Post-Progressivism?: Toward a New Social Science
Heterodox Social Science Inaugural Conference
We are entering a post-progressive era in which sixty years of cultural left intellectual hegemony is in question. Populism, polarization, progressive illiberalism and the fraying of social capital have produced an intellectual crisis and loss of confidence in our progressive-dominated meaning-making institutions. Traditional leftists, classical liberals and conservatives have all rendered pointed critiques of the cultural left episteme. A shift away from ‘woke’ excess is evident in new media, social media and even established media and organizations, but is being steadfastly resisted in academia.
Even so, academic research is vital for building theories which frame, organize and systematize smaller-scale insights from think tanks, the media and empirical scholars. We need high theory and intellectual depth alongside analysis and commentary. This requires networks, conferences, journals, associations, canonical texts, graduate programmes and courses. This conference is both an intellectual and an organizational endeavour.
The conference addresses a major problem: our knowledge-production system is heavily swayed by its cultural left weltanschauung, directing attention to progressive topics and viewpoints while using carrots and sticks to constrain the pursuit of truth. As a result, today’s social science conceals as much as it reveals about the world.
The conference’s intellectual aims are twofold: a) to institutionalize the study of woke, arguably a dominant high-cultural ideology of our episteme; and b) to research omitted topics and perspectives, rebalancing social scientific knowledge.
We need a New Social Science for an emerging post-progressive era.
Plenary and parallel sessions will bring heterodox scholars together to debate and collaborate, with the aim of institutionalizing alternative social science.
The conference is about conferring, but also about focused results. The event will be recorded and disseminated online. It will produce a special issue of an academic journal and an edited book on post-progressive social science.
We will discuss strategies for networking, funding, publishing and supporting the careers of heterodox social science scholars. We will debate the Buckingham Manifesto, a countercultural vision for a politically-neutral social science.
Themes will include, but are not limited to, the following:
Critical Woke Studies
- The intellectual origins of woke: Protestant, liberal, neo-Marxist or postmodernist?
- Are woke ideas downstream of equality law, or are laws and institutions downstream of culture?
- Is woke a result of self-interest (dividing workers, status distinction via ‘luxury beliefs’) or genuine belief?
- Bottom-up versus top-down – the sociology of woke: did beliefs spread epidemiologically through the media and social media, or a via a more deliberate ‘march through the institutions’?
- The politics of woke: how important is the culture war for deciding elections? Can public policy roll it back?
- The psychology of woke: how important is hyperparenting, fragility, therapeutic concept creep, psychopathology and personal victimhood in spurring the rise of this ideology?
- The political theory of woke. Is there a case for limiting speech, mandating equal outcomes or deconstructing a majority tradition?
Neglected Perspectives in the Social Sciences
- Alternative explanations for racial, sexual or gender inequality
- Positive sociology
- The effect of diversity on social cohesion and social capital
- Anomie, sexual orientation and mental health
- Family structure and social outcomes
- The effects of DEI on minorities, majorities and organizational performance
- Anti-conservative/male/white/Asian discrimination in elite institutions
- Attitudes to free speech and objective truth
- Correlates of left-wing authoritarianism
- Distortion in the public understanding of historical events
- The social construction of trauma and harm
- The social construction of systemic discrimination
- The social construction of disinformation and hate speech
- Negative effects of low-skilled immigration
- Innumeracy and police violence
- The effects of heredity/evolutionary psychology on social behaviour
- How can we reform the social sciences, and the academy more broadly?
Schedule
Day 1: Thursday, June 5
12:30 PM – Tea & Coffee
1:15 PM – Welcome (Vinson Auditorium)
University of Buckingham Vice-Chancellor James Tooley, Eric Kaufmann
1:30 – 2:15 PM
Eric Kaufmann – The Post-Progressive Condition
2:15 – 3:30 PM
Theme: Status or True Belief
- Musa al-Gharbi – TBA
- Gad Saad – Parasitic Ideas and Suicidal Empathy Are Killing the West
3:30 – 3:50 PM – Coffee Break
3:50 – 4:50 PM
Track 1: Critical Woke Studies (Vinson Auditorium)
- Frank Furedi – The Culture War Over Socialization
- Joshua Katz – What has happened to the field of Linguistics?
Track 2: Countercultural Social Science (Vinson Enterprise Centre)
- April Bleske-Reschek – Persistent Sex and Race Differences in Advanced Placement Exam Participation and Performance
- Cory Clark – Letters from the Editors: Harm Concerns in the Scientific Publication Process
- Colin Wright – Sex Pseudoscience in Society and the Academy
5:00 – 6:00 PM
Theme: Classical Liberal Approaches (Vinson Auditorium)
- Yascha Mounk – How to Fight the Identity Trap Without Becoming Illiberal
- Steven Pinker – A Positive Vision for Scholarship and Society
Conference Reception and Dinner
Day 2: Friday, June 6
9:30 – 10:30 AM
Theme: US and UK (Vinson Auditorium)
- Wilfred Reilly – TBA
- Matthew Goodwin – Speaking up for the Forgotten Majority
10:30 – 11:00 AM – Coffee Break
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Track 1: Critical Woke Studies (Vinson Auditorium)
- Nathan Honeycutt – TBA
- Jukka Savolainen – Let’s Be Honest: On the Cancellation of Sociology by the State of Florida
- John Iceland – Post-Social Justice: How Should We Study Racial Inequality?
Track 2: Countercultural Social Science (Vinson Enterprise Centre)
- George Borjas – Ideological Bias in Estimates of the Impact of Immigration
- Jan van de Beek – TBA (on effects of immigration)
12:00 – 1:00 PM
Track 1: Critical Woke Studies (Vinson Auditorium)
- Zvi Shalem – Science vs. Woke: Can the Divide Be Bridged?
- JD Haltigan – Personality, Psychopathology, & Political Beliefs
- Pamela Paresky – Investing Wisely in a Prestige Economy
Track 2: Countercultural Social Science (Vinson Enterprise Centre)
- Richard McNally – Is Clinical Psychological Science Racist?
- Sally Satel – Corruption of Psychotherapies
1:00 – 2:15 PM – Lunch
2:30 – 3:30 PM
Track 1: Critical Woke Studies (Vinson Auditorium)
- Thomas Prosser – The Economic Drivers of Social Justice Ideology: Developing Hypotheses and Presenting Empirical Evidence
- Neema Parvini – TBC
- Helen Pluckrose – TBC
Track 2: Countercultural Social Science (Vinson Enterprise Centre)
- David Rozado – Where Do Political Preferences in AI Systems Come From?
- Gabriel Rossman – The Past and Future of Wokeness in Organizations
- Kevin McCaffree – Documenting “Woke” Ideology with Data
3:30 – 4:00 PM – Coffee Break
4:00 – 5:00 PM
Theme: Class or Ideology? (Vinson Auditorium)
- Wesley Yang
- Batya Ungar-Sargon
5:15 – 6:30 PM
Theme: Role of Government (Vinson Auditorium)
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Chris Rufo (remote)
Dinner: Participants free to go out in Buckingham
Day 3: Saturday, June 7
9:30 – 10:30 AM
Track 1: Critical Woke Studies (Vinson Auditorium)
- Lawrence Krauss – TBA
- Bob Maranto – How to Have Heterodox Scholarly Journals
- Sean Stevens – TBA
Track 2: Countercultural Social Science (Vinson Enterprise Centre)
- Zachary Patterson – The Relationship Between “Diversity” and Academic Output
- Luke Conway – TBA
- Jonathan Anomaly – Enlightened Tribalism: An Alternative to Cosmopolitan Liberalism
10:30 – 11:00 AM – Coffee Break
11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Roundtable on the Future of Heterodox Social Science (Vinson Auditorium)
- Kevin McCaffree – Theory and Society
- Bob Maranto – Journal of School Choice
- Francesca Minerva – The Journal of Controversial Ideas
- Lee Jussim – Journal of Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences
- Radomir Tylecote – Prosperity Institute
- Sean Stevens – FIRE
12:20 – 12:45 PM
Closing Remarks (Vinson Auditorium) – Eric Kaufmann
- Buckingham Manifesto
- Buckingham Heterodox Social Science Research Award
- Conference Special Issue & Book