Scholars work at ‘Decolonizing Light’ to combat ‘colonialism in contemporary physics’

The effort, funded by the Canadian government, seeks both to explore “ways and approaches to decolonize science, such as revitalizing and restoring Indigenous knowledges” and to develop “a culture of critical reflection and investigation of the relation of science and colonialism,” according to the project’s website.

Led by Tanja Tajmel, a special equity, diversity and inclusion advisor to Concordia’s dean, core members of the group also include physicist Ingo Salzmann and Associate Professor of First Peoples Studies Louellyn White.

As detailed in a 2021 paper the three co-authored with Donna Kahérakwas Goodleaf, Concordia’s director of decolonizing curriculum and pedagogy, the project intentionally targeted physics for decolonization due to the field’s “unique scientific authority.”

“Physics is commonly regarded as the ‘most objective’ and the ‘hardest’ science,” the scholars wrote, “it fundamentally defines scientific key concepts such as energy, matter, force, light, space and time, for all the other sciences.”

“It is the narrative of physics as objective and as socially independent that constitutes and stabilizes its knowledge authority in relation to all other knowledge systems.”

“For our purpose,” they stated, “it is important to understand physics as a social field [italics in the original] rather than as ‘pure knowledge’ independent from social values and decisions.”

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As part of their effort to decolonize light, the three wrote, they plan to develop courses with indigenous scholars and “Knowledge Keepers” in which indigenous knowledge is elevated and Eurocentric western science is de-centered and scrutinized for its alleged past and present contributions to colonialism.

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Patanjali Kambhampati, a professor of chemistry at McGill University who conducts research on ultrafast spectroscopy, commented via email to The College Fix, “Decolonizing STEM is absurd and offensive to many people of all walks of life, including me as a scientist born in the 3rd world.”