This Harvard comp sci prof laments Republicans’ declining public opinion of universities and blames it on professors who, unlike him, inject politics into their classes. As evidence of politicization, he references Google, Coinbase, Bud Light—ie not academia—and one email from one law school TA.

He *is* teaching politics. He just doesn't realize what he's doing is teaching politics. Computer science, almost more than any other subject in STEM, is profoundly political

Take Bluesky. It's entire existence and many of its technical design choice are (little p) political. They are not just choices about what computers /can/ do, but choices about what computers /should/ do based on how that changes the product's place in society.

Or take cryptography, which he teaches. Cryptography is opinionated! It can create or break power relationships about information. It lets computers, but more importantly the people who use them, keep or reveal secrets or manage trust relationships. That's it's entire job and why it's important!

The bare technology shows how you can do that abstractly, sure, but as when you build a /specific/ product, *you* (or the architect) *are making those choices concretely*. What power relationship it enforces or changes are fundamentally (small-p) political ones

One creates a power relationship and dependency. The other breaks one. But in both cases it has /opinions/ about what is /right/ that are grounded not in what computers /can/ do but what they /should/ do, based not on opinions about computers, but opinions about how people should be able to use them

So many of the problems in society right now tracks back to the false statement that "technology is apolitical" being used by techbros to simply assert their own political opinions as "right", uncontestable, and must be imposed on society, and not just other political opinions, same as many others