In the wake of Michael Mann’s humiliating slapdown for deceit in his SLAPP lawsuit against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, we wondered in March “What does the University of Pennsylvania think, which recently made him their first-ever Vice Provost for Climate Science as ‘a globally renowned scholar of climate science’ who ‘has been named one of the world’s most influential people in climate policy, one of the 10 most influential earth scientists, one of the top influencers in sustainability, and one of the 50 scientists who are changing the way we see the world’? (What, indeed, do they think of his public offer of a million dollars to a Supreme Court justice to step down?)” Well, we sort of know. Mann has just resigned that Vice Provost post in order to be free to use abusive partisan language, and worse, such as calling Charlie Kirk “head of Trump’s Hitler Youth”. Unless he was pushed out, which we doubt because he is employed by people too cowardly to keep or oust this repulsive figure.
As usual, the profile in courage who run universities leave us uncertain as to whether they found even a single vertebra:
“Provost John Jackson Jr. told The Daily Pennsylvanian that Mann was neither fired nor ‘driven out’ of the position. ‘I think his position has been that it’s more and more difficult for him to do the kind of public intellectual work he wants to do while also being a University administrator at an institution that says we pride ourselves on institutional neutrality,’ Jackson added.”
Yeah. That says. And what proportion of your faculty are leftwing Democrats and see no problem with bullies like Mann? Even when he doesn’t want to be seen with you?
Hint: back in 2003 the faculty was 12:1 Democrat and it hasn’t gotten better since. So they lack the courage of their convictions in any direction. And it may not be pure coincidence that he suddenly stepped down, or was demoted, after a Republican senator from Pennsylvania began making trouble over his obnoxious posts. But if the university was expecting gratitude, or a team-player attitude, they didn’t know their Mann.
Here we are reminded of Edmund Burke’s cutting phrase about factionalism in the French Revolution, that “Birds of prey are not gregarious.” Michael Mann’s institutional loyalty is to Michael Mann, full stop. But really, who would want to be loyal to an institution that says if you find Mann obnoxious, well, we don’t want him representing us, but if you think he’s a hero, well, we’re proud to have him?
Again, remember that, as Climate Change Dispatch reminds us, Mann is not a nice guy who occasionally forgets his manners. Whether he was always this way, or early success spoiled him, he is an intellectual thug. His efforts to bully, and his slanders of, other scientists are legendary, including his frivolously despicable claim that Judith Curry traded sex for her PhD.
He more recently hinted that Donald Trump should be shot for dismantling the useless, bloated, ultra vires U.S. federal Department of Education, calling it “second amendment territory”. Despite all of which, the University kept him on and indeed promoted him, until he poked them in the eye or they secretly maneuvered him out of his high-profile PR/administrative position then lied about it.
So much for the University of Pennsylvania and, indeed, in some sense for Mann. But what of all those colleagues who didn’t merely turn a blind eye to his chronic abusiveness, they aided and abetted him in keeping skeptics from getting published? Are they any less wicked for being sneaky?
And to think some people say there’s a problem with orthodox climate science.
P.S. An alert viewer also sent us a video from the mysteriously popular Sabine Hossenfelder in which, after a lively defence of using cuss words instead of something more eloquent and creative because it’s not the 16th century (she evidently has no idea that people knew rude words in the Renaissance) and it’s how her mind supposedly actually works, she tells of being ditched by a professional association for daring to say that much of modern physics is careerist “tribalism and groupthink” rather than pathbreaking or even useful work and so increasingly is mathematics. So it’s not just climate science that’s in trouble, though certainly given its political prominence it would be an excellent place to start. And maybe she’d like to give it a try.
If U Penn had any integrity it would dumped Mann after the leaked climate-gate emails became public. That would have saved Mark Steyn and Tim Ball a lost decade of misery and expense, bankruptcy in the case of Tim Ball.