several problems.

“This really represents a craven decision to cave to the students who were disrupting university policy, violating rules, harassing Jewish students, and we heard really appalling and egregious accounts of that harassment directly from Jewish students in a meeting today,” the aide said, adding that the provisions in the agreement “are of significant concern to us because — while we’re still getting more information and looking into this — they appear to be violations of the law.”

Stefanik! We all know what she does to craven or double-talking professors. Not that I’m on her political side, or agree with her views on the First Amendment, but Schill does need to be grilled publicly on this.

And Northwestern students have sued their school for breaching promises to them. It’s all described in the student newspaper, the Daily Northwestern; click the headline below to or the link in this sentence to read:

The complaint:

Three plaintiffs brought a breach of contract lawsuit against Northwestern Wednesday, citing a “dystopic cesspool of hate” present at the pro-Palestinian encampment on Deering Meadow.

The lawsuit — brought by two graduate students and one first-year undergraduate student at NU — alleges that NU breached a “modest core promise” to students when it opted to allow the encampment to continue throughout the weekend despite demonstration policies stating such encampments are prohibited.

“Northwestern’s refusal to enforce its own policies is thus a breach of contract, in addition to being a total embarrassment to the broader Northwestern community,” the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit, filed in the Cook County Circuit Court, alleges the University allowed the encampment to become “increasingly hostile to Jews” and that “the encampment featured open support for Hamas.” The plaintiffs seek class certification for Jewish students at NU who did not participate in the encampment.

. . .“Rather than enforce its express and implied promises to Plaintiffs that Northwestern is a place of civility where free expression is governed by transparent, content-neutral codes of conduct, Northwestern twisted itself into a pretzel to accommodate the hostile and discriminatory encampment, legislate around it, and ultimately reward it,” the lawsuit reads.

This is what I think the administrators at the University of Chicago have not considered: that their allowing our encampment to remain, despite its palpable violations of the “time, place, and manner” of speech codes, despite the protestors’ repeated vandalism and removal of the banners of Jewish students, despite their erection of illegal blockages of access, and despite their placement of Palestinian flags all over the quad—all of this constitutes a violation of the free speech (and restriction of its disruption) code that is contractually promised to our students by the University.  The persistence of the encampment despite our administration’s admission that it violates university regulations is, I think, grounds for a lawsuit against the University of Chicago. They cannot on one hand laud our tradition of free speech and on the other hand allow palpable and copious violations of free speech and of the time, place, and manner of its emission.

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