Recently I came across an article at Science 2.0 by Dr. Kevin Folta (whom I had actually encountered in the past on twitter). Reading it I kept thinking about something rather frightening I had anticipated several years ago, that some kind of a purge would happen in our nation. Now I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was already underway. You see, Dr. Folta is a Phd educator in jeopardy of losing his reputation being that he was accused of taking money from a very rich source that stood presumably to gain by influencing what he taught.
I will not attempt to take sides here but rather I’ll come back to his story after I outline some very significant developments that serve as the context for this unpleasant circumstance and others like it. Educators have often been taken to task for political and religious views. Prior to this even, and because of NCLB, RTTT and CCSS many have suggested educators were becoming the scapegoats for what ails our country. And now science is on the defensive too. More specifically, genetic engineering and its applications in agriculture and other industries appear to feel or truly be threatened.
So, what are the “fronts” where this battle is waging, or better yet the context for this development? Let me outline a few.
(a) The Federal Government has decided to impose a Common Core curriculum which for example puts science front and center — to the apparent curricular sacrifice of humanities, the soft sciences, sports, music, theatre and the visual arts. Thus a front of alarmed cultural proponents has formed, mostly parents and teachers, and others with a vested interest in a thriving creative and open-minded, broadly educated community. Opposing them it is claimed are those that seek only to build a fresh workforce and supposedly thereby return greatness to American industries and recover an ailing economy.
(b) Environmental issues are ever present too, but only now finally prevalent in the mainstream media. Once a fashionable disdain for pollution of air, water and soil, now it’s spectacle of disasters, protests — some being extremely dangerous actions by Green Peace, and others more inclined to violence such as bombing University facilities. In the social media a near shrill and pervasive exchange of barbs has sprung over issues of global climate change, imperial affluence, inadequate storage of radioactive materials, irresponsible use of chemicals, or insufficient caution, agricultural run-off, and not of least importance the depletion of resources and slow development of sustainable energy. Malthus would probably say, yeah, but population growth will take you to the brink of sustainability.
(c) It would seem too that because of political failures American business has finally openly and unapologetically ripped away the veil of power from congress, the supreme court and the executive office. The revolving door worse than a meme whines like a turbine as an appeal to all to rally in exploiting this power over the consumer and labor. And now nearly every call to action in response has become an “occupy” movement. Campaigners alike presume now to be telling it like it is. Bernie Sanders disheveled hair and the meme of Trump’s skewed open mouth seem to reverberate the feverishness like two mirrors facing each other.
(d) Regulatory measures have all but evaporated such that free pure fresh water and retirement savings or decent healthcare are scarce every where round the globe. Consumers everywhere are finding that everything has a high price; and that this price continues to climb at alarming rates, while the value of one’s labor declines, and the actual percentage of un- and underemployed workers increases. This is evidence of the economic failure, that there is no feed back loop to support this aggregated and mismanaged growth.
(e) And thus a combination of fatalism and civil disobedience appear to have threatened to overwhelm any last hope of our maintaining a democracy. Even anarchy appears to be losing its claim to the streets… It must seem unsurprising to those bothering to pay attention that a police state would be the mandated response to this alarmed public temperament. Big brother has handed military weapons to enforcers of peace that don’t live in the neighborhoods wherein they are dispatched. It’s like 1968 on steroids.
(f) In a big way, America has taken several steps backwards with regard to the fate of black Americans. Only now that more and more middle class white Americans find themselves loosing everything and watching their stored treasures being auctioned off on Reality TV, only now, they begin to feel exposed by the harsh light. A light not unlike the sleep depriving streetlamp glare through the windshield of the unregistered car they are forced to sleep in. But racism continues to disproportionately oppress blacks. The civil rights movement and affirmative action seem to have had little lasting effect. Immigrants and anyone else for that matter that appears suspicious have also not fared well in this. Airports and the border with Mexico are fronts too where the battle for cvil rights is highlighted.
(G)These then are just some of the facets, some of the origins of what makes up the general temperament of far too many struggling global citizens. Imagine the temperament of citizens in other countries where they fare far worse than Westerners and especially only now they see they’ve inherited the same environmental issues we once had but sent them like smallpox ladened blankets, a dubious promise of future comforts derived from developing industries and wealth of their own — only to realize now thanks to the world wide web and social media they are being cheated for their cheaply had laborious efforts. This is not a localized discontent anymore. Americans are the not the only ones crying out for free (independent) enterprise or a living wage.
Could it be possible there is worldwide revolution ahead? We’ve already had non-governmental American agencies — not just our military — influencing and interfering in the internal affairs and crises of other countries. This only further implicates us and solidifies a global image of America as an exploitive empire. And politicians like Hilary Clinton pining for Cold War days of espionage only serves to reveal they are living in an action film.
(h) Pope Francis too has entered this global appeal to human sanity, by citing capitalist greed and plunder as the cause of our misery and that it fairly might signify our end on earth. And here I confess, I expected American evangelists to beat him to it. Wrong. How many established church leaders are unknowingly in bed anyway with developers the way government proposes to fix things simply by initiating more infrastructure?
So, considering the above incomplete and hotly contested perspectives, fronts where humans are colliding, is it any wonder that specific groups and individuals now are “trolling” and “shilling” in the social media, infiltrating departments or simply probing by way of say, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), or the NSA, for means to expose, harass or roust those they feel to be responsible for their perceived plight? The Patriot Act has not helped either to assuage any fears of invasive terrorism but rather it and its associated incomprehensibly weighted laws and legal failures to protect rights of natural persons such as privacy have only brought to light that those in power might fear citizens are becoming more agitated to the point of wide-spread violence.
Unlike some, I don’t equate all this necessarily with how the NAZI party sought to force Jewish educators from its schools, and store owners from their shops prior to the their “final solution” of exterminating them. Rather these bulleted contexts, as a sober reflection and comparison, suggest we indeed as ordinary citizens are on the brink of immediacy and forcing an extraordinary and misdirected solution to our problems. That is, looking for someone else to blame should be abhorrent to us, but instead it seems like it has become a past-time we relish. It’s not just schadenfreude, either. Indeed, everyone must look in the mirror and realize that over decades all consumers have been deluded and, worse are in collusion, for we all fantasize about more leisure, more freedom, more pleasure, more privacy — some of us have been too easily made complacent, in spite of this downward path. This perhaps inherent overreaching for material prosperity is an extension of a genetic selfishness — not to bastardize a little Dawkins. Don’t we humans propagate toward satisfaction, and away from blight and pain.
Now, back to my example of harassment. Yes, I’ve come quite a distance now from the article by Mr. Folta and the subject of his plight. But it was necessary in order to show how his predicament, and the accusations directed at him, whether bearing any truth or not, are indicative of a society experiencing ethical convulsions. We are literally being torn apart from within by warring versions of what is the common good and how to go about achieving or maintaining it versus what would be good for us individually. And Kevin Folta has become one of it’s recent public victims.
Kevin asks, “Why would they target me?” This indeed is a good question and I think I have answered the question of where the angst of the attack comes from. But not the specific back ground of his specialization or the concerned parities involved. It is claimed he is a proxy for Monsanto and is paid to promote their interest (GMOs and profit) by receiving money from them.
“I am well trained,” he continues, “in transgenic technology, familiarly, ‘GMOs’. I teach science communication to farmers and scientists, and explain to them how to discuss issues in biotechnology, the risks and benefits, strengths and limitations, with concerned public audiences—something they historically have not done well.” And that he doesn’t “consider a donation to an outreach program a ‘financial relationship’ any more than my donation to my local NPR station a financial relationship. Monsanto does not fund my research or salary, and they have no influence on workshop content." (Kevin Folta, Science 2.0).
According to Colleen Flaherty, writing for Inside Higher Education, ”[Folta does admit] to another detail in the article: that in 2014 he accepted an unrestricted $25,000 grant from the company to further his active outreach agenda on scientific communication.” Sadly for him this must have pricked up the ears of those also familiar with the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United versus the Federal Elections Committee case, and the ultimate unleashing of political action committee campaign funding. It’s not at all the same issue — but any possibility of special interest groups’ financial gain, where independence would protect any purported common good, makes anything you say suspect. Consequently, any employee of say Monsanto is suspect as well, then.
Mr. Folta then has had to submit his emails, because of an FOIA subpoena. Having read this article and one email he includes there, I can only see one possible problem for him, other than the obvious professional crisis. Nor is it a legal one, but rather one of perspective or maybe semantics. What constitutes a “financial relationship” or how do we formulate influence? He mentions, that his role in his outreach program, which is where the Monsanto donations go, is for the benefit of teaching farmers and scientists how to communicate “with concerned public audiences.” I should have said said, “narrowing of perspective” here because farmers in particular while they may be interested in the science and are not inherently uneducated may only appear to be failing to explain and promote science in agriculture, as Folta states, only perhaps because farmers are results-oriented and may be more inclined to speak directly and lucidly in objective visual terms of a desire for the success of their crops, as opposed to utilizing laboratory science vocabulary. After all they are usually speaking indirectly to the broader public through the media. If failure is evident to them it will be more readily described in empirical terms. In turn if Genetics is failing, it may just as reasonably be described in terms of genetics — natural adaptation. The same problem has developed with overuse of antibiotics: disease resistance. And no amount of explaining will alter a gene enough to convince it to slow down its evolution. Nor will any amount increased yield suffice to save humanity anyway if the planet is already over populated. Perhaps the focus of our science is just a little off target. And perhaps it is natural to skirt the obvious. But I think if anything science should be focused on how to avoid exposing life on earth to concentrations of any toxins. Did we decide that diversity and crop rotation was a bad idea? No. Rather, we have become in a hurry. Or rather we are in a race with natural processes to accommodate our rising threshold. The kind of risk science should be concerned with is not what it’s been criticized for, that of financial risk, but rather environmental risk. In other words the precautionary principle in particular it would seem is anathema to industry, not science. Other wise it’s not truly science.
The trouble with this last point is that science does need money to function. And sadly Universities have less and less of it. And less still if they are inclined to divest. Where will science get this funding then if not from where it accumulates in public institutions? Taxes? From private individuals or business allocations for research and development? “And-development” is the operative phrase here that causes distrust. But shouldn’t business at least be allowed to gain back its investments if indeed the research yields a benefit to all mankind? Benefit, yes. Everyone is hungering like little chicks for benefit of the worm.
If Kevin Folta is to be held accountable for anything it is not for acquiring funds donated without restrictions. Rather let him answer for his perspective, and that alone. Otherwise must we attempt to ask each and every gene where on earth it acquired its energy?
The proportion of the specific issue of genetics in agriculture which we may choose to ignore is that it stretches from the intricately small and fast realm of molecular interactions to the grand scale of possible extinction of whole species. Thus the ensuing elevated voices whether they’re schooled in the science or not have become prevalent. But science itself apparently has two opposing camps, a split consensus. And thus the sense that science has gone mad. But really it’s only because our gaze as spectators of these events is distracted by our own loyalties and dependencies, our own perspectives. We civilized (or not) communities are indebted as it were to the awful and disastrous policies that brought us to this critical point but we can’t pull away without tearing asunder our precious and familiar roots. It will continue to be played out then in private and in the public domain: will we defend to the death our own self-destruction?
