TIMES.KY

Cayman Islands, Caribbeanand International News
Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Stanford professor who challenged lockdowns and 'scientific clerisy' declares academic freedom 'dead'

Stanford professor who challenged lockdowns and 'scientific clerisy' declares academic freedom 'dead'

Stanford University professor of medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya declared academic freedom "dead" after he objected to COVID lockdown policies during the pandemic and was deplatformed.
A Stanford University professor of medicine says "academic freedom is dead" after his life became a "living hell" for challenging coronavirus lockdown orders and the "scientific clerisy" during the pandemic.

"The basic premise is that if you don't have protection and academic freedom in the hard cases, when a faculty member has an idea that's unpopular among some of the other faculty – powerful faculty, or even the administration … If they don't protect it in that case, then you don't have academic freedom at all," Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told Fox News Digital in a phone interview. 

Bhattacharya is a tenured professor of medicine at Stanford University and also an economist who serves as director of Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. 

He came under fire during the pandemic after co-authoring the Great Barrington Declaration, which was an open letter signed by thousands of doctors and scientists in 2020 denouncing lockdowns as harmful. Bhattacharya was joined by Harvard professor of medicine Dr. Martin Kulldorff and Oxford professor Dr. Sunetra Gupta in co-authoring the document. 

The declaration was quickly denounced by other health leaders, including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci, who slammed the call for herd immunity in the document as "nonsense and very dangerous."

Bhattacharya spoke at the Academic Freedom Conference at Stanford's Graduate School of Business earlier this month and said that in the current era, "we have a high clerisy that declares from on high what is true and what is not true."

"When you take a position that is at odds with the scientific clerisy, your life becomes a living hell," he said at the conference. "You face a deeply hostile work environment."

Bhattacharya said that soon after the Great Barrington Declaration gained widespread attention, he received death threats, hate mail and questions on where he receives funding, which he noted, "most of my money has come from the NIH for most of my life."

"The purpose of the one-page document was aimed at telling the public that there was not a scientific consensus in favor of lockdown, that in fact many epidemiologists, many doctors, many other people – prominent people – disagreed with the consensus," Bhattacharya said during his 10-minute talk at the conference. 

And on campus, "a chill" on debate set in and he was disinvited from delivering a campus talk and an effort to organize a debate on COVID policies stalled, the College Fix reported of his remarks at the conference. 

"If Stanford really truly were committed to academic freedom, they would have… worked to make sure that there were debates and discussions, seminars, where these ideas were discussed among faculty," regardless of whether academics agreed or disagreed, he told Fox News Digital following his address at the conference. 

Bhattacharya argued in his comments to Fox News that in many scientific circles during the pandemic, "power replaced the idea of truth as the guiding light."

"So you have somebody like Tony Fauci who says unironically, that if you question me, you're not simply questioning a man, you're questioning science itself. That is an exercise of raw power, where he places himself effectively as the pope of science rather than a genuine desire to learn the truth."

"They systematically tried to make it seem like everyone agreed with their ideas about COVID policy, when in fact there was deep disagreement among scientists and epidemiologists about the right strategy. That's why we wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, to tell the public that there was this disagreement. There was another alternate policy available," he said.  

Bhattacharya charged at the conference that "academic freedom is dead" and that he was left without support from Stanford leaders. 

"The policy of the university, when push comes to shove, is to permit this kind of hostile work environment," he said. "What if there had been open scientific debate on campus, sponsored by the university on this? So that people could know there were legitimate alternate views?"

He argued that if the Stanford president had pushed for a debate when the Great Barrington Declaration was written, "there would have been tremendous controversy around it."

"But at the same time the hostile work environment would have dissipated because what it would have said is, ‘Look, there’s a debate, it’s legitimate to have this debate, a place like Stanford is where this debate ought to happen.'"

Neither Stanford’s media team nor the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases immediately responded to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment on Bhattacharya’s remarks.
Newsletter

Related Articles

TIMES.KY
0:00
0:00
Close
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
Israel: Unprecedented Civil Disobedience Looms as IDF Reservists Protest Judiciary Reform
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The politician and the journalist lost control and started fighting on live broadcast.
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
Joe Biden admitted, in his own words, that he delivered what he promised in exchange for the $10 million bribe he received from the Ukraine Oil Company.
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
Europe is boiling: Extreme Weather Conditions Prevail Across the Continent
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Italian Court's Controversial Ruling on Sexual Harassment Ignites Uproar
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
BBC Personalities Rebuke Accusations Amidst Scandal Involving Teen Exploitation
A Swift Disappointment: Why Is Taylor Swift Bypassing Canada on Her Global Tour?
Historic Moment: Edgars Rinkevics, EU's First Openly Gay Head of State, Takes Office as Latvia's President
Bye bye democracy, human rights, freedom: French Cops Can Now Secretly Activate Phone Cameras, Microphones And GPS To Spy On Citizens
The Poor Man With Money, Mark Zuckerberg, Unveils Twitter Replica with Heavy-Handed Censorship: A New Low in Innovation?
Unilever Plummets in a $2.5 Billion Free Fall, to begin with: A Reckoning for Misuse of Corporate Power Against National Interest
Beyond the Blame Game: The Need for Nuanced Perspectives on America's Complex Reality
Twitter Targets Meta: A Tangle of Trade Secrets and Copycat Culture
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: AI is linked to layoffs in industry that created it
US Sanctions on China's Chip Industry Backfire, Prompting Self-Inflicted Blowback
Meta Copy Twitter with New App, Threads
The New French Revolution
BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Application Refiled, Naming Coinbase as ‘Surveillance-Sharing’ Partner
×