Researchers ponder legal actions against taxpayer-funded university
This year, two researchers who have spoken to The College Fix in interviews who have spoken out against and condemn the idea of female identity were lately kicked out of an NIH event on the subject.
Tomás Bogardus, a theory professor at Pepperdine University and a self-described” standard Catholic,” and Colin Wright, a well-known evolutionary scientist and Manhattan Institute brother, were prevented from a conference that was a part of a two-day forum” Exploring the several dimensions of sex and gender in the genomics era” hosted by NIH in mid-July.
The two scholars claimed they were unfairly excluded from the website event, which was particularly troubling because it was a taxpayer-funded occasion.
” I was shocked more than anything, because my conduct was completely specialist and in no way violated their Code of Conduct,” Wright wrote in an email to The College Fix. He claimed that while private organizations may have more liberty, NIH is common, and that “kicking me out of the occasion is a violation of my legal rights under the First Amendment.”
Bogardus said he was even very surprised at being booted, telling The Fix via email:” That’s basically the equivalent of being forcefully ejected from a life, in-person event, and my behavior in no way did permit that sort of treatment”.
Some important questions and comments that the two scholars made in the talk section were at issue.
” We held an open Q& and Answer session at our Conference,” according to the statement. We asked our administrators to ensure a professional setting that was healthy, creative, and effective for all guests”, Sarah Bates, an NIH director, told The College Fix on Wednesday.
She claimed that a code of conduct was necessary to attend the forum.
Three attendees were removed for disrupting the occasion by consistently posting questions related to the online Q&, A forum, according to our program records, she wrote via e-mail. ” This was in violation of the event’s code of conduct”.
This is disputable by both Wright and Bogardus.
” It was my intention to attend this event and to simply ask the speakers questions about the topics covered in their talks. According to Wright,” I remained professional throughout, and I made sure all of my questions were directly related to the statements made by the speakers.”
Wright used the X to arouse concern about being kicked out.
” This is completely unacceptable”, he posted. ” I demand that Eric D. Green ( @NHGRI_Director ), the director of the @genome_gov at the @NIH, who gave the opening remarks, explain why Dr. Bogardus and I were kicked out of the event”.
I want an explanation from the @NIH and @genome_gov as to why I was just kicked out of their public event, which I had registered for in advance and was quietly attending.
About 20 minutes into Dr. Tucker … pic. twitter.com/Q0YKfYFnzd
— Colin Wright ( @SwipeWright ) July 17, 2024
Bogardus said he was aware that he would likely disagree with the presenters, but that he had hoped to be able to ask questions and raise objections to the speakers during the Q& and A periods.
” That’s how it works in Philosophy: the Q&, A periods are for challenging questions and objections. And it’s quite common for philosophers to attend talks they know they’ll disagree with, in order to raise objections in the Q&, A”, he said.
Bogardus claimed that he found no real interaction between the speakers and the audience and that the “moderator appeared to be only interested in giving the speakers the opportunity to expand on what they had already said.”
” I saw no pushback from the moderator to the speakers, despite these issues being extremely controversial”, he said. By the time I was kicked out, I could see that this webinar was a bit absurd and not a real academic event where the validity of ideas could be challenged by challenging questions and objections. That simply was n’t going to happen, by design”.
The National Institute of Health and the National Genome Research Institute organized the webinar. Dr. Eric Green, the director of the two organizations, did not respond to an emailed request from The College Fix seeking comment.
Bogardus describes himself as a” traditional Catholic” on his X profile. He is outspoken against the so-called “activist orthodoxy” on sex and gender issues.
For claiming that there are “only two sexes,” Wright has sparked controversy.
One more incident that upended what he refers to as the “activist orthodoxy” was the cancellation of a panel of female scholars’ on the importance of sex as a category by the American Anthropological Association.
Bogardus claimed that because he hopes to write a short book about the nature of biological sex, he was interested in hearing the opinions of what he refers to as “influential” and “prominent” speakers.
Wright claimed that he was attending the webinar because he has written about the subject for the past six years and that it was advertised as a “multidisciplinary meeting of the minds on the topic of sex and gender in science and society.”
Wright also contributes to the creation of expert reports for American and international lawmakers that examine the biology of sex.
According to Wright,” It is crucial that I understand how medical organizations are currently addressing sex and gender so that I can be properly informed on the subject matter.”
Wright added that Wright wanted to attend the webinar because, contrary to what he writes about in publications like the City Journal, it was advertised as “platforming multiple viewpoints.”
MORE: A biologist criticizes anthropologists for canceling the panel on biological sex
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