The Humiliation of Tim Hunt: Why Did He Apologise?

If when the twits began to twitter that he'd made a sexist remark, Professor, Sir Tim Hunt, FRS, Nobel Laureate, had issued a vice-presidential "Go fuck yourself," that would have been the end to the witch hunt, i.e., the hunt by feminist witches. Instead he apologized, admitting that he'd gone mad, which to those in pursuit was like blood in the water to a shark.

Meantime, Hunt's confession was all that the bureaucratic enforcers of political correctness needed to instigate immediate punitive action. The Royal Society, headed by Sir Paul Nurse, who shared with Tim Hunt the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, immediately "distanced" itself from the hapless Hunt, while University College London (Vice-Chancellor Professor Michael Arthur) booted Hunt from his unpaid faculty position within hours, as did the European Research Council (President: Professor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon).

That none of these organizations, each headed by a distinguished scientist, found it necessary either to justify its action or to provide Professor Hunt an opportunity to speak for himself is an aspect of the Hunt affair that deserves critical consideration. Here though, our concern is solely with this question: why did Hunt bring disaster upon his own head by making an unwarranted and, indeed, idiotic confession of guilt?

The answer, it seems, can only be that Hunt, is himself a feminist, which is to say a supporter of everything PC who automatically caves to any feminist demand whatever.

Which raises the further question, why would someone of undoubted intelligence adopt such a foolish view? And to that, I suggest, the answer is simply that Hunt accepts the liberal-left PC ideology that is almost universally held in academia. Most likely Hunt assimilated this view back in the 70's and has never given it a moment's serious thought since, first because he has a mind very narrowly focused on scientific work, and second because when 85-90% of your academic colleagues, including the administrative bureaucracy, are liberal leftist feminists, being a liberal-leftist feminist is the most comfortable position to take.

Why most academics are liberal-leftist advocates of feminism, diversity, aka the ethnic cleansing of the European peoples through suppression of reproduction plus mass immigration, etc., etc., is not entirely clear to me, although it is, obviously, highly compatible with the libertinism of many male academics working closely with nubile feminist students, such as was, for example, Mary Collins, Hunt's graduate student who became his second wife.

Perhaps the humiliation of Tim Hunt will prompt a few academics to re-examine their commitment to the liberal-leftist ideology that nurtures the politically correct world view. But don't bet on it. Education is a key component of the modern state's brainwashing apparatus. Academics play a critical role in in this apparatus: they teach the teachers who indoctrinate the children. Defection from the official line will always incur a substantial penalty.

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