The Obama Doctrine

Gary Kasparov, former chess champion turned political activist, has defined the Obama doctrine:

The Obama Doctrine: "Do as little as necessary to appear to be doing something without actually committing to a cause or course of action."

(Via Powerline)

Or, in the words of Bret Stephens this morning:

Republicans know what’s wrong with Barack Obama ’s foreign policy. He has given the U.S. the reputation of a faithless friend and feckless foe. He sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan with no intention of defeating the Taliban, raising the cost by cheapening the goal. He squandered a hard-won win in Iraq with a fumbled exit.

He announces initiatives—the pivot to Asia, the arming of moderate Syrian rebels—then fails to follow up. He is gutting the military. He repeatedly shows that he is disengaged, ill-advised and stunningly ill-informed. Tell us, Mr. President: Is al Qaeda, core or otherwise, still on a “path to defeat”?

Strangely enough, both men agree that the Obama doctrine values appearances over reality. Obama appears to be in charge; he appears to be doing something. He isn't.

In truth, it’s all for the cameras and for the election. ISIS is not quaking before Obama. Putin is not staying up nights worrying about our hapless president.

No one should be surprised. It takes experience to access reality. Obama brought no relevant experience into office. Thus, he has consistently fallen back on ideology and ideology can only give you access to appearances.

Isn’t this what Plato meant?

And isn’t this why Aristotle, even if he got some of it wrong, laid the groundwork for science?

Nate Silver's Last Call

Nate Silver, of the FiveThirtyEight blog, has published his last call, his final forecast of today’s senatorial elections.

In his words:

After two months of forecasting, it comes down to this: Republicans are favored to win the Senate. Their chances of doing so are 76 percent,according to FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast, which is principally basedon an analysis of the polls in each state and the historical accuracy of Senate polling.

But they are not necessarily favored to have the race “called” for them on Tuesday night. Because of a variety of circumstances like possible runoffs in Georgia and Louisiana and the potential decision of Kansas independent Greg Orman about which party he chooses to caucus with, the outcome of the Senate may not be determined until days or weeks from now. The forecast refers only to the probability that Republicans will eventually claim control of the Senate by the time it convenes in January.

He adds that:

… the polls have moved toward Republicans in the closing days of the campaign — making their position more robust. The movement has been clearest in states like Kentucky, Arkansas and Georgia that typically vote Republican, suggesting the election may be converging toward the “fundamentals” of each state.

 If you prefer it in visual form, here's Silver's graph:

 

For further discussion, see Silver's extensive analysis of the data in his post.

The Catcalling Controversy

Strictly speaking the evidence is anecdotal. A woman named Shoshana Roberts put a camera in her backpack and walked around New York City for ten hours.

The experiment was conducted by an anti-harassment organization called Hollaback.

She was, it is fair to say, subjected to catcalls, harassment and some feeble attempts at humor. To give you the flavor of the remarks she received, Amanda Hess explains:

Bliss’ camera caught men approaching, leering, and trailing Roberts’ movements; the mics recorded their comments, which ranged from ostensibly friendly greetings (“Have a nice evening!”) to unsolicited commentaries on Roberts’ body (“Sexy!”) to absurd commands (“Smile!”) to pure expressions of entitlement (“Somebody’s acknowledging you for being beautiful! You should say thank you more!”).

In other words, some of the catcalls are menacing. Some are insulting. To be fair, some were attempts at humor.

Hollaback produced the video in order to show the truth about male behavior.

Amanda Hess explains:

The ceaseless chatter (plus some light stalking!) adds up to a constant reminder that, just for walking from point A to point B, some men believe that women’s bodies and minds should be made accessible to them on command. 

Look closely and you will see that Hess’s sentence contains a dangling participle. Hess thinks she is saying that women are subject to horrific instances of street harassment on a daily, even an hourly basis. Her sentence say men believe that, “just for walking”—the phrase refers to men-- they should have access to women’s bodies on command.

Dare I say that this is positively idiotic. It borders on the paranoid.

Some people believe that dangling participles are harmless and that we ought to allow them. We can allow what we wish, but Hess and her editors should know better.

For my part, I do not dangle participles. I recommend that others follow the rule.

Then, Hanna Rosin took a gander at the video and drew a slightly different conclusion:

But the video also unintentionally makes another point: that harassers are mostly black and Latino, and hanging out on the streets in midday in clothes that suggest they are not on their lunch break. As Roxane Gay tweeted, “The racial politics of the video are fucked up. Like, she didn’t walk through any white neighborhoods?”

So Rosin called out Rob Bliss Creative, producer of the video, for racism.

Rosin might have said that street harassers are more likely to be those that the Obama recovery left behind.  They are today’s lumpen proletariat. Rosin might have said that it has something to do with class distinctions, even class conflict. She didn’t.

Dee Lockett, also writing on Slate Double XX, went Rosin one step better. She accepted that white males do not catcall as often as do unemployed minority men, but still, they are men. And that means, that they are, as the saying goes, “bad to the bone.”

Lockett writes:

That, of course, is not to say that white men don’t have their own predatory nature—one that is expressed in ways unique to their privilege. As we know from countless court cases, it’s not that white men don’t hassle women (or rich white men, as Joyce Carol Oates implied this week in a tone-deaf tweet), it’s that they do it in a different way….

White men, on the other hand, have no use for that sort of catcalling. They marked their territory centuries ago. So, instead, their sexual harassment is less invasive (“in passing,” as Bliss puts it) and harder to recognize—even when it’s staring you in the face. They do it in bars, at parties, on the frat row at your local college campus, in boardrooms, and other places men of color are never privy to, at least not in positions of power.

Now, what passes for feminist thought these days: blatant anti-male and anti-white male bigotry.

Using anecdotal evidence Lockett calls men predatory, and like animals that mark their territory. You know how male animals mark their territory, so I will not explain.

One would like to think that these women see more in men than the will to harass women and to possess women’s bodies. Men, even white men have accomplished things in this world. Some of them enjoy privileges, but these are often privileges that derive from achievement. If Jon Stewart’s children attend private school or live in a beautiful apartment, they are enjoying a privilege. It does not befall them because they are white, but because their father has accomplished something.

Feminist do not care. They have condemned all men, especially all white men for harassment. It can range from abusive language to stalking to looking at a woman the wrong way.

The fact that white males produced the Industrial Revolution, liberal democracy and much of modern science does not count for feminists.

If white men do not act like the lumpen proletariat the reason must be, Lockett declares, that they express their own hostility in more insidious ways, inside boardrooms where women, according to feminists, have been excluded for millennia.

The feminist revolution has held men, especially white men, in contempt. If Lockett's attitude is indicative, feminism has stereotyped and caricatured men as violent and vicious predators, people whose successes were purchased by enslaving and abusing everyone who wasn’t white and male.

It is slightly unrealistic to imagine that a group of people so consistently demeaned and denigrated is not going to respond. In some cases, that response might be criminal. Obviously, it ought to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

It most cases, however, the response is more subtle, and not subject to prosecution.

Therein lies the problem with catcalling.

Put it in perspective.

By the light of feminist reasoning women do not need men. They are strong and powerful. If you do not believe me, listen to how many times media figures label women strong and empowered. Doubtless they all believe that the more they say it, the truer it will become.

Women are therefore independent and autonomous. They do not want to feel that they are under the protection of any man. They want to feel that they can fend for themselves, even defend themselves.

But, men are the born and sworn enemies of women’s emancipation. They do not bear good will to their mothers, their wives or their daughters.

Therein lies a problem. If men are really and truly predators who want nothing more than to abuse and to own women, then a man who acts like a boor or even a predator is fulfilling feminist expectations. His behavior proves that feminism is correct.

Since feminism is an ideology, it is constantly on the lookout for facts that can appear to prove that it is right. It systematically ignores all facts that might contradict its narrative.

Thus, if all men, and especially all white men are sexual predators, a man who adopts a code of gentlemanly conduct and acts respectfully to women must be a fraud.

Does a man then have a vested interest in behaving well toward women? Or is he being induced to behave badly, the better to fulfill the expectations that have unjustly been placed on him.

Putting this aside for the moment, consider this. Strong powerful feminists now believe that women need to be protected by the state and even by extra-judicial authorities from the threat of sexual violence. It's the new vulnerability.

By current feminist logic a strong, empowered woman who gets drunk and does not say No to a casual sexual encounter cannot, by virtue of the fact that she is drunk, be consenting to sex. Thus, strong, powerful women are being infantilized—they cannot really consent—and men will be deprived of their rights under the law because, one must imagine, the law is so corrupt that it sometimes fails to punish rapists.

In a world where men are all sexual predators, they are presumed guilty of the most horrific sexual crimes against women. A woman’s word is law.

From its onset second-wave feminism decided that courtship had to be rejected. When a man holds a door for a woman that can only mean that she is so weak she cannot open the door herself. When a man pays for a woman’s dinner that can only mean that she is too incompetent to support herself.

It was demeaning for a woman to feel protected by a man.

Traditional courtship rules made feminists feel weak and ineffectual. The rules were tossed out like so much detritus. The consequences were often not very good for women, and feminists rose up in anger against the new regime. They forgot one salient point: you broke it; you own it.

If feminism was instrumental in discrediting the old dating and mating customs, then feminism should bear the responsibility for the consequences, both intended and unintended.

Of course, if we are dealing with accusations of rape we are talking about a felony. It ought certainly to be prosecuted.

And yet, trying to regulate human behavior through the criminal justice system is ultimately inefficient. Aside from the fact that this approach makes men and women mortal enemies, thus undermining their impulse to get along with each other, it creates circumstances where men, in particular, will engage in behaviors that are obnoxious, but not criminal.

Walking beside a woman for several minutes on the sidewalk looks to me like stalking behavior. It was the worst that I saw on the tape.

I would have some sympathy if the police were to intervene to explain to the man that his behavior was borderline criminal but if you overdo the impulse to criminalize, that might make it more difficult to prosecute the more violent and threatening stalkers out there.

As for the other kinds of street harassment, I don’t see how you can criminalize expressions like: “Hi, honey;” “You look beautiful;” and “Wow!”

I have occasionally offered my opinion on this problem. Sabrina Schaeffer explains it well in a commentary on the catcalling controversy:

But gender roles helped men and women and in times past allowed the sexes to better navigate the sometimes-rough waters of romance, courtship, marriage, and sex. Feminists view the chivalry and social mores of previous generations as anachronistic. But the reality is these traditional customs of giving up a seat for a woman on a train, or accompanying a woman in public, weren’t all rooted in sexism. They were social structures to help make men more respectful of women and to curb this kind of inappropriate behavior.

It might not have been perfect, but it had a purpose. Today’s dismissal of gender differences instead creates confusion, disappointment, and often more opportunity for harassment.

The conversation about street harassment has revealed once again that feminism has come with a cost, and women are usually the ones who bear the real price. Society has never been perfect, and I’m not advocating for a return to a time when women’s choices were more limited, but in years past men and women both had a better framework to determine what was acceptable behavior and what was not.

Certainly a woman should never be made to feel uncomfortable while just walking to work or picking something up at the store. We all want to encourage a healthier and safer society for both men and women. But instead of focusing on the faux sexism lurking on every street corner, we’d be better to consider the limitations of modern feminism and ask ourselves how we can better navigate this new world of gender relations.

Nate Silver's Latest Senate Forcast

Wunderkind statistician Nate Silver, the man who has earned a reputation for being the most accurate prognosticator of elections has just offered his latest prediction of Tuesday’s Senate races.

It comes to us from his FiveThirtyEight blog, at ESPN.

Republicans have a 73.0%chance of winning a majority.

Democrats have a 27.0%chance of keeping the majority.

There is a 21.9% chance Republicans will control 52 seats and Democrats will control 48 seats.

If you follow the link and examine the graph that accompanies the forecast you will see that over the past few days the forecast shows that the election has been breaking toward  Republican candidates.

As much as we are all interested in the outcome of the elections, some of us will be wondering whether Nate Silver has again called it correctly.

The Age of Xi Jinping

Something new is happening in China and Western media are trying to figure out what.

Two years ago Xi Jinping took over the Chinese government. Now we are beginning to see that his rule will be what one writer called “transformative.”

The Economist explained:

Mr Xi has quickly become, to all appearances, the most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping. The communiqué reinforced this perception. Its reference to a “series of important speeches by Xi Jinping” elevated his utterances to the canon of officially accepted works. His predecessors Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin have been so honoured, but Mr Xi is the first leader to be named personally in this kind of invocation since Deng Xiaoping. It is a reminder that the rules China is playing by, in law and in other areas, belong not just to the party but also to Mr Xi.

And Elizabeth Economy wrote in Foreign Affairs:

Chinese President Xi Jinping has articulated a simple but powerful vision: the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. It is a patriotic call to arms, drawing inspiration from the glories of China’s imperial past and the ideals of its socialist present to promote political unity at home and influence abroad. After just two years in office, Xi has advanced himself as a transformative leader, adopting an agenda that proposes to reform, if not revolutionize, political and economic relations not only within China but also with the rest of the world.

Also,

Xi has … rejected the communist tradition of collective leadership, instead establishing himself as the paramount leader within a tightly centralized political system. At home, his proposed economic reforms will bolster the role of the market but nonetheless allow the state to retain significant control. Abroad, Xi has sought to elevate China by expanding trade and investment, creating new international institutions, and strengthening the military. His vision contains an implicit fear: that an open door to Western political and economic ideas will undermine the power of the Chinese state.

Will it work? Economy, and many others are skeptical:

If successful, Xi’s reforms could yield a corruption-free, politically cohesive, and economically powerful one-party state with global reach: a Singapore on steroids. But there is no guarantee that the reforms will be as transformative as Xi hopes. His policies have created deep pockets of domestic discontent and provoked an international backlash. To silence dissent, Xi has launched a political crackdown, alienating many of the talented and resourceful Chinese citizens his reforms are intended to encourage. His tentative economic steps have raised questions about the country’s prospects for continued growth. And his winner-take-all mentality has undermined his efforts to become a global leader.

On the other hand, The Economist argued yesterday that if Xi’s China introduces the rule of law, it will represent great progress:

DRAFTERS of Communist Party documents in China are masters of linguistic sleights; Deng Xiaoping invented the term “socialist market economy” to satisfy hardline ideologues while he steered the country towards capitalism. Now the party is trumpeting a new slogan: “Socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics”. At an annual plenum that ended on October 23rd, the Central Committee promised that it would be implemented by 2020 (see article) and would lead to “extensive and profound” changes. If they are anything like as significant as those that Deng’s catchphrase heralded, then this is a welcome development.

While skepticism is surely warranted, Western observers have been counting China out, over and over again for a quarter century. Somehow, it has managed to thrive… economically, at least.

Adding to our understanding of the citation, Time Magazine offers an intriguing look at the cultural transformation that Xi has been trying to effect. He is trying to return China to Confucianism. Kudos to Michael Schuman for his excellent report on this vitally important point.

Schuman sets the scene:

For the first 30 years of communist rule in China, the party of Mao Zedong had tried to uproot Confucian influence from society, seeing the enduring legacy of Confucius as an impediment to socialism and modernization. During the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, launched by Mao in the mid-1960s, Red Guards rampaged through Qufu, smashing relics and defacing the old Confucian temple. In communist propaganda, Confucius was vilified as a feudal leftover responsible for the oppression of the common man.

Apparently, Confucianism is congenial to capitalism. After all, the sage granted people the ability to use discretion while making decisions, even when following imperial edicts. Clearly, this is a window of freedom. It reminds one of the British Common Law.

The enemy of Confucianism was Chinese legalism, which insisted that all rules be followed to the letter, no matter what.

Confucius did not promote the unbridled freedom or free-for-all that some Westerners crave, but he wanted people to exercise freedom virtuously. You cannot run a free market without participants who play by the rules, are good to their word and respect others.

Some believe that greed motivates homo economicus. Confucius believed that, given the right incentive and the right example, people would incline toward benevolence.

Xi has left little doubt about the source of his inspiration:

Though Xi has also invoked other figures from Chinese history — from philosophers of competing schools to more modern personalities like Mao Zedong — the President seems to take special interest in Confucianism. “Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire,” he said in a September speech, quoting one of Confucius’s most-famous sayings. Earlier in the year, he extolled the wonders of benevolent rule in an address to party cadres with another, well-known passage from the Analects, the most authoritative text on Confucius’s teachings: “The rule of virtue can be compared to the polestar which commands the homage of the multitude of stars without leaving its place.” Last year, Xi, like so many Emperors of old, visited Qufu, Confucius’ hometown. During his tour, he pledged to read Confucian texts and praised the continuing value of Chinese traditional culture.

Note well that the first principle quoted: “Do not impose on others what you do not desire” is the Confucian version of our rule: Do unto others what you would have others do unto you.

In Confucian thinking, people are naturally inclined to conduct their lives virtuously if their leaders are more virtuous, thus, more benevolent. It is preferable, in a Confucian system, that leaders induce virtue by their own conduct and do not try to impose it with a tidal wave of bureaucratic regulation.

One might understand this by drawing a distinction between a politician who does what he considers best for the people and a politician who does what is best to preserve his own political power.

A society that is ruled by corrupt officials who are interest in their own and not the social good cannot function virtuously. Thus, Xi’s important anti-corruption campaign.

Clearly, this entails risk. It requires a gentleman-leader, a man who is in charge. It rejects rule by committee and rule by bureaucrats.

It requires leadership by example, but it recognizes that a powerful human leader might be tempted to use his office for his own benefit or to impose his ideas by fiat. In other words, rule by a Confucian sage is not the same as rule by a Platonic philosopher king or a class of guardians.

In Schuman’s words:

Xi also apparently believes that Confucius can bolster his own standing in the country. Confucius’ ideal government was topped by a “sage-king” — a person who was so learned, benevolent and upright that his virtuous rule would bring peace and order to society and uplift the Chinese masses both spiritually and materially. Confucius made little progress in achieving this vision during his own lifetime. But Xi seems to be resurrecting the idea. Since becoming President, he has been whittling away at the government by committee that had prevailed for two decades, in the process centralizing more power in his hands than any communist leader since Mao. By combining one-man rule with the morality of Chinese antiquity, he appears to be painting himself up as some newfangled communist/Confucian sage-king — an all-commanding figure who will usher in a new epoch of prestige and prosperity.

Schuman questions whether Xi will fulfill the terms of Confucian thought:

Kings were not supposed to be autocrats in his teachings. Ministers and other officials were bound by duty to protest policies they considered misguided to keep the Emperor on the proper path. Government was not to tread heavily into the lives of ordinary people. Kings may have had ultimate authority, but not unlimited power. Xi, however, doesn’t appear interested in easing the repressive machinery of the state, nor accepting any challenges to or limitations on his authority.

As always, the results are in doubt. But China has made a habit of defying skeptics, so, we shall keep an open mind.

The Perfect Female Body

You might not have noticed, but Victoria’s Secret is in the business of selling what used to called women’s unmentionables.

To do so it has always shown its products being worn by women who are exquisitely beautiful and perfectly proportioned.

To be fair, women of all sizes and shapes flock to Victoria’s Secret to buy what it is selling. The company is notably successful.

Apparently, the women who choose to shop at Victoria’s Secret are not offended or repulsed by the fact that their bodies do not exactly look like Gisele Bundchen’s or Tyra Banks’s.

Clearly, the store is offering them a way to feel sexy and they have embraced it. If they shop there, in stark defiance of feminist scolds like Naomi Wolf, who am I to complain or to criticize? After all, it’s a free market and, if they do not like what VS is selling, garments and image, they can shop elsewhere.

If you respect women you should also respect their decisions. Otherwise you will find yourself mired in paranoid thinking, accusing women of having been manipulated by the patriarchy to buy things that they hate in order to placate the male gaze.

Since science—you remember that—tells us that the male of the human species is more attuned to the physical appearance of a potential mate, it makes some sense that women are attuned to the male gaze and that men are not attuned to the female gaze.

Of course, if you accept the feminist party line you will have to believe that women are so easily duped or so completely enthralled to the male gaze that they are dispossessed of their rational faculties and free will is too misogynistic for me.

In the meantime, you have doubtless heard that Victoria’s Secret recently released a new ad entitled, “The Perfect Body.”

I reproduce it here, but only so you know what we are talking about.

Evidently, it contains ten fashion models showing off their good looks, their good figures and their undergarments.

Is this the way all women look in their underwear? I have it on excellent authority that such is not the case.

Is this the way most women like to think of themselves when they are buying unmentionables? This is closer to the truth.

Of course, the ad provoked an outcry, especially in radical feminist quarters. The objection, not entirely without merit, is that women who seek perfection sometimes do harm to their bodies in a vain effort to make their bodies resemble what they see on Victoria’s Secret models.

Indeed, this happens sometimes, but one suspects that the deeper issue is whether today’s women are somehow embarrassed about their femaleness because they believe that it irrevocably sets them apart from men. One also wonders how many of today’s women, brought up on a steady diet of feminism, really like being women or really like being attractive to men.

You might argue, correctly, that there is more to a woman than being attractive to men, but you should add that very, very few women want to be unattractive to their boyfriends or husbands. And precious few of them want to be seen as they really, really are… warts and all. Most women want to use their appearance and their clothing to manipulate the male gaze.

Apparently, feminists have not learned this lesson.

They still see femininity as a mystique that they need to discard in order to lead the way to a brave new world where everyone will be equally neutered.

Anyway, a company called Dear Kate has countered the VS ad with one of its own. You see, Dear Kate also makes women’s unmentionables. It does not traffic in beauty or in sexiness or femininity. It tries to appeal to women who have gone beyond all of those things and do not much care how they look to men.

Again, Dear Kate has every right to do as it pleases. Women have every right to buy its image. DK will be judged by women, in the marketplace and not by male gazers.

For your edification, here’s Dear Kate’s view of the female body in a response to VS.

 

Or better, here is the opening page of DK's website:

Apparently, the models in the DK ads do not need or want bras. I have no idea what that means.

True enough, women come in all shapes and sizes. So do men. But, so what?

Is that what women really want, to see themselves as they look to an objective and neutered gaze?

Or is it more about feeling sexy, no matter how you look? And do women feel sexier thinking of themselves in the Dear Kate ad or in the VS ad?

The market will tell.

Liberals Denying Science

Anyone who follows the media drumbeat will discover that conservatives are science-deniers.

In particular, conservatives are charged with denying the reality of climate change. They are accused of not believing in global warming and of rejecting the settled science about the future of the planet.

As I have occasionally mentioned, serious scientists do not believe that there is such a thing as “settled science.” Besides, predictions about the future, even those concocted by a computer, are not and cannot be scientific fact.

For my part I have long suspected (and blogged about the fact) that liberals, especially leftist radicals live their own kinds of science denial. At the least, they reject Darwinian theories about the difference between the sexes. They have no use for the notion that men and women are biologically distinct and that the observable differences are not mere social constructs.

It’s always good to have a new study proving that one is right, so we are happy to read Chris Mooney’s Washington Post article on Mark Horowitz’ research into science denial among liberal sociologists.

One accepts that academic sociologists are a good sampling of liberal and leftist academic opinion. Being academics they cannot be excused of being unaware of the facts.

The Post qualifies the scope of the research. It is not definitive, but it provides a good picture into leftist thinking:

The study is far from the authoritative word on the subject of left wing science denial. Rather, it is a provocative, narrow look at the question. In particular, the study examined a group of left wing people -- academic sociologists -- and evaluated their views on a fairly esoteric scientific topic. The specific issue was whether the evolutionary history of human beings has an important influence on our present day behavior. In other words, whether or not we are "blank slates," wholly shaped by the culture around us.

Being radical thinkers, these sociologists are unwilling to deviate from the feminist party line, even when science refutes it:

… the study also found that these scholars were less willing to consider evolutionary explanations for other aspects of human behavior, especially those relating to male-female differences. Less than 50 percent considered it plausible that that "feelings of sexual jealousy have a significant evolutionary biological component," for instance, and just 36.4 percent considered it plausible that men "have a greater tendency towards promiscuity than women due to an evolved reproductive strategy.” While it is hard to be absolutely definitive on either of these issues (we weren't there to observe evolution happen), evolutionary psychologists have certainly argued in published studies that people exhibit jealousy in sexual relationships in order to ensure reproductive fidelity and preserve the resources that come from a partner, and that men are more promiscuous because they are not constrained in how often they can attempt to reproduce.

Horowitz remarks that left-leaning academics have a tendency to be “dogmatic.” Clearly, they are so caught up in their ideas, in their vision for changing human nature that they find themselves on a collision-course with reality.

Mooney explains the root cause of their denial:

There's no doubt that many left leaning academics have historically been quite skeptical about evolutionary psychology, presumably out of the fear that ascribing certain traits to biology suggests that they cannot be changed -- and thus, can perpetuate inequality.

Jonathan Haidt adds:

When the facts conflict with...sacred values, almost everyone finds a way to stick with their values and reject the evidence. On the left, including the academic left, the most sacred issues involve race and gender. So that's where you find the most direct and I'd say flagrant denial of evidence. I think the results of this study do clearly show that political concerns influence the willingness of sociologists to consider a major class of causal factors in human behavior.

They might think of themselves as modern atheists, but dogmatic liberal academics are more like pagan idolaters, worshipping the god of Equality and fearing any word or thought that would give him offense.