Two conservative MSM outlets largely share the same story and outlook. Re: Real Science (not Social Science). And Political Correctness carried to an extreme.

NYTimes, "M.I.T.’s Choice of Lecturer Ignited Criticism. So Did Its Decision to Cancel. - Dorian Abbot is a scientist who has opposed aspects of affirmative action. He is now at the center of an argument over free speech and acceptable discourse."

Breitbart, "Scientist’s Talk Canceled Because Experts Should Reflect Diversity: ‘Citational Justice’ Necessary."

Breitbart's post, under a lead photo, summarized its viewpoint:

 A geophysicist and professor at the University of Chicago who was scheduled to talk about climate change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was blocked from speaking after faculty members and graduate students protested. The angry response was not because of the content of his proposed speech but because Dorian Abbot, who is white, has written in the past about his belief that while diverse selection pools are a good thing, the best person should win the prize based not on race but on merit.

NYT's item begins:

CHICAGO — The Massachusetts Institute of Technology invited the geophysicist Dorian Abbot to give a prestigious public lecture this autumn. He seemed a natural choice, a scientific star who studies climate change and whether planets in distant solar systems might harbor atmospheres conducive to life.

Then a swell of angry resistance arose. Some faculty members and graduate students argued that Dr. Abbot, a professor at the University of Chicago, had created harm by speaking out against aspects of affirmative action and diversity programs. In videos and opinion pieces, Dr. Abbot, who is white, has asserted that such programs treat “people as members of a group rather than as individuals, repeating the mistake that made possible the atrocities of the 20th century.” He said that he favored a diverse pool of applicants selected on merit.

He said that his planned lecture at M.I.T. would have made no mention of his views on affirmative action. But his opponents in the sciences argued he represented an “infuriating,” “inappropriate” and oppressive choice.

On Sept. 30, M.I.T. reversed course. The head of its earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences department called off Dr. Abbot’s lecture, to be delivered to professors, graduate students and the public, including some top Black and Latino high school students.

“Besides freedom of speech, we have the freedom to pick the speaker who best fits our needs,” said Robert van der Hilst, the head of the department at M.I.T. “Words matter and have consequences.”

Ever more fraught arguments over speech and academic freedom on American campuses have moved as a flood tide into the sciences. Biology, physics, math: All have seen fierce debates over courses, hiring and objectivity, and some on the academic left have moved to silence those who disagree on certain questions.

A few fields have purged scientific terms and names seen by some as offensive, and there is a rising call for “citational justice,” arguing that professors and graduate students should seek to cite more Black, Latino, Asian and Native American scholars and in some cases refuse to acknowledge in footnotes the research of those who hold distasteful views. Still the decision by M.I.T., viewed as a high citadel of science in the United States, took aback some prominent scientists. Debate and argumentation, impassioned, even ferocious, is the mother’s milk of science, they said.

“I thought scientists would not get on board with the denial-of-free-speech movement,” said Jerry Coyne, an emeritus professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago. “I was absolutely wrong, 100 percent so.”

Dr. Abbot, 40, spoke of his shock when he was told his speech was canceled. “I truly did not know what to say,” he said in an interview in his Chicago apartment. “We’re not going to do the best science we can if we are constrained ideologically.”

This is a debate fully engaged in academia. No sooner had M.I.T. canceled his speech than Robert P. George, director of Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, invited him to give the speech there on Thursday, the same day as the canceled lecture. Dr. George is a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance, which is dedicated to promoting academic debate.

“M.I.T. has behaved disgracefully in capitulating to a politically motivated campaign,” Dr. George said. “This is part of a larger trend of the politicization of science.”

The story took another turn this week, as David Romps, a professor of climate physics at the University of California, Berkeley, announced that he would resign as director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center. He said he had tried to persuade his fellow scientists and professors to invite Dr. Abbot to speak and so reaffirm the importance of separating science from politics.

“In my view, there are some institutional principles that we have to hold sacred,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.

Galileo was forced to recant, than let off the Roman Church's hook with that scolding.

How would Edward Teller, if still alive, fit into political correctness? Teller has been alleged to be the Dr. Strangelove model for the Peter Sellers movie character. 

Worth reading, an online chapter excerpt from a book about where physics was politicized in National Socialist Germany. The beauty of real science is in part its being apolitical (where the term "political science" is a bastardization invented by hucksters to justify their being given faculty paychecks).