![]() ![]() The numbers of admitted conservatives on campus are diminishing to the point of no return. Nevertheless, university campuses remain ground zero for the phenomenon, because that is where freedom of speech, free academic inquiry and diversity of opinion are the bedrock ideals from which objective knowledge emerges and is disseminated into the larger community for the benefit of all citizens. It is now a gigantic, unstoppable boulder of ice, crushing writers, editors, scientists, artists, actors, fashion influencers, politicians and even knitting enthusiasts in its path. It began on university campuses, but didn't stay there. And it doesn’t drive the drug trade.Cancel culture is now a trope that needs no explanation for all but the willfully uninformed in western countries. I’m a big believer in the legalization of hand lenses, because it really takes you into an altered mental state. You know it’s only a centimeter or two long, but through a hand lens it’s this great creature covered in glossy glass. Then through a hand lens, a huge snail comes through. You could imagine spaceships flying around, and in fact there they are in the form of fungal gnats. And here it is, right under my feet, all these weird little structures. Like the surface of a planet that I wasn’t previously familiar with because I hadn’t been facedown on the forest floor with a hand lens very much. When you get down on the leaf litter, in the late summer when it’s really wet from a lot of rain, there is an incredible diversity of fungal fruiting bodies … a crazy other world. from an interview with The New York Times But we lost the passenger pigeon and we lost some of this remarkable music made out of atoms and DNA. We lost the passenger pigeon and the U.S. Much of it is useless to us, and that’s O.K. You can live a perfectly happy life never having heard of Shakespeare, but your life is in some ways a little diminished, because there’s such beauty there. from an interview on To the Best of Our Knowledge They push us beyond the superficial appearance of things and we dive down into meaning. Science and poetry are not different things … The key is to see beyond the surface: That’s what poetry does and that’s what science does. He was recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for research on his new book THE SONGS OF TREES (to be published by Viking Penguin in April 2017), a study of humanity’s varied roles within biological networks as heard through the acoustics of trees. The Oxford American featured him in 2011 as one of the southern U.S.’s most creative teachers, and his teaching has been profiled in USA Today, The Tennesseean, and other newspapers. In 2009, the Carnegie and CASE Foundations named him Professor of the Year for Tennessee. Haskell’s classes have received national attention for the innovative ways they combine science, contemplation, and action in the community. He has also served on the boards and advisory committees of local and regional land conservation groups.” He is a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and was granted Elective Membership in the American Ornithologists’ Union in recognition of “significant contributions to ornithology.” His scientific research on animal ecology, evolution and conservation has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the World Wildlife Fund, among others. He is Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of the South, where he served as Chair of Biology. Haskell holds degrees from the University of Oxford and from Cornell University. Wilson called Haskell’s work “…a new genre of nature writing, located between science and poetry in which the invisible appear, the small grow large, and the immense complexity and beauty of life are more clearly revealed.” ![]() A profile in The New York Times said of Haskell that he “thinks like a biologist, writes like a poet, and gives the natural world the kind of open-minded attention one expects from a Zen monk rather than a hypothesis-driven scientist.” E.O. His book, The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature (Viking Penguin, 2012), was winner of the National Academies’ Best Book Award for 2013, finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction, winner of the 2013 Reed Environmental Writing Award, winner the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature, and runner-up for the 2013 PEN E. David Haskell’s work integrates scientific and contemplative studies of natural world. ![]()
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