Meet the anti-Israel prof working for 'transgender liberation,' against 'white empricism'

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a professor of physics and women’s studies at the University of New Hampshire. 

Her article, “Making Black Women Scientists under White Empiricism: The Racialization of Epistemology in Physics,” argues that scientific careers are systemically discriminatory against Black Women.

Applying intersectional analysis to coin the term “white empiricism,” Prescod-Weinstein wrote:  

“White empiricism is the phenomenon through which only white people (particularly white men)  are read has having a fundamental capacity for objectivity and Black people (particularly Black women) are produced as an ontological other.”

Prescod-Weinstein is a prolific scholar that writes on and speaks about issues of race and STEM, such as in her 2021 book The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred. 

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During the Israel-Hamas clashes in May, Prescod-Weinstein has also accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. She tweeted, “Israel is Wiping Out Entire Gazan Families on Purpose,” the title of the Haaretz article she linked.

She also framed her charge of ethnic cleansing as coming from someone who is a “Black Jew who opposes settler colonialism in all its forms.” 

I was supposed to be on break but human rights crimes don’t care about breaks:
As a Black Jew who opposes settler colonialism in all its forms, I cannot remain silent.

IDF enters into Gaza on foot: we are witnessing yet another stage in an ethnic cleansing.

— The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (@IBJIYONGI) May 14, 2021

On August 23, she spoke at Virginia Tech’s “Aims of Education” event, “an intellectual space for students and the university community to consider the meaning and power of a university education,” according to the press release. 

In July, she criticized the Texas state government banning of Critical Race Theory in K-12 schools, tweeting, “My interpretation: the KKK in the Texas legislature wanted to make sure it was legal to teach their violent white supremacist values in Texas schools.” 

In a March interview with the radio show Hot 97 FM, Prescod-Weinstein explained that Black women are disrespected in the workplace because Black women are often disrespected at large.

“If you grow up in a culture, which all of us did, that disrespects Black women, you’re probably going to come into the room being disrespectful to Black women unless you’re like making a proactive effort to be respectful.” Prescod-Weinstein said.

Prescod-Weinstein also emphasizes the need to acknowledge the perspectives and struggles of transgender individuals, claiming people need to working at being, “good at recognizing peoples’ pronouns.”

In the interview, she claims her book will help readers learn more about “transgender liberation” among other cultural issues that she believes contemporary popular science neglects.

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“I think so much popular science, particularly those of us who come from marginalized communities, people of color, it can feel like ‘oh that book was written for white nerds,’ and I wanted a book that was written for Black nerds.”

Prescod-Weinstein also maintains a personal website. 

Campus Reform reached out to Prescod-Weinstein for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.