Dorian Abbot UCHIC
UATX board of advisors
Faculty
staff
board of trustees
board of advisors
Dorian Abbot
Geophysicist, University of Chicago
GGL 6 26
[### Dorian AbbotProfessor

University of Chicago
https://geosci.uchicago.edu › people › dorian-abbot](https://geosci.uchicago.edu/people/dorian-abbot/)
I have an undergraduate degree in physics (2004, Harvard) and a PhD in applied math (2008, Harvard). I came to the University of Chicago as a Chamberlin Fellow ...Read more
I have an undergraduate degree in physics (2004, Harvard) and a PhD in applied math (2008, Harvard). I came to the University of Chicago as a Chamberlin Fellow in 2009 and stayed on as a faculty member in 2011. I use mathematical and computational models to understand and explain fundamental problems in Earth and Planetary Sciences. I work best with students who have strong mathematical skills. Right now I am most interested in recruiting students to work on rare event sampling, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in weather and climate.
More Information
Related Research
Journal Article·May 21, 2025
Can AI weather models predict out-of-distribution gray swan tropical cyclones?
Related Insights, News, and Past Events
News·May 21, 2025
AI is good at weather forecasting. Can it predict freak weather events?
via UChicago News
AI Overview
Dorian Abbot is a professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago. His academic research focuses on climate, paleoclimate, and planetary habitability using mathematical and computational models, as well as AI.
University of Chicago
Beyond his scientific work, he is a prominent advocate for academic freedom and meritocracy.
---
Dorian AbbotProfessor
Research Focus:Climate, paleoclimate, and planetary habitabilityEmail:abbot@uchicago.eduOffice:Hinds 549
Biography
I have an undergraduate degree in physics (2004, Harvard) and a PhD in applied math (2008, Harvard). I came to the University of Chicago as a Chamberlin Fellow in 2009 and stayed on as a faculty member in 2011.
The T.C. Chamberlin Postdoctoral Fellowship is a highly prestigious, prize postdoctoral position at the University of Chicago within the Department of the Geophysical Sciences. It targets early-career scientists conducting creative research into Earth and other planetary bodies, covering physics, biology, chemistry, climate, and history. [1, 2, 3]
Research Interests
I use mathematical and computational models to understand and explain fundamental problems in Earth and Planetary Science. I work best with students who have strong mathematical skills. Right now I am most interested in recruiting students to work on rare event sampling, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in weather and climate.
Selected Publications
- Lancelin, A., Wikner, A., Dubus, L., Le Priol, C., Abbot, D. S., Bouchet, F., Hassanzadeh, P., & Weare, J. (2025). AI-boosted rare event sampling to characterize extreme weather. arxiv
- Sun, Y. Qiang, Pedram Hassanzadeh, Mohsen Zand, Ashesh Chattopadhyay, Jonathan Weare, and Dorian S. Abbot. "Can AI weather models predict out-of-distribution gray swan tropical cyclones?." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122, no. 21 (2025): e2420914122. arxiv
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Professional Background
- Education: B.A. in Physics (Harvard University, 2004); Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics (Harvard University, 2008).
- Research Focus: Climate dynamics, ice, exoplanets, rare event sampling, and machine learning.
- Publications: You can view his academic papers and citations via his Google Scholar Profile.
Free Speech Controversy
Professor Abbot gained national attention in late 2021 when MIT canceled his scheduled Carlson Lecture following a public Twitter campaign opposing university diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices.
YouTube·GOACTA +1
- Following this, he was awarded the Hero of Intellectual Freedom Award by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
- He serves on the board of advisors for the newly founded University of Austin, which was established to promote open inquiry and free expression.
Chicago Maroon +2
Recent Work
He continues his teaching, research, and advocacy. You can explore his work on climate and planetary habitability through his official University of Chicago Profile or watch his discussions on scientific creativity and academic culture on.
Dorian S. Abbot - Google Scholar
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6 26 TALK NOTABILITY
Dorian Schuyler Abbot is an American geophysicist. He is a professor at the University of Chicago.[1]
Education
Abbot was educated at Harvard University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2004 in physics, then received a Master of Science (2004) and Ph.D. (2008) in applied mathematics from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. His dissertation was titled A high-latitude convective cloud feedback.[2] Abbot's doctoral advisor was Eli Tziperman [Wikidata]. From 2008 to 2009, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. Abbot conducted post doctoral research in geophysical sciences from 2009 to 2011 at the University of Chicago.[3]
Career
Abbot became an assistant professor of geophysical sciences at University of Chicago in 2011. He became an associate professor in 2015 and a full professor in 2024. Abbot uses low-order mathematical models and numerical models to research climates, paleoclimates, planetary habitability, and exoplanets.[3][4]
MIT lecture cancellation
In 2020, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology invited Abbot to discuss his work on extraterrestrial life in the public Carlson Lecture. The COVID-19 pandemic postponed the lecture to the following year. In September 2021, the host department cancelled Abbot's public lecture and offered Abbot a future private lecture to its faculty and students.[5][6] According to the department, the cancellation responded to objections from faculty and students to a Newsweek editorial co-written by Abbot in the prior month.[5][7][6][8]
Abbot, Dorian S.; Marinovic, Ivan (12 August 2021). "The diversity problem on campus - Opinion". Newsweek. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
AI Overview
In 2021, the opinion section at Newsweek was spearheaded by Josh Hammer as the lead Opinion Editor and Batya Ungar-Sargon as the Deputy Opinion Editor. Together, they oversaw the editorial board and expanded the section to include a diverse array of political viewpoints. [1, 2, 3]
You can read their latest contributions and analyses directly on the Newsweek Staff directory. [1]
In the editorial, Abbot and Stanford professor Ivan Marinovic argued for renewed focus on individual talent in university admissions and hiring.[5] They called for abolishing "group membership" preferences, including race and legacy preference in university admissions, and criticized aspects of university diversity policy. They recalled how the racial ideology of Nazi Germany "drove many of the best scholars out" of the universities, and called this "a warning of the consequences of viewing group membership as more important than merit."[7][9]
Defending the lecture cancellation, senior MIT officials stated that controversy over Abbott's views on diversity would "overshadow" the scientific content of his public lecture.[5][10] Abbot ultimately delivered his lecture on planetary science to a larger audience hosted by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University on the same day as the cancelled event.[6][11] Abbot was a guest on Tucker Carlson Tonight[12] and CNN[13] to discuss the cancellation. He also received a Hero of Intellectual Freedom Award from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.[11]
Following public outrage and rebukes from MIT faculty about free expression, the university held forums at which attending faculty were polled on free speech questions.[6][5] 60% of attendees felt that their voices were "constrained" at MIT; a new MIT Free Speech Alliance cited these findings as a call to action.[14][independent ^source ^needed] In December 2022, responding to the Abbot controversy, MIT's faculty voted by a roughly 2-to-1 margin to adopt a formal university statement on freedom of expression.[15][16] Abbot said of the faculty statement: "The challenge is always enforcement, but it looks promising."[15]
Publications
Abbot's most cited publications are:
- Hoffman PF, Abbot DS, Ashkenazy Y, Benn DI, Brocks JJ, Cohen PA, Cox GM, Creveling JR, Donnadieu Y, Erwin DH, Fairchild IJ. Snowball Earth climate dynamics and Cryogenian geology-geobiology. Science Advances. 2017 Nov 1;3(11):e1600983. [[1]](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600983?rss\u003d1=) open access. According to Google Scholar, cited 248 times ^[17]
- Palmer PI, Abbot DS, Fu TM, Jacob DJ, Chance K, Kurosu TP, Guenther A, Wiedinmyer C, Stanton JC, Pilling MJ, Pressley SN. Quantifying the seasonal and interannual variability of North American isoprene emissions using satellite observations of the formaldehyde column. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. 2006 Jun 27;111(D12).[2] open access. According to Google Scholar, cited 245 times ^[17]
- Yang J, Cowan NB, Abbot DS. Stabilizing cloud feedback dramatically expands the habitable zone of tidally locked planets. The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 2013 Jun 27;771(2):L45. According to Google Scholar, cited 225 times ^[17]
- Abbot DS, Voigt A, Koll D. The Jormungand global climate state and implications for Neoproterozoic glaciations. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. 2011 Sep 27;116(D18). [3] open access. According to Google Scholar, cited 245 times ^[17]
- Yang J, Boué G, Fabrycky DC, Abbot DS. Strong dependence of the inner edge of the habitable zone on planetary rotation rate. The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 2014 Apr 25;787(1):L2. According to Google Scholar, cited 136 times ^[17]
- Abbot DS, Cowan NB, Ciesla FJ. Indication of insensitivity of planetary weathering behavior and habitable zone to surface land fraction. The Astrophysical Journal. 2012 Aug 24;756(2):178.[17]
References
---
The Diversity Problem on Campus | Opinion
Published
Aug 12, 2021
updated
Aug 12, 2021 at 10:28 AM EDT

By Dorian S. Abbot and Ivan Marinovic
professors
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
American universities are undergoing a profound transformation that threatens to derail their primary mission: the production and dissemination of knowledge. The new regime is titled "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" or DEI, and is enforced by a large bureaucracy of administrators. Nearly every decision taken on campus, from admissions, to faculty hiring, to course content, to teaching methods, is made through the lens of DEI. This regime was imposed from the top and has never been adequately debated. In the current climate it cannot be openly debated: the emotions around DEI are so strong that self-censorship among dissenting faculty is nearly universal.
The words "diversity, equity and inclusion" sound just, and are often supported by well-intentioned people, but their effects are the opposite of noble sentiments. Most importantly, "equity" does not mean fair and equal treatment. DEI seeks to increase the representation of some groups through discrimination against members of other groups. The underlying premise of DEI is that any statistical difference between group representation on campus and national averages reflects systemic injustice and discrimination by the university itself. The magnitude of the distortions is significant: for some job searches discrimination rises to the level of implicitly or explicitly excluding applicants from certain groups.
DEI violates the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment. It entails treating people as members of a group rather than as individuals, repeating the mistake that made possible the atrocities of the 20th century. It requires being willing to tell an applicant "I will ignore your merits and qualifications and deny you admission because you belong to the wrong group, and I have defined a more important social objective that justifies doing so." It treats persons as merely means to an end, giving primacy to a statistic over the individuality of a human being.
Read More on Opinion
](https://www.newsweek.com/austin-metcalfs-father-says-karmelo-anthonys-family-showed-no-remorse-12107424)
DEI compromises the university's mission. The core business of the university is the search for truth. A university's intellectual environment depends fundamentally on its commitment to hiring the most talented and best trained minds: any departure from this commitment must come at the expense of academic excellence, and ultimately will compromise the university's contribution to society. This point is particularly urgent given that DEI considerations often reduce the pool of truly eligible candidates by a factor of two or more.
DEI undermines the public's trust in universities and their graduates. Some on campus might be surprised to learn that, according to a recent Pew poll, 74 percent of Americans think only qualifications should be taken into account in hiring and promotion, even if this results in less diversity. If current trends continue, employers and consumers will quickly adjust their perception of the value of a university degree.
We propose an alternative framework called Merit, Fairness, and Equality (MFE) whereby university applicants are treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone. Crucially, this would mean an end to legacy and athletic admission advantages, which significantly favor white applicants, in addition to those based on group membership. Simultaneously, MFE would involve universities investing in education projects in neighborhoods where public education is failing to help children from those areas compete. These projects would be evidence-based and non-ideological, testing a variety of different options such as increased public school funding, charter schools and voucher programs.
Viewed objectively, American universities already are incredibly diverse. They feature people from all countries, races and ethnicities (for example, one of us was born and raised in Chile, and is classified as Hispanic by his university). This is in stark contrast with most universities in Europe, Asia and South America. American universities are diverse not because of DEI, but because they have been extremely competitive at attracting talent from all over the world. Ninety years ago Germany had the best universities in the world. Then an ideological regime obsessed with race came to power and drove many of the best scholars out, gutting the faculties and leading to sustained decay that German universities never fully recovered from. We should view this as a warning of the consequences of viewing group membership as more important than merit, and correct our course before it is too late.
Dorian S. Abbot is an associate professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago. In his research he uses mathematical and computational models to understand and explain fundamental problems in Earth and planetary sciences.*
Ivan Marinovic is an associate professor of accounting at Stanford Graduate School of Business. In his research he uses game theory to understand incentive and information transmission problems in capital markets.*
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GGL 6 26
[### The Abbot Cancellation

MIT Free Speech Alliance
https://mitfreespeech.org › the_abbot_cancellation_banner](https://mitfreespeech.org/the_abbot_cancellation_banner.php)
This page explains the MIT Dorian Abbot cancellation and the implications for free speech on college campuses.
[### At MIT, controversy over a canceled lecture

Inside Higher Ed
https://www.insidehighered.com › news › 2021/10/06](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/10/06/mit-controversy-over-canceled-lecture)
Oct 5, 2021 — MIT says that Abbot was disinvited from giving a planned public outreach lecture aimed, in part, at engaging local high school students. The ...Read more
[### When M.I.T. Asked Dorian Abbot to Speak, It Invited Criticism

The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com › 2021/10/20 › dorian-abbot-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/us/dorian-abbot-mit.html)
Oct 20, 2021 — 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 ...
[### This Is Why Top Scientists Are Walking Away | Dorian Abbot

YouTube · Heterodox Academy
2.1K+ views · 1 year ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3SSMc0QJaU)

2:30
University of Chicago professor Dorian Abbot explains how ideological pressure is causing scientists to self-censor, avoid controversial ...

3 key moments in this video
[### Dorian Abbot

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Dorian_Abbot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorian_Abbot)
In December 2022, responding to the Abbot controversy, MIT's faculty voted by a roughly 2-to-1 margin to adopt a formal university statement on freedom of ...Read more
[### UChicago Professor's MIT Lecture Canceled After DEI ...

Chicago Maroon
https://chicagomaroon.com › news › uchicago-professo...](https://chicagomaroon.com/28700/news/uchicago-professors-mit-lecture-canceled-dei-opinions-spark/)
Nov 8, 2021 — MIT administrators were pressured to rescind Abbot's invitation to speak at a lecture in light of an op-ed Abbot co-wrote in Newsweek.
Discussions and forums
[MIT cancels geophysicist Dorian Abbot's lecture over Twitter outrage

Reddit ·
r/SGU
- 40+ comments
- 4 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/SGU/comments/q3olni/mit_cancels_geophysicist_dorian_abbots_lecture/)
·
MIT cancels geophysicist Dorian Abbot's lecture over Twitter outrage ... " a controversial statement? How is it that people who support ...More
[Controversy About Academic Freedom at MIT

Reddit ·
r/mit
- 40+ comments
- 4 years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/mit/comments/qje5l6/controversy_about_academic_freedom_at_mit/)
·
[### Dr. Dorian Abbot

American Council of Trustees and Alumni
https://www.goacta.org › 2023/06 › dr-dorian-abbot-ass...](https://www.goacta.org/2023/06/dr-dorian-abbot-associate-professor-of-geophysical-sciences-at-the-university-of-chicago/)
Jun 20, 2023 — A group of students and faculty objected to his talk on Twitter because of his prior public statements opposing current diversity, equity, and ...Read more
[### MIT Abandons Its Mission. And Me. - by Dorian Abbot

The Free Press
https://www.thefp.com › Education](https://www.thefp.com/p/mit-abandons-its-mission-and-me)
Oct 5, 2021 — I am a professor who just had a prestigious public science lecture at MIT cancelled because of an outrage mob on Twitter. My crime?Read more
[### Professor embroiled in controversy over disinvited speaker The Williams Record
https://williamsrecord.com › news › professor-embroiled...](https://williamsrecord.com/458418/news/professor-embroiled-in-controversy-over-disinvited-speaker/)
Nov 10, 2021 — MIT disinvited him after criticism from graduate students and professors about videos and opinion pieces by Abbot on affirmative action and diversity, equity, ...Read more
---
Chicago Maroon +2
Geophysical Sciences Grad Students Call on Faculty to Denounce Videos By Department Member
Following a set of videos published by professor Dorian Abbot, a group of students in his department are demanding that he be removed from his social media and website positions, as well as departmental denunciation of the video’s content.
By Matthew Lee and Caroline Kubzansky
December 2, 2020
A group of students in the geophysical sciences department are demanding that professor Dorian Abbot be removed from his position as Department Website and Social Media Committee Chair in response to a series of videos that criticized many diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts in his department and in academia as a whole.
In these videos, since taken down, Abbot alleged that his department discriminated against white and Asian candidates in their admissions and hiring processes, claimed that conservatives and Christians are mocked in the academic environment, and urged his colleagues to reject affirmative-action based hiring practices. These allegations, Abbot claimed on Twitter, are now the subject of an investigation by the University’s Title IX office.
“We are right to feel compelled to do something about [injustice],” Abbot says in one video, titled “My perspective on the current academic climate.” However, he goes on to describe how it seems to him that a white, conservative, Christian male from the Florida panhandle would not feel he had a place at UChicago.
Abbot also made specific allegations about hiring and admissions practices he viewed as problematic. In his video, Abbot says that in a recent selection process for a postdoctoral fellowship, two out of 47 male applicants were selected, versus six out of 31 female applicants. In the same video, Abbot also alleges that he “has seen us discriminating against Chinese applicants and I feel terrible about it. Chinese students are just as creative and independent thinking as American students.”
After discussing acts of service as a way of fighting injustice, Abbot urges his audience to “treat all applicants fairly by only judging them on the basis of their ability and promise as scientists.”
Abbot’s views have generated a controversy both within his department and in the general public.
Graduate students in the department of Geophysical Sciences delivered a letter to department faculty on November 20, writing that Abbot’s videos constitute an aggressive action toward underrepresented groups in the department and undercut the efforts of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Coordination Team (EDICT). They also questioned the soundness of Abbot’s argument.
“In these videos, he uses anecdotal evidence and poor statistics not supported by peer-reviewed literature about diversity,” the letter says.
Among other demands, the letter’s signatories ask that Abbot’s Teaching and Research Assistants be allowed to opt out of their responsibilities, and that students in Abbot’s classes be given the option to complete the quarter with another instructor.
The letter also urges the Department of Geophysical Sciences publish a public statement denouncing Abbot’s videos, increase funding for equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives, and ensure that the department’s “hiring committee have a vested interest in improving equity, diversity, and inclusion.”
The petition also alleges that Abbot inappropriately used student photos obtained via his official role as Department Website and Social Media Committee Chair and demands that he lose his position and privileges for that role immediately. In “My perspective on the current academic climate,” a photo of several Department of Geophysical Sciences students gathering is displayed with the caption “let’s treat all applicants fairly by judging them only on the basis of their ability and their promise as scientists.” The same photo was featured on the Department of Geophysical Sciences’s official website under the “prospective students” page.
In response to a request for comment, Abbot directed The Maroon to a statement he posted on his Twitter.
In that statement, Abbot said that several of his colleagues had privately contacted him to express concern regarding “the way that anyone who tries to dissent on certain issues is immediately assumed to have racist or otherwise bigoted motives, which prevents the intellectual exploration of that issue,” and that he had intended the videos to follow up on those privately expressed concerns.
In a statement to The Maroon, organizers said they wrote the letter because they saw a lack of existing levers to enact social change in their department.
“There are currently no real or reliable means of addressing incidents of bias, nor of making structural or policy changes in the department,” organizers wrote. “The department culture is dominated by an inclination not to name names, and currently the department primarily relies on seminars and discussions rather than on changes that will materially help marginalized students in the department.”
The organizers added that they made the letter public in order to “put maximal pressure on department leadership.”
Geophysical Sciences Department Chair Fred Ciesla forwarded a request for comment to University spokesperson Gerald McSwiggan, who said that EDI efforts were a priority for the department as well as the University as a whole.
“Members of the Department of the Geophysical Sciences have been actively engaged in building a stronger, more diverse community of scientists through efforts such as the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDICT) team, membership in the American Geophysical Union’s Bridge Program, and education and discussion groups focused on diversity and inclusion,” he said.
McSwiggan added that the University does not speak for individual faculty members.
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MAROON
By Basil Egli, Deputy News Editor
November 8, 2021
UChicago geophysical sciences professor Dorian Abbot was disinvited from the annual John Carlson Lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in September following backlash from MIT’s student body over Abbot’s public opinions on affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in higher education.
Robert van der Hilst, the chair of MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)—which hosts the Carlson Lecture—cited a controversial op-ed Abbot coauthored in Newsweek titled “The Diversity Problem on Campus” when explaining the reason for the lecture’s cancellation.
Abbot has taught at UChicago since 2009 and became an associate professor in 2015. He researches climate change and the habitability of exoplanets and teaches a variety of courses, including the popular Global Warming course.
Abbot has been a figure of national controversy since August, when he co-wrote the Newsweek article with Stanford University professor Iván Marinovic. The op-ed expressed concerns about the increasing emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in many colleges and universities. Such initiatives, Abbot and Marinovic argued, are made at the expense of academic excellence and merit, thus actively harming the value of American institutions.
The op-ed compared the implementation of DEI curriculums to the rise of Nazi Germany, where “an ideological regime obsessed with race came to power and drove many of the best scholars out.” Van der Hilst cited this comparison as one of his key reasons for canceling the lecture.
The authors suggested that DEI should instead be replaced with another standard: Merit, Fairness, and Equality (MFE). The authors described MFE as a method “whereby university applicants are treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone.”
“Professor Marinovic and I wanted to express our opinions on a controversial topic openly. We hoped that this would encourage others to speak freely,” Abbot wrote in an email to The Maroon.
Abbot emphasized the values underpinning their proposed MFE system in an emailed response to The Maroon. “We suggest that universities should stop giving preferences to legacies, athletes, and donor children. We also suggest that universities should invest money in researching and implementing optimal techniques to improve K-12 education, particularly for children who are not currently receiving a high-quality education.”
Abbot was initially set to speak as a part of the Carlson Lecture Series in early 2020, but the event was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In September, MIT students and other people affiliated with EAPS pushed the university and the department over social media and in meetings to rescind Abbot’s invitation publicly. The protestors argued that the selection of Abbot as a lecturer reflected a lapse in MIT and EAPS’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
After the cancellation of his MIT lecture, Abbot was offered a lecture appearance by Robert George, the director of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, which he gave on October 21 to a virtual audience of around 3,000. George, a well-known conservative intellectual, announced on Twitter that “MIT’s caving in to a cancel mob’s demand to disinvite a distinguished scientist who had been invited on the basis of his achievements to give an honorific lecture shows just how badly science today has been politicized. The integrity of science can’t survive politicization.”
In response to MIT’s decision, Abbot penned another op-ed, published in the Wall Street Journal in late October. Abbot framed his personal beliefs as concerns for equality, the prioritization of academic merit in the admissions process, and the separation of the scientific process from politics. He wrote, “I believe that every human being should be treated as an individual worthy of dignity and respect. In an academic context, that means evaluating people for positions based on their individual qualities, not on membership in favored or disfavored groups. It also means allowing them to present their ideas and perspectives freely, even when we disagree with them.”
In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, Abbot re-emphasized the key points from his op-ed with Marinovic on which he has elaborated in various Twitter posts. He made similar arguments about merit-based admissions, separating politics and science, and political sensitivity on campus to those he had previously voiced on Twitter.
This is not the first time Abbot’s political views have caused controversy. Last year, Abbot released a Google Doc on Twitter titled “My Perspective on the Controversial Events of 11/13/20-11/15/20.” The document addresses a since-deleted videotaped slideshow that Abbot had shared with geophysical sciences department faculty in November 2020, explaining his belief that academia marginalizes people on the basis of political belief and exhibits bias toward women and non-Asian people of color.
Abbot’s slideshow and follow-up document, which were circulated around the UChicago community, were met with criticism. Particularly controversial was a slideshow that compared the cultural trajectory of college campuses to the Holodomor, the 1932–33 genocide that killed millions of ethnic Ukrainians.
When asked why he released the document, Abbot stated, “I wanted to present those slides internally in my department, but was refused. I posted them on YouTube as a way to share them with my department. I did not realize they would get shared widely, and people started writing mean things to each other in the comments, which was not something I expected or was happy about. I’ve since learned that this is typical of discussions on the internet.”
Abbot, along with Chancellor and former University president Robert Zimmer, is listed as being on the board of advisors for the newly announced University of Austin, which is set to launch its undergraduate college in 2024.
---
[### Iván Marinovic - Stanford Graduate School of Business

Stanford Graduate School of Business
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu › faculty › ivan-marinovic](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/ivan-marinovic)
Iván Marinovic joined Stanford Graduate School of Business as an assistant professor of accounting in July 2011.Read more
[### Stanford's War on the Western Canon - by Iván Marinovic

The Free Press
https://www.thefp.com › Education](https://www.thefp.com/p/stanford-faculty-senate-curriculum-vote)
May 20, 2026 — A faculty member explains why he voted against Stanford's new general education program, and what the curriculum reveals about the ...
[### Ivan Marinovic

Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com › citations](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pp-pk2YAAAAJ&hl=en)
Earnings management and earnings quality: Theory and evidence. A Beyer, I Guttman, I Marinovic. Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2014. 261*, 2014 ; A theory ...Read more
[### Ivan Marinovic

Stanford University
https://web.stanford.edu › ~imvial](https://web.stanford.edu/imvial/index.html)
Ivan Marinovic received his Ph.D from Northwestern University in 2011 and joined the Stanford Graduate School of Business in July of that year.Read more
[### Iván Marinovic

The Stanford Daily
https://stanforddaily.com › author › ivan-marinovic](https://stanforddaily.com/author/ivan-marinovic/)
From the Community | Students deserve better than COLLEGE · Iván Marinovic. •. May 14. The Stanford Daily.Read more
[### Ivan Marinovic - Stanford Graduate School of Business

LinkedIn · Ivan Marinovic
2 followers](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-marinovic-49310b50)
Assistant Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business · Experience: Stanford Graduate School of Business · Location: Palo Alto · 1 connection on ...
Images

Iván Marinovic | Stanford Graduate School of Business

Stanford Graduate School of Business - Stanford University
Professor quantifies 'curriculum degradation' at University ...

The College Fix

DISS Workshop - Keynote by Iván Marinovic (Stanford University)

YouTube
Show more images
[### Ivan MARINOVIC | Stanford University, Stanford | SU

ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net › Stanford University](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ivan-Marinovic)
Ivan MARINOVIC | Cited by 2535 | of Stanford University, Stanford (SU) | Read 62 publications | Contact Ivan MARINOVIC.
[### Ivan Marinovic on Stanford's new general education ...

X · JohnHCochrane
230+ likes · 1 month ago](https://x.com/JohnHCochrane/status/2055383890857005194)
Ivan Marinovic on Stanford's new general education requirements. The return of western civilization, this is not. A gem below.Read more
[### Professor quantifies 'curriculum degradation' at University ...

The College Fix
https://www.thecollegefix.com › Category: Featured](https://www.thecollegefix.com/professor-quantifies-curriculum-degradation-at-university-of-chicago/)
May 11, 2026 — Professor Ivan Marinovic, who teaches accounting at Stanford University, analyzed language used in University of Chicago course titles and ...Read more
