Much has been said in the last two days about a Harvard law student’s e-mail to a couple of other students — an e-mail that was some months later apparently widely forwarded by one of the recipients (without the sender’s permission). The e-mail led to much criticism of the sender, coverage in Above The Law, the Boston Globe, an AP wire story, and the Harvard Crimson, a condemnatory statement from the Dean of Harvard Law School, an apology from the sender, and more.
I thought I’d say a few words about this, both in this post and in some others to come, because this seems to me to go to the heart of what a university should be, of what we should want our society to be, and of a scientific approach to questions of scientific fact.
I would have happily avoided this topic if I could have. But I feel an obligation — as a professor, as a tenured professor, and as someone who feels strongly about the need to treat scientific questions as scientific questions and not as articles of faith — to speak up about it. I am not naïve enough to be surprised that an e-mail such as this would lead to public condemnation and a public outcry. But that the reaction has been unsurprising doesn’t mean that it has been proper.
Let me begin with the e-mail, which was apparently a follow-up to a conversation between the student and the recipients at a dinner shortly before:
… I just hate leaving things where I feel I misstated my position.I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:) Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders. This suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria. I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner.
I also don’t think that there are no cultural differences or that cultural differences are not likely the most important sources of disparate test scores (statistically, the measurable ones like income do account for some raw differences). I would just like some scientific data to disprove the genetic position, and it is often hard given difficult to quantify cultural aspects. One example (courtesy of Randall Kennedy) is that some people, based on crime statistics, might think African Americans are genetically more likely to be violent, since income and other statistics cannot close the racial gap. In the slavery era, however, the stereotype was of a docile, childlike, African American, and they were, in fact, responsible for very little violence (which was why the handful of rebellions seriously shook white people up). Obviously group wide rates of violence could not fluctuate so dramatically in ten generations if the cause was genetic, and so although there are no quantifiable data currently available to “explain” away the racial discrepancy in violent crimes, it must be some nongenetic cultural shift. Of course, there are pro-genetic counterarguments, but if we assume we can control for all variables in the given time periods, the form of the argument is compelling.
In conclusion, I think it is bad science to disagree with a conclusion in your heart, and then try (unsuccessfully, so far at least) to find data that will confirm what you want to be true. Everyone wants someone to take 100 white infants and 100 African American ones and raise them in Disney utopia and prove once and for all that we are all equal on every dimension, or at least the really important ones like intelligence. I am merely not 100% convinced that this is the case.
Please don’t pull a Larry Summers on me,
CRIMSON DNA
Here’s my thinking on the e-mail itself; I’ll have a few more posts shortly about some of the reaction to the e-mail.
1. Whether there are genetic differences among racial and ethnic groups in intelligence is a question of scientific fact. Either there are, or there aren’t (or, more precisely, either there are such differences under some plausible definitions of the relevant groups and of intelligence, or there aren’t). The question is not the moral question about what we should do about those differences, if they exist. It’s not a question about what we would like the facts to be. The facts are what they are, whether we like them or not.
Given this, it seems to me that the proper approach to this question is precisely the same as the proper approach to other questions of scientific fact. One absolutely should not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. Likewise, to give examples involving three groups I myself belong to, one absolutely should not rule out the possibility that Jews are (say), on average, genetically predisposed to be more acquisitive, or more loyal to their narrow ethnic group than to broader groups, or that whites are genetically predisposed to be more hostile to other racial groups, or that being nonreligious is genetically linked, and that people who have those genes are genetically predisposed to be more likely to commit crime or cheat on their spouses or what have you. One should also obviously be willing to be convinced by evidence that shows that, by controlling for the right variables, we would see that those groups are, in fact, identical to other groups under the same circumstances.
One should not rule out possibilities in the absence of conclusive evidence, for the simple reason that one then has no factual basis to rule out those possibilities. And since on many things the evidence will rarely be conclusive, one shouldn’t rule out those possibilities categorically at all. And one should also be open to the evidence that exists, and to being convinced by it in one or the other direction (to the degree of conviction that is warranted by the evidence).
Now some claims may be so contrary to our current understanding of the world that we might say something like this: We shouldn’t rule out the possibility in principle, but in practice the probability is so vanishingly small that we should exclude it from our analysis. That, for instance, might be one’s view about claims that werewolves exist. First, it’s just hard to imagine, given current science, what possible mechanism there might be that would turn humans into wolves every full moon. Second, one would think that if werewolves existed, we’d have good evidence of them, since proving their existence would be pretty easy.
But we still know very little about which genes produce intelligence, how exactly those genes operate, and even how intelligence can be defined. We obviously have vastly more left to learn about this. And there is certainly reason to believe that intelligence is heritable in some measure among individuals (though there is hot debate about the degree to which this is so). Such heritability, coupled with the possibility of differing selection pressures in different environments, provides a potential mechanism through which there conceivably could be intelligence differences among racial or ethnic groups.
So at this point it seems to me that the only scientifically sensible conclusion about this question, which I stress again is a question of what the facts really are, is that we can’t be sure that there are no such differences: Again, we cannot rule out either the possibility that there are racial differences in intelligence, or that there aren’t.
Or at least we cannot rule them out as a scientific judgment. (Perhaps there’s some expert somewhere out there who is so knowledgeable and brilliant that he feels he can accurately predict all that we will ever know about this field, and therefore can rule out one or the other possibility; I doubt it, but in any case I’m pretty sure that no-one is this discussion is that expert.) Obviously, each of us has the perfect right to rule any factual possibility out as a matter of faith, moral, religious, or whatever else. We can say “I don’t care what the evidence might say, I rule out this possibility because of my moral beliefs.” Or we can say “My moral beliefs are actually capable of indicating to me not just what I should do, but what the scientific facts about the world actually are, and therefore I am completely confident about what those facts are, based on my confidently held moral beliefs.”
But surely there ought to be no obligation on other people to adopt this sort of faith-based view on scientific questions. That’s why it seems to me that the author’s statement that “I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent” — or a similar statement, as I suggested, about Jews, or whites, or the irreligious — is perfectly proper, and in fact is the way that people should approach scientific questions of all sort.
2. Of course, I take it that some people were inferring from the e-mail that the author doesn’t actually mean just that she doesn’t rule out this possibility, but rather that she actually thinks the possibility is likely true. If so, then to critique the e-mail one would have to further discuss whether in fact the possibility is likely true under the current, highly limited state of scientific knowledge.
But there is no need to do that here. This e-mail was a follow-up to an earlier conversation, which apparently was not recorded. It was intended to be a private e-mail to other students who were parts of that conversation. One can’t tell whether the e-mail was (a) actually a means of implicitly asserting that there probably are intelligence differences, or (b) a rebuttal to an allegation that the author wasn’t scientifically minded enough in the discussion over dinner and was wrongly foreclosing scientific possibilities, or (c) part of a discussion about the nature of scientific evidence, or anything else. Sometimes, one might legitimately draw inferences about a person’s views based on a statement that was meant to be self-contained, to the point of justifying public criticism of the inferred views and not just the literally stated ones. But one can’t infer from this snippet of the broader conversation that the author means anything other than what she says: that she does not rule out a certain possibility, a possibility that I think cannot scientifically be ruled out.
I considered whether some of the language of the e-mail, such as (emphasis added) “In conclusion, I think it is bad science to disagree with a conclusion in your heart, and then try (unsuccessfully, so far at least) to find data that will confirm what you want to be true” suggests that the student believes that there is no existing data strongly suggesting the absence of genetic differences. If that were the right interpretation, then we’d have to discuss whether there is indeed such data.
But my reading of this, given both this sentence and the rest of the e-mail, is that the author is saying that there has been no success in (to go further down the paragraph) “prov[ing] once and for all that we are all equal” in intelligence, and in providing evidence that would make one “100% convinced that this is the case.” That’s a restatement of the first sentence in the e-mail, and again it strikes me as being quite scientifically accurate: There can’t be, at this stage of our knowledge (and possibly at any stage), proof “once and for all” that there are no such racial differences in intelligence.
3. On then to just a brief response to what I imagine would be some likely reactions.
a. Some might argue that belief in racial differences in intelligence could cause all sorts of immoral and harmful social and legal reactions. That might be so. But it’s different from the question that the student was writing about, which is what is actually true. Lots of other facts that are actually true can yield, and have yielded, harmful social and legal reactions. That doesn’t make those facts any less true — nor does it make it somehow improper for people to even be open to the possibility that certain facts might, in fact, be true.
b. Some might point to the history of unsound claims about racial differences in intelligence. And the history of errors in a field should indeed teach people to avoid those particular errors. But there’s no “three strikes and you’re out” for scientific theories: That some people in the past have posited various unsound theories with some general thesis doesn’t mean that all theories with a related thesis are guaranteed to be false. One still cannot rule out the possibility that some other theory in that genre will in fact be correct. Again, that’s just the way facts are: If something is true, people’s having thought a bunch of similar-sounding things that are nonetheless false doesn’t affect that truth.
c. Some might point out that intelligence and race are “socially constructed,” which is certainly true in the sense that different societies may draw racial lines in different places, and may define what constitutes intelligence — or how it should be tested — differently. But while we can’t just assume that there are some obviously correct definitions of either term, science often operates with terms that don’t have an inherently correct definition. What usually happens is that people come up with possible definitions, there’s debate about those definitions, there are studies done using different definitions, some results emerge that are common over a wide range of definitions and others that are highly sensitive to the definitions, and so on. Yet the right approach throughout this process is, again, precisely to “not rule out the possibility” that under some set of plausible definitions some result might be true, and to be willing to “be convinced” that under some set of plausible definitions some other result might be true.
It’s also possible that over time it will turn out that the definitional question is so difficult (or the required measurements are so difficult) that no real pattern emerges in the results. Say, for instance, that under some definitions of intelligence one sees one result and under others one sees the opposite result, and there seems to be no good basis to choose any particular definition over another. That might mean that we have to reformulate the question, and that the original question might be abandoned as not accurately answerable in its original form. We can’t rule out that possibility, either. But neither can we just assume that this is sure to happen.
d. Finally some might just argue that even the openness to the possibility that there may be racial differences in intelligence will offend people, and that the author should have recognized that the e-mail she sent to a couple of people might be forwarded to others who might be offended.
But this presupposes that it’s somehow wrong for people in a free country to discuss scientific questions because of the possibility that some people might learn about that and be offended. That can’t be right.
It especially can’t be right for students at a research university. But I think that it can’t be right for anyone anywhere. I realize that in the real world there might be bad consequences to speakers who offend others, however legitimate the speaker’s position — which, I stress again, is a position of openness to scientific evidence — might be. But we should work against that phenomenon, and its tendency to suppress honest discussion about scientific questions. We should not just give in to it as inevitable and, worse still, somehow right.
Disclosure: The student who wrote the e-mail will be clerking for the same judge for whom I clerked, so I thought I’d note this in case some thought it relevant. But I don’t know her personally (perhaps I have talked to her once by phone, but I’m not sure I’ve even done that), and this post has nothing to do with the indirect employment connection.
Mark Field says:
Two very quick comments because I’m short of time:
1. Your reading of the email in Section 2 strikes me as far too charitable to the student. I get a strong implication that s/he (I happen to know the answer but think it’s right to keep it vague) actually believes that blacks are genetically inferior.
2. While no one could disagree with your epistemology, the issue isn’t as simple as that. The fact is, we reserve cases of serious doubt to those for which we think there’s evidence. Nobody “doubts” Newton’s theory of gravity under ordinary conditions, even if we recognize that (a) in some abstract sense it might be wrong, and (b) that it actually IS wrong in special cases.
The real issue raised by the email is why this student believes that the intelligence of blacks is one of those issues on which we ought to spend time researching or debating. Such suggestions imply the chance that it’s true; after all, if the chance that it’s true is as low as the chances that Newton was wrong about gravity here on earth, nobody would debate it and certainly nobody would fund it.
In short, this student clearly believes that good evidence exists to cast doubt on the equal intelligence of blacks. It’s very sad that someone so well-educated as to get into HLS could be so ignorant.
Cue Zarkov in 3…2…1…
April 30, 2010, 4:44 pmPlugInMonster says:
Rest assured after this, she won’t be clerking for anyone. She’s done, as in career over!
April 30, 2010, 4:44 pmruuffles says:
Isn’t that the point? She’s not pursuing a PhD where she would do original, scientific research, but rather going into law, where she’d have to rule out “the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent.” What the the wise man say? The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
But hey, she’s not a wise Latina so I guess she gets a free pass.
April 30, 2010, 4:46 pmq says:
“Some might point to the history of unsound claims about racial differences in intelligence.”
I don’t know if there’s a history of unsound claims (there probably are), but there is a lot of evidence that there are racial disparities in intelligence, at least intelligence that can be measured by IQ. This finding has held in many different countries with IQ tests formulated by many different people.
I think a lot of people debating about this letter do not even realize the scientific concensus about this racial gap in IQ testing. That such a gap might be genetic is controversial, but entirely plausible. But I think more people are criticizing her for even assuming there is a racial disparity in intelligence (despite a lot of evidence that indicates there is, though it’s certainly possible that IQ testing does not accurately measure intelligence; however, that is hardly the concensus and probably a minority position), rather than criticizing her for saying genetics might explain such a disparity.
If I said Jews have a genetic prediposition to drink the blood of Gentiles (an example I stole from a prawfsblawg commenter), then you should criticize me for even assuming Jews are more likely to drink Goyim blood than non-Jews. But it’s certainly possible that blood-drinking is a genetic disorder!
April 30, 2010, 4:47 pmruuffles says:
Actually, I wouldn’t be so sure. The judge that EV clerked her is Kozinski, of cow porn and circumventing internet filter fame. I wouldn’t expect him to roll over so easily especially since the controversy seems well confined to the blogosphere and local papers.
April 30, 2010, 4:48 pmq says:
“In short, this student clearly believes that good evidence exists to cast doubt on the equal intelligence of blacks. It’s very sad that someone so well-educated as to get into HLS could be so ignorant.”
But there is good evidence… racial disparities in IQ testing, racial disparities in outcomes. And it’s certainly reasonable to question why this is. It could be socio-economic factors, but it could also be genetics, or perhaps both. Once we accept the racial gap (which we should, because it is a significant problem), we need to find out why it occurs in order to determine a good solution to the problem.
The fact that some do not even wish to delve into such questions goes to show how easy it is for those on both sides of the aisle to hold science to disdain if it goes against our preconceived biases.
April 30, 2010, 4:50 pmadam says:
The science is more settled than you may expect, for example, studies of the IQ of twins that were separated at birth indicate that ~70% of IQ is inherited.
See http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/250/4978/223 (abstract only). Such twin studies are powerful because they control optimally for parental rearing and other environmental factors.
April 30, 2010, 4:51 pmMore recent research indicates that for children raised in optimal rearing conditions, IQ is more heritable than in less optimal rearing conditions (poverty etc). In other words, the more optimal the environment our children are reared in, the more IQ’s heritability stands out.
Guest says:
It’s nice to see some legitimate public commentary on this issue that isn’t so reactionary.
Thank you.
April 30, 2010, 4:51 pmRobert says:
I suspect Kozinski might literally have to be impeached before he’d consider firing her over this. He is as hardcore free speech as the Federal judiciary gets. The chances of her being fired are zero, which I’m sure makes you sad.
I’m rather glad I’m getting out of the academic world soon. The power of the “Diversity Police” is truly unbelievable. One comment that they don’t like — even in a private email — and you have groups across the country working together to get you fired, the Dean of HLS calling you out, a professor calling you into his office to demand you explain yourself.. if it hadn’t just happened nobody would believe it. Our modern academic world is pretty funny when you think about it: Pooping Jesus artwork doesn’t raise an eyebrow, but an email that violates liberal orthodoxy will bring the world to an end.
April 30, 2010, 4:56 pmSandy MacHoots says:
How on earth did the private email of an unknown law student somehow become a significant news story? The race-baiters are really having to stretch these days to find their headlines.
WARNING TO THOSE IN ACADEMIA: It’s fine to search for truth and knowledge, but if you discover anything that might rattle someone’s chain, keep silent. Put nothing in writing. People will try to destroy you. At least wait until you’re a tenured prof at a major state school.
April 30, 2010, 4:59 pmSnaphappy says:
I do not rule out the possibility that Obama is in fact a Nigerian born terrorist.
I do not rule out the possibility that Eugene Volokh is a child molesting pedophile.
As a matter of scientific fact, these things could be true. The question is not the moral question about what we should do about it, if it is true. It’s not a question about what we would like the facts to be. The facts are what they are, whether we like them or not.
April 30, 2010, 5:00 pmChris Travers says:
I spot a major problem with the thesis, however.
First of all, we can all agree that intelligence is determined by a variety of factors, some genetic and some environmental. For example, due to a variety of reasons, my ability to solve certain types of problems is quite diminished. However, let’s start by asking the very hard question: How does one, for the purpose of such a statement, define intelligence? Part of the problem here is that intelligence is a sufficiently abstract idea that subtle differences in definition could conceivably affect the outcome.
Secondly, the student somewhat misunderstands the gender gap in areas like mathematics. While it is true that men are better represented on the top margin of the field, the same goes for the bottom margin. I am not sure that there is any evidence that men, on average, do better than women mathematically. The bell curve could just be wider (more geniuses and more morons).
Now, if we assume that human intelligence is necessarily finite and partly driven by evolution, then we would expect differences in environment to perhaps change the form of intelligence that a person acquires genetically to some extent.
However, when we add environmental factors including language, early childhood environments, prenatal environment, etc. we may find that the problem is so complex that it does not admit of a scientific definition, much less a scientific test and that subtle differences in definition could yield strongly divergent results.
April 30, 2010, 5:02 pmChris Travers says:
I wouldn’t rule them out either, but I would state that they strike me as very unlikely possibilities ;-)
April 30, 2010, 5:03 pmq says:
Chris Travers, very well thought-out comment. The thing is, I do not see how what you said indicates a “problem” with the thesis (Professor Volokh’s thesis?). Intelligence is partly inheritable, but it’s certainly possible that there are differences in the “intelligence gene” correlated with race. But it’s certainly possible there is. And it’s certainly possible that the differences are minute enough that social and environmental factors are more likely to be determinative.
But these are all questions that need to be researched, and we can’t have a healthy scientific debate about it if we are cut off from even considering that genetics explains the racial gap.
April 30, 2010, 5:07 pmtroll_dc2 says:
Chris Travers, are you comfortable that her quite private e-mail was released and that she was publicly critized? Or are you so dismissive of what she said that you don’t care much whether she should have been free to say it?
April 30, 2010, 5:13 pmERH says:
“Everyone wants someone to take 100 white infants and 100 African American ones and raise them in Disney utopia and prove once and for all that we are all equal on every dimension, or at least the really important ones like intelligence. I am merely not 100% convinced that this is the case.”
There’s no way to read this execpt to conclude that she believes that blacks are inferior to whites.
April 30, 2010, 5:18 pmSteve says:
Would it be illegal for Judge Kozinski to withdraw an offer of federal employment based upon the student’s constitutionally protected statements? Not that I think he will, of course. I’m just wondering if the rules apply.
I agree with others who fail to see the connection to scientific inquiry here (or the relevance of the fact that Harvard is a “research university”). The individual is a law student who is not proposing to conduct any sort of scientific experiment. Nor is he, like Larry Summers, in a position of leadership suggesting “here’s a question we might want to look at.” He’s just a guy spouting off. I’m not interested in creating a safe harbor for anyone who couches their offensive statements in the form “it would be interesting to study whether Jews are inherently greedy.” Now if someone actually wants to go ahead and set up that experiment, maybe that’s a different issue.
There’s a larger issue, which is whether it is morally okay to try and deprive someone of their livelihood because they said something that offended you. I suppose we could quote the noted scholar Eugene Volokh on the subject:
Prof. Volokh thought there was a “tough question” as to whether it was moral to boycott the Dixie Chicks. On the other hand, the Harvard situation seems to strike him as exceptionally easy. In a related context, Prof. Volokh has suggested that it depends at least in part on how offensive the statements were:
I’m not sure, though, if Prof. Volokh is expressing the view that what the Dixie Chicks said is significantly more outrageous than what the Harvard student said. Perhaps he could clarify why this is such an easy case for him.
April 30, 2010, 5:22 pmStephen Lathrop says:
Science? IQ testing? I don’t want to hold anyone in disdain. In fact, I’m very impressed by neuropsychology, because it seems to produce fairly repeatable results, or at least it has in cases I’m familiar with. But science? As in repeatable measurements in falsifiable experiments?
I don’t think IQ testers even agree on what IQ allegedly measures. I’m certain that if you tell me an IQ test measures intelligence, the only way you can prove it is to define intelligence as the property measured by an IQ test. Come to think of it, isn’t that what the inventors of the IQ test did do?
April 30, 2010, 5:27 pmTed says:
Are you suggesting both should raise an eyebrow or that neither should? Or that one should and one shouldn’t, but it’s currently not the ones you would like…
Damn straight. Gauging intelligence is “social” science, not science. Comparison to mathematical proofs, gravitational theories, or other discoveries “hard” science is inappropriate. There will never be a consensus on what group is more or less intelligent, because there will never be consensus on what “intelligence” means. This is compounded by the fact that any particular definition of intelligence seems to be driven by its specific context. Webster’s offers a good example:
Websters Third New Int’l Dictionary, “intelligence” (unabridged ed 2002).
I think to even suggest that we have a “scientific” measure of intelligence is misleading. We do not.
April 30, 2010, 5:29 pmleo marvin says:
I agree with EV’s post as far as it goes, but here’s what it overlooks. Racial bigotry does exist, and as Lee Atwater famously pointed out, its grosser expressions are no longer acceptable, so bigots are forced into subtler forms. When someone asks, “Are blacks as intelligent as whites?”, the challenge is to divine whether s/he is motivated by a sincere interest or is using the question as a fig leaf for bigotry. There are no doubt people in both categories, and it’s wrong to smear the former for their curiosity. But they should be mindful that there are bigots hiding in their shadows, and should try to avoid being used for that sort of cover.
April 30, 2010, 5:40 pmq says:
Yes, “intelligence” is a very nebulous term, but is there any better way to objectively measure it than IQ-testing? Note that IQ scores are highly correlated with achievement, so even if IQ doesn’t measure “intelligence,” we should still care about the racial gap and we should still try to find the explanation for such a gap.
And yes, this is very much science. Especially the attempt determine if “intelligence” (or whatever IQ measures) is a heritable trait, and if the “intelligence” (or whatever IQ measures) genes can be discovered, and if the distribution of those genes differ across racial lines.
April 30, 2010, 5:45 pmAnonsters says:
If someone is genuinely curious, there are tons of resources available, especially to someone still in school, to find answers, before spouting off a priori theories.
April 30, 2010, 5:46 pmDon Miller says:
Intelligence is so varied, that it is possible for a group to be genetically worse at the forms of intelligence that IQ tests but possibly better at other intelligences that standard IQ test don’t measure.
For example – Maybe Caucasians have better spatial relations IQ, but Africans have better music IQ
My understanding of the current research is that Africans are genetically predisposed to produce a different mix of muscles fibers than caucasians do.
Different results don’t mean that one is better than the other. It means one group is better adapted for an environment than the other is. Conversly, switch the environment and the other group would appear better adapted.
Understanding genetics effects human behavior is an important question. Morally, we may want certain outcomes. But if our genetics don’t support that outcome, we are wasting time and effort to fight against it.
Personal example – I would have loved to be an NFL wide receiver. However, I am short and don’t sprint well. I don’t have the genetics to get that result. However, I was a pretty decent wrestler and I was very good at running 5k races.
April 30, 2010, 5:47 pmKen Arromdee says:
I’d suggest a few ideas:
– If someone’s job is to entertain the public–that is, if their job is one where they should expect to get fired solely because of purely subjective reactions on the basis of the audience anyway–it’s more justifiable to also demand they get fired when you don’t like their politics.
– If they are trading on celebrity to spread their ideas. Nobody with any brains thinks an actor is any sort of authority on politics; an actor doing this is inherently appealing to the uneducated and ill-informed and I have fewer qualms complaining about someone who tries to spread their ideas to the uneducated and ill-informed.
– If they are fairly directly stating the objectionable idea. The student above didn’t say that blacks are stupid; in order to get that from his words, you need to interpret it. The Dixie Chicks directly stated that they are ashamed of Bush because of Iraq.
– And yes, it does depend on the merits of the idea. I wouldn’t think it’s right to boycott even an actor for believing in evolution, because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with believing in evolution. The argument over this supposedly racist student is really an argument about whether his viewpoint is legitimate, not over how to treat illegitimate viewpoints.
I’d also point out that a student is a customer, not an employee, and whether you should try to get people fired is different from whether you should refuse to serve them.
April 30, 2010, 5:49 pmBlue says:
Truly we must never spout off a priori theories in private e-mails to each other. All communications must be properly sourced and approved through the Office of Knowledge and Diversity.
April 30, 2010, 5:51 pmMalvolio says:
I think it’s funny (in a kinda horrific way) how many commenters are making the leap from “the author thinks blacks may have on average have lower intelligence than whites” to “the author thinks blacks are inferior to whites.”
Do people who say things like that (Mark Field and ERH for two examples) actually believe them? Do they believe themselves to be inferior to anyone who is smarter than them? Do they believe themselves to be superior to anyone not as smart?
April 30, 2010, 5:52 pmLarryA says:
At a university, though, it can be left.
“This student ought to be summarily dismissed. After all, we can’t tolerate someone at a major university who still has something to learn.”
April 30, 2010, 5:52 pmfwb says:
WGAF!
It is her opinion. Everyone has a right to his/her opinion, correct or incorrect. And those who disagree that one has a right to any opinion one wishes can take it and shove it.
April 30, 2010, 5:53 pmAnonsters says:
Certainly, she has a right to her opinion. Just like the Grand Wizard does. Just like all those who condemn her for her opinion have the right to their opinion. Just like they have the right to speak out and to apply pressure on those around her to condemn her. Just like they have the right to campaign against her being placed in a position of potential public influence (federal clerkship).
Free speech, ain’t it grand?
April 30, 2010, 5:56 pmEvan says:
Fixed.
Which is why you need to keep the context in mind. She was writing this to some friends in follow-up to a private discussion: they already were spending time debating it. We don’t know why – it could’ve been for any number of reasons. She’s definitely not suggesting that scientists spend time and money formally researching it, just that (until and unless they do) we don’t consider it absolutely proven.
I’m not a lawyer, but where does law have to assume anything about the person’s intelligence? Everyone has equal rights, no matter what their IQ.
April 30, 2010, 6:04 pmPerseus says:
This is a good case for those of us political philosophers to use to illustrate how even in supposedly free democratic societies, (natural) philosophic study is threatened by beasts whose cheeks turn red with indignation when their idol of equality is questioned. At the same, as Mark Field suggests, deciding which particular questions are worth spending time researching is not really a scientific judgment but a normative one (which modern science seeks to avoid).
April 30, 2010, 6:11 pmJon Rowe says:
Do they believe themselves to be inferior to anyone who is smarter than them? Do they believe themselves to be superior to anyone not as smart?
One thing we should get straight here is that intelligence level has absolutely NOTHING to do with one’s worth as a human being. The Unibomber, Ted Bundy and Rodney Alcala (perhaps the worst serial killer in American history) had IQs that were purportedly either above average (Bundy’s) or genius level (the other two).
Likewise looks have nothing to do with superiority or inferiority. Bundy and Dahmer were handsome. And though he looks like a freak now, Alcala was handsome in the 70s on the Dating Game.
April 30, 2010, 6:15 pmtroll_dc2 says:
I must say that I am getting a clearer picture of certain commenters than I ever wanted to, and the picture is not pretty.
April 30, 2010, 6:17 pmAnonsters says:
Amen.
In fact, the only thing that has to do with “one’s worth as a human being” is the sheer fact of being human.
Thus runs my pinko-commie socialist-fascist liberal creed.
April 30, 2010, 6:17 pmStephen Lathrop says:
If you note that people can’t measure, or even agree on a definition for, human characteristic X, what does it mean when someone nevertheless asserts that there is X, X is good, and members of not-my-race are deficient in X?
When that happens, is it really outlandish to criticize it?
The question of privacy is a different one. I think it does change the ethical situation when the controversial statement was not offered publicly or in a professional context.
On the other hand, the ethical situation and the practical situation seem to differ. Obviously practical concerns stifle debate on some topics, and probably limit research as well. Presumably that’s not good, especially if the chosen measure for “good” is some abstract standard of truth walled off from every social context.
What a shame to have to deal with social context. Shouldn’t researchers be free to announce findings and hypotheses full of qualifications, doubts, ambiguities, and every possible kind of uncertainty save one —the certainty that the findings threaten social comity. We know so many cases where the answer to that question has been tested by history and answered in the affirmative. Yes, they should be free to do that. Those are the cases where time and experiment removed uncertainties, and they tell a heroic tale.
We also know the other cases, the dreadful ones, too numerous to mention, where the doubts got confirmed, and the only legacy was a residue of social harm. There are shameful tales in that catalogue.
What is the moral? If you want to overturn the social order with your science, it is better to be Galileo than a eugenicist? Maybe you can find a useful lesson in that. It’s not easy.
April 30, 2010, 6:25 pmq says:
We do as best we can. Technically, we can’t measure wealth, or even agree on the definition of wealth, but we mostly believe that wealth is good and that we should help those who do not have it. This goes for most such “characteristic.”
IQ is useful as a predictor of “achievement” (which I define as future earnings). Even if it doesn’t measure your concept of intelligence, we still need to care about it. It would be better if for the sake of discussion we assumed “intelligence” meant IQ-measured intelligence, because that is ultimately what people care about.
It’s not like it’s any less demeaning when I say you have a lower IQ than I do.
April 30, 2010, 6:29 pmAnonsters says:
That’s a sad definition.
April 30, 2010, 6:34 pmCurious says:
I would like apologize in advance for writing the excerpt below but I feel I have no choice given the post by Professor Volokh. Again, I am really sorry, I know this will be very offensive, especially to my Jewish friends. Check it out:
I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that Jews are, on average, genetically predisposed to be greedy. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, no greedier than white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:) Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders. This suggests to me that some part of greed is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will serve the public and not be bankers or corporate lawyers whether I raise them myself or give them to an orphanage in Israel. I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that Jews are greedier on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner.
How about that? Are you offended by that Professor Volokh? Maybe there is a genetic reason behind the success of Jews in banking and law (I cannot believe I am reduced to writing this, I want to kill myself right now). Maybe we should research this possibility. This is simply a question of what the facts are, right?
April 30, 2010, 6:35 pmBlue says:
Yes, I’m sure you go through life without ever making a judgment about whether someone is smart or not. Or if you do, I’m sure you are continuously surprised that your judgment is different that others. Take, say Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, for example. No one really has any ability to say that there is a difference in some mystical “intelligence” between them.
April 30, 2010, 6:36 pmEugene Volokh says:
Curious: I’m curious whether you looked at the paragraph in this post that begins with “Given this, it seems to me.”
April 30, 2010, 6:40 pmDjDiverDan says:
Correction – Newton never claimed to develop a “theory” of gravity, in that Newton’s work didn’t even try to explain a mechanism by which gravity works. Indeed, that fact really bothered Newton himself for a long time. Rather, Newton developed a descriptive mathematical equation which quite accurately predicted the physical reactions induced by gravitational pull between two bodies with mass. And Newton’s gravitational equation is in fact “wrong”, in that it is not absolutely accurate, and becomes extraordinarily cumbersome to deal with whenever considering multiple bodies; just using Newton’s equation to simultaneously predict gravitational motions of 8 or more bodies (like the Sun, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, the Earth’s moon, and a few near-earth orbiting Asteroids) where the mass of each has gravitational affects on all the others, can keep several supercomputers busy for a long time without yielding completely accurate predictions.
April 30, 2010, 6:41 pmCalderon says:
Not to get off topic, but do you really believe that? Suppose two people are drowning, and you can save one and only one. Person A is multiple murderer and child molester, while Person B is a successful cancer researcher and builds houses for the homeless in his spare time. Do you flip a coin to determine which one to save, or engage in some other random determination, since they’re both human and thus have the same worth?
April 30, 2010, 6:43 pmMark M says:
Does one really need to think too hard why these statements might seem repulsive too African Americans? African American history is largely rooted in the rationalization of black inferiority. The christian justification for slavery was largely based on blacks being barely distinguishable from animals. It was one of the primary bases of slavery. It is not academic too African Americans any more than Mengele’s experimenting on Jews or Nazis creating a justification for the extermination of Jews. The result of the premise of black inferiority pretty much describes so much of the degradation blacks have endured for hundreds of years and and resulted in literally millions dying. So please spare us with so much of the academic freedom arguments. In fact, many would argue that it wasn’t merely a hypothetical she presented– she was arguably presenting a belief that is rooted, at least in America, in White Supremacy which is to say that everything that has happened to black people in American is due to their own inadequacies rather than existential factors such as being human chattel.
I have seen a great deal of comments that basically has stated that blacks do indeed perform at a lower level than whites and that shows that they are less intelligent. No one really denies that blacks perform at a lower level, but there is hardly real evidence that such discrepancies are due to skin color. What African Americans do know is that the advent of eugenics was largely started by white men who had a pre-conceived notions of white supremacy. From cranial size to penis size, African Americans have been targets of rationalizations for group violence and oppression to criminal debasement.
To the extent that scientists discover there is a gene that drives native intelligence and that gene is less present in humans who have black skin, African Americans and liberals, in general, will have a very skeptical eye towards statements like those of the student. There is something called racism, much to the disappointment of many, and this woman’s statements come very close to it not because there may actually be a biological difference but b/c it has been and is used a social pretext to having African Americans start from a presumption of a deficit. If reported accurately, the basis for her faux hypo was Affirmative Action. Personally, I could care less what she wrote as an individual. However, her statement to many is merely a realization that black folk have not and do not get a fair shake. Please note that such a view occurred pre-Affirmative Action and continues today regardless of Affirmative Action.
Professor Volokh, whom I truly have a high regard, seems to discount much of the history behind these very loaded ideas and views these statements in isolation. That is unfortunate as it assumes a de-legitimacy of those who use the word racism. The word is does have meaning even though much of white america has effectively turned the victims into perps.
April 30, 2010, 6:45 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I think some people are, as it were, confusing atheism with agnosticism. And I think that to make an assertion in the absense of, or in the teeth of, evidence, is an act of faith. Faith is fine in a religious framework. Is racial theory a religion?
From her email:
I find this a cogent argument against black people being genetically predisposed to having low IQ.
All of this points up the ridiculous absurdity of Eric Holder saying that we need to quit being cowards and have a real conversation about race.
April 30, 2010, 6:45 pmAnonsters says:
It’ll probably be some other random determination, yes.
April 30, 2010, 6:45 pmAnonsters says:
FWIW, this is factually inaccurate (shocking, I know). One scholar has counted up, on the basis of antebellum newspaper reports and other sources, and found something like 600+ attempted slave rebellions. I’ll try to find the article.
April 30, 2010, 6:48 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Actually, Atwater was making exactly the opposite point, but hey.
April 30, 2010, 6:49 pmPerseus says:
The ancient Greeks would beg to differ. Kalon means both noble and beautiful, and the two were associated with each other (cf. Nietzsche on the ugliness of Socrates; contrast Francis Bacon on the negative correlation between the two).
April 30, 2010, 6:49 pmMatt says:
Of course there is at least one other way. Saying that she is “merely not 100% convinced” can be read without straining to mean that she doubts the arguments mustered in favor of the statement “Whites and blacks are of equal mean intelligence” or some such. That may or may not be the most sensible interpretation in light of all the circumstances, but it doesn’t logically equate to “I believe that blacks are intellectually inferior.”
April 30, 2010, 6:55 pmCurious says:
Yes, I had read that paragraph before my posting. My only question is whether you would be equally generous to the author of that statement and defend them so passionately as well if they were attacked as an anti-semite or a neo-Nazi. The person who authored the, in my opinion, racist e-mail even went so far as to imply that babies in Nigerian orphanages are somehow not destined to be geniuses or beautiful but that her future babies are…I’m offended and I’m white! I can’t imagine how black students must feel.
April 30, 2010, 6:58 pmChris says:
Attacking the idea of intelligence is silly. The way to deal with the IQ gap between the races is to attack the idea of race.
April 30, 2010, 7:00 pmD says:
I believe the reason why this student’s email has become so inflammatory is not merely due to its overarching questioning of genetic intelligence, but the fact that it is colored (no pun intended) with considerable biases that belie her prejudice. I will spare you from a more thorough analysis of the letter but please look beyond the “scientific” veneer that this HLS 3L has so artfully crafted.
April 30, 2010, 7:05 pmCynical says:
Non sequitur. If there is no rationale for enslaving people with Down’s syndrome, there is no rationale for enslaving African-Americans on the basis of much smaller group differences. And of course, individuals are individuals and can be far from average… in either direction.
The real threat is to not just to the “social justice” worldview, but to the entire affirmative-action, diversity and racial reparations industry. If individuals are judged for their deeds and abilities instead of their skin color, Griggs goes away along with the jobs of a great many compliance officers. Worse, the rampant credentialism which has fed the expansion of colleges and universities as substitutes for pre-employment aptitude tests would fall by the wayside, and that whole racket would start to collapse as well.
You can see how true color-blindness threatens to break the rice bowls of many influential people, and they’ll do almost anything to prevent it. The one thing… okay, two things in its favor are (a) the general public is fed up with the nonsense involved with the pretense, and (b) the nation can no longer afford to keep up the façade.
April 30, 2010, 7:06 pmTuna says:
Someone correct me if I’m wrong about the following:
The consensus of current scientific belief is that several hundred homo sapiens left Africa about 50,000 years ago and spread out over the world. Since that time, there have been several hundred generations of humans.
The theory of evolution teaches that if you put one population group here, and one population group there, and they have different selection pressures from different environments, and you wait several hundred generations, that the populations will diverge in average characteristics.
Right?
Science teaches us that homo sapiens are the same as any other animal (i.e., that evolution works the same on us as any other animal). So, for our purposes, let’s look at dogs. Eighty percent of dog breeds are modern breeds that evolved in the last few hundred years. Think about that. 80% of the dogs that you own or know of have only been around for a few hundred years. They diverge greatly in intelligence and other characteristics. Is it really controversial to think that groups of humans—if separated for tens of thousands of years—could diverge in intelligence and other characteristics?
April 30, 2010, 7:07 pmAnonsters says:
How fun. A thought experiment.
When there’s a shit-ton of actual research available if you care to look for it.
April 30, 2010, 7:12 pmTuna says:
Perhaps you would care to provide it?
BTW, I appreciate your attempt at engaging in a civil discussion and not being the least bit snarky. You’re a class act that we all should seek to emulate.
April 30, 2010, 7:15 pmq says:
Well, to argue Jews have a genetic predisposition to be greedy looks like this:
If Jews are greedier, then it is plausible this is partly explained by genetics.
Jews are greedier.
But is there any scientific evidence that Jews are greedier than other races? If not, then simply assuming it’s true would certainly justify criticism that it’s anti-semitical.
April 30, 2010, 7:17 pmAnonsters says:
No, I wouldn’t. Do your own research.
I’ve already stated my position about this several times (maybe in a diff. thread; it’s hard to keep track at this point). I don’t think it’s valuable or at all worth the time to engage in thought experiments, a priori musings, etc. on questions of actual scientific research. There’s data out there. I don’t care what you think is “reasonable” based on your own unique understanding or interpretation of a slice of the science, not when there’s a ton of actual science done on these topics.
April 30, 2010, 7:19 pmMark M says:
Cynical,
You make one good point — colorblindness is possibly an answer to racism. Outside of your screed on liberal politics, however, your rush to colorblindness is somewhat circuitous due to: 1. a history of white supremacy and 2. statements like this student that, at least to me, can be read as an endorsement of group decision-making and a presumption of deficiency by those who make decisions as to the allocation of resources, jobs, justice and wealth.
One more note: Affirmative Action will likely be gone in the next 25 years. Rather than diversity, many of us who believe Affirmative Action was a mild form of remediation for legally sanctioned white supremacy and black oppression and a form of protection against those in power who have opinions that are not too far from those expressed by the student from further denying 12% of the population from jobs and wealth-building.
April 30, 2010, 7:24 pmAnonsters says:
Sandra Day, is that you? ;)
April 30, 2010, 7:26 pmzuch says:
From the letter:
This assumes that we can even agree on what a suitable “Disney utopia” would consist of. The fact that she doesn’t recognise this does not speak well for her understanding of the subject matter. If I were to look for the “most productive” crop plants, I might see which ones produce the most fruit in a constant and controlled environment; a nice greenhouse with regular watering, constant heat, and good strong sun. But that would be stupid of me; if I were to study the same strains under reduced lighting conditions, I may well find that other varieties of plants are now (by that somewhat arbitrary metric) the most productive. Which environment to choose depends a lot of what I’m looking for … and the results answer rather different questions, even if I wrongly think it is just one simple question.
Cheers,
April 30, 2010, 7:27 pmMark Field says:
Inferior in that specific way. I thought that was pretty obvious, but I guess not. Is it your view that the student speculated on this as part of an overall argument in favor of the equality of blacks?
As I said in response to Prof. Volokh, I think this is too charitable a reading.
April 30, 2010, 7:33 pmCurious says:
True. But, the author of the racist e-mail equates black with a lack of intelligence and maybe even a lack of beauty, why else would she believe that her baby would be a genius and beautiful DESPITE being in a Nigerian orphanage. I would contend that tests show that black kids perform poorly, not that black kids are less intelligent. Why do lawyers always miss the forest for the trees? Can anyone honestly read the e-mail that the Harvard Law Student wrote and tell me she is not a racist (i.e., that she does not think differences in skin color are meaningful, and that white skin is an indicator of higher intelligence and higher beauty and that black skin is not an indicator of the opposite?).
April 30, 2010, 7:35 pmleo marvin says:
As I recall, he was making two points: (1) the one I mentioned, and (2) dialing down the intensity of racist expression tends to reduce the racism itself, and so on. If you think I misread it or I’m misremembering it, please explain.
April 30, 2010, 7:36 pmTed says:
Last time I enslaved a person afflicted with Down Syndrome I was quite unimpressed with his physical prowess; he could barely perform 16-hour days of heavy labor. Further, he seemed quite uncoordinated and “slow.” Maybe I just had a bad experience, but I will never enslave another “Downey” again. Back to the ol’ standby…time tested, southerner approved!
How’s that for rationalization?
April 30, 2010, 7:53 pmJon Rowe says:
Perseus:
I’ll preface my remarks by noting I’m not a Christian. Many imagines of Jesus have us looking at strikingly handsome idealized figure. But if the Shroud our Turin really is what Jesus looked like, he was quite ordinary looking, homely even.
Lucifer, on the other hand, purportedly was the most beautiful of God’s creation.
April 30, 2010, 7:59 pmreality check says:
Its a fact that we are all genetically different. Genetic differences lead to different attributes. Different attributes lead to differing abilities.
The emailer did not suggest that African-Americans were “inferior” in sum. She suggested they were different… and that some of those differences result from genetic variation. That probability should not come as a shock to anybody.
The emailer was not aruing for diminished rights, or diminished status, or that on balance, whites were superior beings to blacks. She merely enterained the possibility that in one attribute, observed variations in measured indicators may be explained by genetic variation.
If someone were to suggest that the African-Americans are athletically more talented than Asians or whites, would they be racists?
Of course not. They would not, in fact, be racist and they wouldnt even be accused of racism because whites and Asians don’t meet the proper qualifiations for the position of racial sacred cow.
This whole controversy is a race-baiter’s delight.
April 30, 2010, 8:06 pmCurious says:
Finally, I am absolutely shocked that Professor Volokh and also, quite possibly, Judge Kozinski do not see a problem with the e-mail from the Harvard Law School student. More than that, Professor Volokh is defending this student with passion. Her e-mail reeks of racism, elitism, and a general lack of tact. Former students at Princeton University and current students at Harvard Law School who know this young lady are not surprised with this e-mail. They say that she has said and argued much worse, but that this tame version is what was caught in writing. (Check out the blogs. Read the comments.) And what does Professor Volokh do? Instead of being concerned that a racist might be clerking for his former judge, he rallies to her defense with passion! Why? Because we are all products of a soulless meritocracy. We have trained “organization kids” who get excellent grades and excel at everything they do but are not good people. Law is the culmination of this cultural crisis. Our students are trained in consistency, in logic, in pursuing the “facts” of a case, but not in identifying what is right. Read some of the comments on the blogs out there. For those of you who have not been following, law students and lawyers and even Professor Volokh all seem to be offended by not the person who wrote the e-mail but the people who distributed it! They find it disheartening that a private e-mail was distributed! This is the issue now! Save your anger not for the person that is possibly racist, but for the person who “outed” the possible racist. Why? I hate even thinking about the answer to that question…
April 30, 2010, 8:08 pmShelbyC says:
For your interpretation to make sense, she would have to be implying that all white babies are beautiful geniuses. I don’t think that’s even an arguable reading of her email.
April 30, 2010, 8:19 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Why? If an adult believes a fairy tale — Jack and the Beanstalk, Noah’s Ark, Goldlocks and the Three Bears, Jonah and the Whale, the Resurrection — that constitutes substandard thinking and appears to reflect an information-processing deficiency. Any adult would mock someone who claimed to believe that Jack climbed the beanstalk to fetch the hen (let alone would order his life in accordance with the tale, let alone try to force others to so order their lives) Why should fairy tales, or their followers, deemed “religious” get a pass?
Neither the student’s e-mail — not the preceding paragraph — should be off-limits to anyone who cares about reason. For her sake, however, I hope her words derived from undisclosed scientific knowledge to dispel natural suspicions involving garden-variety racism and unwarranted elitism.
April 30, 2010, 8:28 pmMQuinn says:
I see two sides to this story. On one hand, I find it hard to disagree with Prof. Volokh’s point that the email is accurate, insofar as the email argues that it isn’t wholly inarguable that African American’s are genetically predisposed to a lower IQ. After all, it similarly isn’t wholly inarguable that I am merely a brain hooked up to a madman’s dream machine (a la Descartes) or some other far-fetched claim. In that sense, the emailer is probably right — it isn’t 100%, wholly, totally inarguable (although I do disagree).
On the other hand, I find the following point persuasive, too:
The emailer could have easily prefaced her comments with a paragraph explicitly expressing the unlikelihood that African Americans are inferior, or that any disparities in IQ testing are likely the products of environment, or some other caveat that softened the blow of her email. But the emailer (intentionally?) failed to do so, and thereby opened himself/herself up to controversy and questions regarding her motives.
In light of the above, I find the emailer to have exercised poor judgment and taste, but possibly correct on the merits.
April 30, 2010, 8:30 pmDerrick says:
It’s always amusing how many on the Right have such a vested interest in this particular discussion about IQ disparities between Whites and African-Americans. You never hear Steve Sailer or others worried about say Whites and Arabs, or Asians and Latinos. At some point, arguing about the scholarship of this continued exercise just seems inane. There is obviously something that Stephanie and others are looking for with this debate. I think she showed her cards on what that something is (I’d guess white supremacy), but I’d love to her reasons why this exact conversation keeps happening from some on the Right and not say about the relative IQ of Jews and Whites.
April 30, 2010, 8:44 pmreality check says:
These issues are not brought up because our legal system does not codify discrimination against Jews for the sake of Gentiles, or Gentiles for the sake of Jews.
The legal system, however, does codify discrimination against Gentiles and Jews and Asians for the sake Latinos and African Americans.
If you wanted to engage in an honest academic conversation, I’d be happy do discuss any number of areas where other races perform better than Whites…
…and I even promise not to resort to race-baiting. Can you do the same?
April 30, 2010, 8:57 pmWhat about Genetics? says:
I’m no expert on genetics, but I thought it was well accepted that there is no race gene. Of course, there are groups of genes that statistically correlate with what society has termed black, white, asian, etc – such as melanin production, hair color, etc. If there’s no race gene, how can she say that “African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent”? Even if there are “intelligence” genes, they are not going to travel (chromosomally) with a non-existent race gene, and very very unlikely to travel with a gene like melanin-production (empirical question…although I think this too has been answered with genetic epidemiology studies about inter- and intra-continental variance).
April 30, 2010, 9:04 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Arthur, I get that you are an evangelical atheist. You have made that very, very plain over probably hundreds of comments so that no one could possibly have missed it by now. I still want to point out that another person’s faith is not your concern. Not your problem. Don’t share it if you don’t want to. Whatever.
It seems to me that the letter writer is wanting evidence as opposed to socially acceptable opinions that can’t be supported but won’t get her into trouble. Obviously that is a BAD THING TO DO. Mouthing socially acceptable opinions that have nothing concrete to back them up is not a reasonable thing, unless you’re pushing AGW.
April 30, 2010, 9:19 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I will help you out here. She didn’t say that “African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent”. She said she wasn’t ruling it out. See the difference? I suppose you are ruling it out. What are you basing that on?
April 30, 2010, 9:21 pmzuch says:
Heritability is only valid for a specific environment. Even if 70% of IQ is “inherited” for the specific case of twins separated at birth (and with the specific environment(s0 that go(es) along with that), I’d note that no identical twins are born with different skin colour, so even this doesn’t apply.
Cheers,
April 30, 2010, 9:21 pmWhat about Genetics? says:
My omission of “I absolutely do not rule out the possibility…” it is not important to my point about genetics. My point is that she does not understand the science to make such a claim. My point is that it is impossible for African Americans to be genetically predisposed (here, I am defining the phrase in the genetic sense, not statistical correlation sense) to be less intelligent because there is no African American gene.
April 30, 2010, 9:29 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
The thing is, she’s not making a claim. That’s her whole point. To say that you are not ruling something out is specifically and explicitly saying that you are not making a claim.
Also, I don’t think anybody has said that there is an African American gene. Sickle cell anemia is overrepresented among the AA population here. Please explain that, in the absence of an AA gene.
April 30, 2010, 9:34 pmMark Field says:
The sickle cell gene is also carried by those of Mediterranean descent. It’s not an issue of race, it’s an issue of your ancestors coming from a place where malaria was common.
April 30, 2010, 9:41 pmOpenVolokh says:
I just wanted to chime in here briefly. I like Eugene Volokh. I really do. But I think he is lacking in both sensibility and judgment. There is more to what questions are asked than how those questions can be evaluated using pure logic and rationality. One must also exercise judgment. That is the basic failure of this HLS student and that is a basic failure of this post by Eugene Volokh.
Thinking about this, I can see a pattern. Eugene Volokh has endorsed John Eastman for Attorney General who has written statements such as the following: “two new indicia of barbarism arose during the 20th century: abortion and homosexuality” Why would Eugene Volokh think that this guy would be a good attorney general in a state where he has to represent all of the people, including gays? It is quite clear that Eugene Volokh’s endorsement of John Eastman for Attorney General is a good indication that Eugene Volokh is someone whose logical skills are quite strong, but who struggles in the exercise of sensible judgment. If you were gay, would you trust John Eastman to enforce California law in a fair and even-handed way? I sure wouldn’t.
This HLS student has failed miserable when it comes to exercising wise judgment. Scientific inquiry involves not merely searching for answers to random questions. Given limited time and resources, there is the question of what questions are asked and what motivates those questions to be asked. As scientist is more than a logic machine, but must exercise judgment in determining (1) which correlations between genes and attributes to study (2) what assumptions to make and (3) for what purpose.
Anyway, I have addressed in greater detail both the merits of the HLS student’s claim here as well as the relationship between logic and rationality on one hand and exercising good judgment on the other here. Overall, my conclusion is that the student has failed massively to exercise good judgment. Just as Eugene Volokh has made a lesser failing in exercising good judgment in endorsing this email as consisting of a legitimate scientific inquiry or endorsing someone who sounds like an anti-gay bigot for California Attorney General.
April 30, 2010, 9:44 pmWhat about Genetics? says:
What she doesn’t want to rule out is a scientific impossibility. It would be like me saying that I don’t want to rule out the possibility that the earth is flat.
Your sickle cell question can be answered here: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-01-02.htm Suffice to say that it’s geographic evolution, not a “AA gene”…which again, does not exist. Thus, it would be incorrect to say that AA are genetically predisposed to have sickle cell anemia. You could only say that there is a statistical correlation between AA and sickle cell anemia. These are very different concepts if we think moving past stereotypes is important to eradicate racism.
April 30, 2010, 9:45 pmKen Arromdee says:
It’s an email, it’s not a scientific paper. It wasn’t supposed to be quoted out of context, and such disclaimers could have been implied by the context.
Besides, nobody puts disclaimers in their private emails anyway. The disclaimer you suggest is only necessary if the email gets sent to an audience it wasn’t supposed to get sent to.
April 30, 2010, 9:47 pmElliot says:
If she had said the same thing about Asians, would anybody be paying any attention?
April 30, 2010, 9:59 pmOpenVolokh says:
Absolutely.
April 30, 2010, 10:04 pmPerseus says:
Professor Kevin MacDonald (CSULB) is doing just that (I note this as someone who is not Jewish but nonetheless part of the vast neoconservative conspiracy).
In other words, bad judgment is when Prof. Volokh disagrees with you.
April 30, 2010, 10:10 pmJohn Herbison says:
It seems to me that Atwater was explaining why/how those politicians who pander to racism learned to use dog whistle euphemisms and shibboleths in place of explicit racial epithets:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#cite_ref-4 [footnotes omitted]
The context here is important. This is spin control for the Reagan administration. The mantra then, if I remember correctly, was that Reagan didn’t have a racist bone in his body.
Governor Reagan, however, opened his 1980 general election campaign in Philadelhia, Mississippi, with a speech in which he spoke favorably of “States’ Rights”. No Southerner who was then of voting age and who had two brain cells to rub together misunderstood the racist subtext. Atwater would have us believe that the fact that is was subtext is a good thing rather than the insidious pandering that it was.
If Lee Atwater wound upon the other side in the same place as Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, I hope that they beat the stuffing out of him.
April 30, 2010, 10:11 pmArthur Kirkland says:
I am not an evangelical atheist. I am an agnostic. I don’t know whether there is a god any more than you do, or anyone else does. With respect to organized religion on Earth today, however, Mark Knopfler’s insight — “two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong” — covers much ground persuasively.
Other people’s superstitions not my problem? When those folks interpret a book of fable to support discrimination against gays (not all Christians, interestingly, and not only Christians, but enough to make bigotry a genuine problem), or extrapolate from that book a ruling that not only should a parent not provide a morning-after pill to a raped 14-year-old, but indeed a person must prevent another man from doing so, their religious views become my problem.
In other words, people mouthing socially acceptable opinions that have nothing (let alone anything concrete) to back them up.
The point was off-limits debate.
April 30, 2010, 10:22 pmOpenVolokh says:
No. Bad judgment in not recognizing that exercising good judgment is necessary. Logic and rationality are a subset of the tools that must be exercised in intellectual endeavors.
It is quite clear that I disagree with Eugene Volokh. But that is not the basis of my claim that he is lacking in good judgment here.
April 30, 2010, 10:24 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
HELLO.
April 30, 2010, 10:55 pmadam says:
It is disconcerting, to say the least, that what she wrote in the email cannot be debated on the scientific facts. A highly intelligent man like the Unabomber is a highly despicable, inferior, being, but commenters here persist in wanting to confuse “less intelligent” and “inferior”, where one is a neutral, measurable fact and the other a social construct.
Anyway, allow me to inject at least some scientific data into this debate.
First of all, identical twins can be born with different skin color, but that is not germane to this issue.
More importantly, the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study looked at exactly this specific potential confounder: “babies from different racial backgrounds were adopted by high cognitive ability white parents, and average cognitive ability was found to be different for different racial categories, and, for example, mixed black-white children had cognitive ability (age 17) exactly between white and black children. 12 children whose parents were convinced they were of AA ancestry, but who were in fact of mixed racial background, had an average cognitive ability similar to that of the average of mixed race children, not that of black children. See the Wikipedia pages on this subject.
Would it not be more effective if we could let the facts speak for themselves, and instead discuss approaches on how these differences can be eliminated?
April 30, 2010, 11:00 pmPerseus says:
Your notion of bad judgment amounts to Prof. Volokh a) lacking political savvy in endorsing a political candidate whose statements might offend a portion of the electorate (despite it being an open question whether such a person could win or whether Prof. Volokh prefers someone whose overall views are closer to his own even if it means a lesser chance of winning) and b) failing to be sufficiently sensitive to the idol of equality and the political nature of deciding what to study. The latter is a more plausible error in judgment, but Prof. Volokh anticipates that line of argument.
April 30, 2010, 11:11 pmjustaguy says:
Jensen in the 1970’s with Genetics and Education, the Bell Curve by Hernstein and Murray in the 19990’s, were both well distributed books citing numerous published studies that attributed some component of intelligence to genetics and some portion of intelligence to the environment. That this idea, a sound and much debated scientific proposition, emailed by a student should cause the Dean of one of the nation’s top law school and so many commenters here to jump the shark is remarkable for showing the closed-mindedness of the elite. Lysenkoism appears to be alive and well among the elite.
April 30, 2010, 11:23 pmOpenVolokh says:
Perseus:
It is quite clear that John Eastman is only one possible candidate for California Attorney General with whom Eugene Volokh would partially agree on certain issues. But, if Eugene Volokh was exercising good judgment, he would want his choice of California AG to be effective. But, John Eastman’s statement that gay people are basically akin to barbarians will undermine his effectiveness as California AG, because a huge percentage of the population will not trust him to faithfully apply the law, given such extreme views.
And even such repugnant views would not undermine his effectiveness as California AG, it speaks volumes about Eugene Volokh’s judgment that he overlooks John Eastman’s repugnant views on this matter and endorses him anyway.
The question with John Eastman is not merely whether he has the requisite intellectual ability, but whether he will exercise good judgment. That he has exercised such bad judgment in his statements in the past does not bode well for his judgment in the future. I do not believe he could be trusted to faithfully execute the law in a sensible manner. I think Eugene Volokh’s trust in him despite this speaks to not only his own insensitivity, but also lack of judgment.
April 30, 2010, 11:40 pmSkeptic says:
Are you saying that there is a single gene for Englishness, Swedishness, Finnishness, Germanishness, Polishness, Russianishness…?
Thesis FAIL.
April 30, 2010, 11:53 pmGastronome says:
“I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that …”
Is there ever an instance where you CAN rule out the possibility that … ? As a practicing attorney, arguing that something is impossible is tantamount to arguing that something is “not foreseeable.” That argument will be a loser virtually every time. That said, if you want something that is impossible, me working a 40 hour work week is impossible.
May 1, 2010, 12:14 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Slacker.
Well, yes, probably. There are some things that can be logically ruled out. You can also rule out a possibility if you are afraid not to b/c you’ll be shunned if you don’t.
May 1, 2010, 12:25 amzuch says:
Sufficiently rare are to make no difference here.
What does this have to do with estimating heritability? How are environmental factors teased out and accounted for? And that’s before any other sources of bias are considered.
Given you seem to think that IQ is highly heritable and that blacks do worse, what do you suggest? Euthanasia of black children?
Cheers,
May 1, 2010, 12:50 amzuch says:
… such as the work of Cyril Burt, which was proved to be manufactured data.
Cheers,
May 1, 2010, 12:55 amPerseus says:
Exactly my point. You happen to find Eastman’s views so repugnant as to be disqualifying, and therefore Prof. Volokh has exercised poor judgment because he does not share your belief that holding those views should be disqualifying.
May 1, 2010, 1:33 amGerbilsbite says:
Here’s the thing:
Did you notice that neither of you put forth the possibility that African-Americans are genetically predisposed to be more intelligent, and that any measured results suggesting otherwise are the result of sociological, not genetic, factors? The most charitable potential outcome for a genetic comparison that either of you made was when she wrote, “I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances.”
That gives the impression that the default assumption is that there’s no way that blacks could be genetically predisposed to be more intelligent than whites. And that would be incredibly wrong.
In the grand arc of human history, given the sheer volume of technological and social advances that were first made by Africans, I think that if one took seriously the possibility that race might correlate with intelligence, one would have to presume at least a strong chance that African Americans would show a genetic predisposition to be more inventive, more predisposed to thinking in the abstract, better at solving problems, etc. than others. But that’s not even mentioned as a possibility in passing.
May 1, 2010, 1:48 amOpenVolokh says:
Yes. But it is not about just any difference in opinion that would lead me to say that someone is not only wrong, but exercising poor judgment.
May 1, 2010, 3:18 amLeo Eko says:
Prof. Volokh,
Your faith in “science” is breath-taking. Would your thinking be the same if for every reference to African Americans in the student’s e-mail we substituted Arabs or women or gays? Would you say that “One absolutely should not rule out the possibility that Arabs are, on average, genetically predisposed towards terrorism.”
By the way, the search for difference is an old intellectual exercise. To Western philosophy, difference is a pathology that can be explained away by reason and “science.” That is what is going on here.
May 1, 2010, 3:23 amreality check says:
Are you kidding me? We’re supposed to take you seriously? Nobody is advocation Euthanasia for black children. Nobody is advocating that we treat black childen any differently. What are you implying?
You’re operating under the assumption that less intelligent people are inferior to highly intelligent people… and that this superiority would call upon some to insist on less rights and mal treatment of the less intelligent.
That’s where the bigotry truly comes in here. The original emailer entertained a scientific question about a measureable factor.
Her attackers have applied the insination that less intelligence equals inferiority. Put race aside – Some people are smarter than others.
Does that mean the less intelligent among us are inferior? Does it mean they are worth less? Does it mean we should endow them with less rights? Do they command less moral respect?
Absolutely not. If blacks are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent, then how is that any different than acknowledging that Scandinavians are genetically prone to being tall… or that Ethiopians possess genes that allow them to excel at long distance running… or that Inuit are predisposed to having stronger ties to family. No variability of trait means that any one person is superior than another.
I know many people I love and care about of a very low intelligence. I would ask that you stop slandarizing them as “inferior” people.
May 1, 2010, 4:05 amBrett Bellmore says:
Even if blacks were genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than whites, (And Asians more intelligent…) the overlap between the races means that this would tell you nothing whatsoever about any particular person you encountered. I’m white, there are blacks smarter than me, Asians who are stupider. And no way to tell which you’ll encounter until you do encounter them, and judge them by criteria which have nothing to do with their race.
I assume the reason liberals go all berserk on this subject is actually because, if the races aren’t exactly equal, you can’t assume that any statistical disparity is the result of bias. And the whole race discrimination game rests on making exactly that assumption. Proving racial discrimination is just so much harder than proving a statistical discrepancy, that they don’t want to have to do it.
May 1, 2010, 7:03 amDon Miller says:
Bingo
May 1, 2010, 10:59 amThat is the dirty little secret of the bigotry game. Everything hinges on unequal results. If there are unequal results it must be because of bigotry. Anyone who suggests that there is any other possible reason is a heretic (and a closet bigot)
troll_dc2 says:
So I will do your thinking for you. When you violate a person’s privacy by putting a private communication into public circulation, you destroy the sense of trust that underlies all social connections. You create a chilling effect on stating your real thoughts for fear of the consequences. This causes you to adopt one of at least three strategies: (1) you never articulate the thought in writing or in a voicemail so that there is no physical evidence to be used against you; (2) you suppress thinking about the matter; (3) you think of future consequences and adopt the socially acceptable view at least in public.
But the thought is still there in one form or another; it never has a chance to be challenged, at the appropriate time and in an appropriate way, by anyone who could do so effectively.
Maybe I have not read enough about the controversy here on VC, but I have seen no condemnation of the person who released the e-mail. Let that be a lesson to you. You have no real friends out there; everyone ought to be treated as a potential betrayer. Say only things that you would want to read in a newspaper or online, no matter what you really believe. (I know people who write one thing in blogs and different things in private [expecting, of course, that I will respect their privacy].)
So make only socially acceptable statements in all circumstances at all times to all people.
May 1, 2010, 11:11 amDesiderius says:
A peek at life behind the Tweed Curtain.
I can tell you – the more regular folks find out what’s happening behind that curtain, the more disenchanted they’re becoming.
May 1, 2010, 11:23 amDesiderius says:
Many thanks to Professor Volokh for his ongoing courage in rectifying that state of affairs.
May 1, 2010, 11:24 amDesiderius says:
OV,
“it speaks volumes about Eugene Volokh’s judgment that he overlooks John Eastman’s repugnant views on this matter and endorses him anyway”
It speaks volumes about OV’s judgment that he underlooks EV’s unrepugnant views on a wide variety of other matters and blasts him anyway.
Here’s hoping you learn that sometimes bullying can be counterproductive in a way that doesn’t cost you your career.
May 1, 2010, 11:34 amThere’s always a bigger fish.
Ken Arromdee says:
Identical twins can’t be born with different skin color. That linked article doesn’t use the word “identical”, and for good reason.
May 1, 2010, 11:42 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
I don’t hate thinking about the answer to it. I don’t hate it at all.
Other people’s behavior may be my concern. Their thoughts and attitudes are absolutely NONE OF MY BUSINESS. Especially when those thoughts and attitudes are written, not in a newspaper article or a blog post, but in a private email to two friends. As opinionated as I am, I have never set myself up to be qualified or entitled to police other people’s thoughts for pete’s sake. I have enough on my plate, policing my own.
It used to be thought highly dishonorable to publish people’s private correspondence without their permission.
So, there is the hateful answer to your question.
May 1, 2010, 11:56 amAndrew J. Lazarus says:
And I agree with Leo. Let me point out something else: I believe that there are a lot of liberals who don’t understand science and whose attempt to drown out the topic is based on fear that the results will support the bigoted view. It’s a little like watching the large number of evangelic conservatives who don’t understand (or simply reject) science trying to drown out the DNA similarity between man and other primates, because they’re afraid of the obvious conclusion. Now, as it happens, the scientific evidence for common ancestry of man and apes is strong while the scientific evidence for race-based IQ is weak, but those are statements about reality, or a scientific evaluations, if you will.
May 1, 2010, 2:23 pmzuch says:
First off, learn to format and quote. Your post has me saying things that others, not I, said. If you’re going to quote, do so so that others are not misled.
I’ll fix it up for you (and others) this time, but please don’t do it again. You shouldn’t make me waste time cleaning up your sloppiness.
As should be apparent from the full conversation, Adam thought we ought to do something about “eliminat[ing]” the “differences” in intelligence. He also cited what he thought was evidence of high heritability. In such a case, it would seem that the way of eliminating the differences would be to ‘reduce’ the genetic variability (particularly the ‘bad’ variability). “One Master Race, One Führer” and all that, you know. Perhaps your difficulty in understanding this was your atrocious misformating. Let me know if it’s still not clear.
Where do you get that in anything I said? You’re “operating under the assumption” that I have assumptions that I don’t have. Which is a foolish thing to do.
I’ve already criticised the “science” here (and in the sister posts), in terms of defining “intelligence”, in terms of the idea of “heritability” of said “intelligence”, and in terms of what any said differences mean.
Why you call her speculations and gross simplifications/mischaracterisations “science” is beyond me. I learned more in one course from Ned Block about this stuff than she seems to know in her entirely. She needs to learn a bit more, or SHIFU. I will defend her right, Voltairesque, to say what she wants to say, while retaining (and exercising) my right to say she’s full’o'it.
I would ask that you respond to what I actually say rather than what you ignorantly or negligently thought (or hoped) I said.
Cheers,
May 1, 2010, 3:34 pmzuch says:
Particularly when the courts deny statistical evidence absent absurdly obvious discrimination ala Yick Wo, and instead require proof of actual invidious intent … unless you happen to be a white guy named Dubya.
Cheers,
May 1, 2010, 3:38 pmzuch says:
If you can show disparate treatment and disparate results, then the claim that “it was going to happen anyways because of genetics or innate capability” becomes an affirmative defence. It is the burden of those that claim disparate results are due to such solely to show that, had there been no disparate treatment, the same results would have pertained. Which … coincidentally … is what the likes of Jared Taylor, J. Phillipe Rushton, and the Pioneer Fund (and the hangers-on, like Schockley, Herrnstein, Jensen, and Murray hint at as well; their implicit claim is that had everything been perfectly equal, you’d still have differences, so why bother with the trouble and expense of trying to treat everyone equal).
Cheers,
May 1, 2010, 3:45 pmDesiderius says:
zuch,
“their implicit claim is that had everything been perfectly equal, you’d still have differences, so why bother with the trouble and expense of trying to treat everyone equal”
Or, you know, unequal. Same dif.
May 1, 2010, 3:52 pmOpenVolokh says:
(1) Regardless of Eugene Volokh’s views on other matters, he is still exercising bad judgment in endorsing John Eastman for California AG.
(2) Pointing out that someone is exercising bad judgment is not bullying.
May 1, 2010, 9:07 pmzuch says:
No.
Cheers,
May 1, 2010, 9:11 pmDesiderius says:
zuch,
“No.”
My point exactly. Their arguments are not against equal treatment, but unequal. If it’s not the same to you, why so blithely mischaracterize their arguments?
Jeers,
May 1, 2010, 11:33 pmDesiderius says:
OV,
“(2) Pointing out that someone is exercising bad judgment is not bullying.”
If you don’t intend to bully, then turn down the volume. Looks to me that, not content with marginalizing John Eastman, you’ve moved on to attempting to do the same with the creator of this site(!) Good luck with that.
May 1, 2010, 11:38 pmElliot says:
A random thought…
Various researchers are working with devices that allow mental control of computers. While they are in their infancy today, I suspect they will become quite functional. Suppose only people from population group X could operate them…
May 1, 2010, 11:42 pmOpenVolokh says:
Eugene Volokh should take responsibility for those whom he publicly endorses to participate in governing the people of the State of California. If Eugene Volokh decided to endorse David Duke for President, that would say something about his judgment. That he has decided to endorse someone who has said “two new indicia of barbarism arose during the 20th century: abortion and homosexuality” likewise says something about his judgment.
If you think that my view that people should take responsibility for whom they endorse for public office to govern other people makes me a bully, that is your prerogative. I happen to disagree.
May 2, 2010, 12:26 amReflections on the Harvard “Emailgate” controversy « Spin, strangeness, and charm says:
[...] summary: a Harvard law student sends a private Email (relevant passages reproduced here) in which she basically says she is “not 100% sure” that the intellectual achievement [...]
May 2, 2010, 12:31 amM Schwartz says:
***One should not rule out possibilities in the absence of conclusive evidence, for the simple reason that one then has no factual basis to rule out those possibilities.***
Indeed, as Steve Hsu notes:
“There is no strong evidence yet for specific gene variants (alleles) that lead to group differences (differences between clusters) in behavior or intelligence, but progress on the genomic side of this question will be rapid in coming years, as the price to sequence a genome is dropping at an exponential rate.
What seems to be true (from preliminary studies) is that the gene variants that were under strong selection (reached fixation) over the last 10k years are different in different clusters. That is, the way that modern people in each cluster differ, due to natural selection, from their own ancestors 10k years ago is not the same in each cluster — we have been, at least at the genetic level, experiencing divergent evolution.
In fact, recent research suggests that 7% or more of all our genes are mutant versions that replaced earlier variants through natural selection over the last tens of thousands of years. There was little gene flow between continental clusters (“races”) during that period, so there is circumstantial evidence for group differences beyond the already established ones (superficial appearance, disease resistance).”
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis-for-race.html
May 2, 2010, 3:53 amclarice says:
I agree that she was simply stating the truth about the possibilities and the issue has become ridiculously overblown. I also agree with Ann Althouse–why is this an issue for the Dean?
We may never know the answer to any degree of scientific certainty. Beyond the limitations you note, there’s this:What kind of draconian horror would you imagine in a scientific test to ascertain if the measurable differences were due to nurture or nature?
May 2, 2010, 10:35 amJimboster says:
Harvard President Martha Minnow called the incident “sad and unfortunate’’ but said she was heartened by the student’s apology. She added: “We seek to encourage freedom of expression, but freedom of speech should be accompanied by responsibility.’’
Gee, if Copernicus had attended Harvard, he wouldn’t have been allowed to posit, even in a private conversation, the possibility the Earth revolved around the Sun.
May 2, 2010, 12:51 pmDHaze says:
Oh my. Such intellectualism. Doesn’t anyone believe that intelligence is just another word for survival skills? One day when the next really big asteroid slams into the northeast coast of the US — we’ll all be defining intelligence differently and these pointy headed arguments will be reduced to their proper perspective. Different groups of humans with related DNA evolved largely in response to their environment — as those less capable of surviving did not. The last thousand years may not look like the next thousand. “IQ” is merely what we look to as some sort of proof of fuctional superiority at this moment in time.
And identifying groups of people by the most visible trait — skin color — is absurd. For all we know it may be the size of one’s ring finger that actually indicates “intelligence” — or some other totally unnoticed trait.
May 2, 2010, 1:44 pmJimboster says:
You could be right. Finger size, or the angle of one’s big toe could be the trait that determines intelligence. Sadly, though, if we live in a society where anyone who challenges the accepted dogma is condemned and ostracized, I guess we’ll never know.
May 2, 2010, 1:56 pmxigxag says:
Identical twins can be born with different skin color? Is your source supposed to support that assertion. The Richardson twins were certainly not identical. Obviously not.
May 2, 2010, 2:09 pmmak says:
Can I make the simple suggestion (without being called a racist) that intelligence is not measured ONLY by standardized IQ tests? To deny that blacks don’t perform as well on such tests is merely ignorant. To suggest that those tests are the only measure of intelligence is likewise ignorant. There are cultural intelligences that revolve around performance, common sense, and values. A classic example would be high school educated Christian evangelicals who nonetheless construct more functional lifestyles than better educated but dysfunctional urbanites because their value systems are a form of cultural intelligence which produce good decisions of economy (saving, prudent spending, staying married, etc.), of morality (not doing drugs, drinking, engagin in risky behavior, etc.), and of social behavior (charitable giving is highest among this group because it’s a value not a metric of intelligence). Consequently, if you look at black performance in the arts, sports, and public speaking, you are seeing a kind of intelligence at work that is superior. I’m not an expert but it is worth considering as a hypothesis.
May 2, 2010, 2:15 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
No. If it were, then cockroaches as a species would be more intelligent than homo sapiens; insects generally would be more intelligent than primates. The former may do something better than the latter, but it’s not “intelligence”; as with Howard Gardner’s shtick, that’s just trying to repurpose a word because you want to draw different conclusions.
May 2, 2010, 2:37 pmLumbago says:
I preface my comments by saying that the smartest person I have ever known — and I’ve known professors and PhDs and geniuses of all sorts — was a black man who was once a colleague of mine. He spoke 8 languages fluently, was an expert in an esoteric advanced form of mathematics, endlessly pondered philosophical paradoxes, etc. I also grew up in a mostly black neighborhood and had almost exclusively black friends as a child; and my sister married a black man so I have mixed-race nephews and nieces and black in-laws whom I love dearly.
I say all this only to defuse any assumptions that I am a racist; in fact, I am not racist in any way, and never have been, and I have never acted ill toward black people due to race. I also understand fully that when we speak of group tendencies we are speaking of averages, not about individuals.
That said:
It is pretty much beyond scientific dispute that people of African descent are on average of lower intelligence; and that intelligence, like just about every other human characteristic, is substantially genetically determined.
First of all, look at the IQ averages for each nation in the world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#National_IQ_estimates
Those who haven’t seen such overviews before may likely be shocked: While the top 5 nations are all in Asia, with average IQs in the 103-107 range, the bottom 16 nations are all in Africa and/or have populations that are 90+% of African heritage. And their average IQs are breathtakingly low:
Nation – Average IQ
Congo 73
Uganda 73
Jamaica 72
Kenya 72
South Africa 72
Sudan 72
Tanzania 72
Ghana 71
Nigeria 67
Guinea 66
Zimbabwe 66
Democratic Republic of the Congo 65
Sierra Leone 64
Ethiopia 63
Equatorial Guinea 59
The PC argument to explain away these results is that national IQ is dependent on national average income; i.e. the poorer you are, the lower your average IQ. Thus, these nations have low IQ not because they’re black, but because they’re poor.
But it’s much more sensible to reverse the point of view: These nations are poor because these nations have low IQs, and they have low IQs because they are black.
Also keep in mind that in the New World, especially places like the US, Brazil and Cuba, people socially identified as “black” are mostly actually mixed race. The average person of unmixed European heritage has a 100 IQ; the average person of unmixed African heritage has an average IQ of 70 (as the chart above shows); but the average IQ of “black” people in New World nations like the US, Brazil and Cuba is 85, because most of them are half-white and half-black. (Studies have shown that nearly 75% of “African-Americans” have at least some white ancestry.)
Again, this very strongly suggests that intelligence is inherited, and on average racially determined.
It would make absolutely no sense for every sort of physical characteristic in humans and other species to be of a genetic origin, except intellectual capacity. We’re twisting ourselves into knots here to avoid saying or thinking something un-PC, but we end up thinking unscientifically.
On a physical level:
Forensic crime scene anthropologists are often tasked with the job of trying to identify the skeletons of murder victims long buried or long decomposed. Often, they can say with a fair degree of confidence the age, gender and race of the person. How can they determine that? Well, age is easy enough, due to bone growth patterns; the pelvis will usually tell you the gender; and race can be determined through cranial capacity. This aspect of forensics is rarely mentioned in polite company, but if a skull has a measurably smaller-than-average brain case, it it almost certainly someone of African descent.
All of this evidence is in addition to the numerous twin studies, etc., mentioned by earlier commenters, which confirm the very solid hypothesis that blacks on average have lower intellectual capacity.
A study done over a century ago in Virginia is to me the most convincing evidence of all:
Researchers tested hundreds of “colored people” in Virginia sometime around the turn of the last century; these people both self-identified as black and were deemed by society at large to be black. The average score was around an IQ of 85. But then the researchers did something interesting. Without revealing any test results, they interviewed each subject and traced their genealogy as best as they could. And they discovered, naturally, that some of the “colored” people in Virginia were 100% black, some were mostly black with a few white people in the family tree, some were about equally mixed, and some were mostly white genetically but “looked” black.
With this data in hand, they charted the relationship between people’s genetic racial makeup and their IQ scores. They discovered that the “whiter” the subjects’ ancestries were, the higher their average IQ scores; and the “blacker” their ancestries, the lower the average IQs. Thus, those who were all-African in their heritage had average IQs closer to 70; and those who were actually more than half-European in their heritage had average IQs closer to 100; and every gradation in between, with level of European heritage closely correlating with IQ level.
But here’s the key: All these people self-identified as black; all were deemed by society to be black; all lived in black communities; all had to endure the same race-based laws and indignities; all had essentially the same income level; all were part of black culture; and so on. In other words, all the test subjects had essentially the same social and cultural conditions; the only thing that differentiated them was their hidden genetic makeup. And so this study ended up being an important nearly “double-blind” example of controlling all other factors except for race. And it proved almost conclusively that the only possible explanation for the IQ difference was people’s racial ancestry.
(Yes, one could twist and twist and try to find some explanation; such as the possibility that the partly-white “coloreds” had slightly lighter skin and thus had higher self-esteem and thus studied harder; or that being slightly lighter-skinned led to less discrimination, and thus better attitude about self-improvement; or whatever; But these attempts are just stretching the bounds of believability; and Occam’s Razor tells us the simplest and most obvious explanation is mostly likely the best one: That race determines IQ level. On average.)
This fact doesn’t make me happy (nor sad); it just is. And acceptance of this fact does not in any way justify racist laws or racist attitudes or racist feelings or racist interpersonal relations. Each individual one meets could be smart or dumb regardless of the “averages,” and one should treat each person based on that person’s attributes, not the presumed attributes of their presumed racial group. It’s entirely possible to have an equitable and fair and mutually loving society while accepting the reality of the racial component of intelligence.
May 2, 2010, 2:52 pmThe Monster says:
Well, the email says nothing about the skin color causing the discrepancy. Let’s try to take this out of race for a bit.
Let us suppose that a certain auto manufacturer (let’s call it “Yatoyo Motor Company”) decided to make more blue cars than other auto manufacturers, and that the same manufacturer turned out to have a problem with its floor mats catching on accelerator pedals, leading to sudden acceleration. If we collected statistics on cars, we would find that blue cars have a higher incidence of sudden acceleration events.
There is no evidence that the sudden acceleration was “due to car color”, but it remains a statistical fact that the distribution of the floor mats is not even across all paint colors.
If someone concluded from this that a blue car is inherently more dangerous than a red car, he would be guilty of colorism. But if bad publicity for Yatoyo vehicles caused a drop in sales, and more blue cars to sit unsold on dealer’s lots, it would be ridiculous to assume that this disparate impact were due to some de facto colorism. And yet, the real-world analogue of this second attitude is somehow the accepted position.
Anyone who doesn’t hire all racial groups equally is considered de facto racist, except in the case of athletics, where we all know that the superiority of sprinters of West African extraction is largely genetic, so sports that place a premium on 100m-or-less speed will necessarily tend to be numerically dominated by people of that heritage.
Noting that different ethnic groups have uneven distribution of various traits is not racist at all. Assuming that, say, a particular Ashkenazi Jew must be smarter than a particular Sub-Saharan African because of statistical differences between those groups is indeed racist, and stupid as well. There is more deviation within each of these groups than between them.
May 2, 2010, 3:37 pmHoward Veit says:
I have coached and played football at a relatively high level and in all cases I’ve been surrounded by what most would call ******blacks (the **** marks are nasty synonyms for stupid). Yet I am always amazed that these so called ****** blacks, no matter how bad their grades, can learn the most complicated of playbooks. This is a daunting task because some these diagrammed playbooks are several hundred pages long. Yet after learning these mazes of blocking assignments, running lanes, and so on these guys will go out and commit deeds of violence, drugs, or robbery that are stupid in the extreme. I don’t get it and I never have. I am open to the possibility that blacks are wired differently than other racial groups and that they can learn from visual depictions (drawings, sketches on paper, and perhaps film) just as well as anyone anywhere. But the fact remains when you look at evidence there is no question that Blacks are responsible for most of the violent crime in this country. The one constant that I note in all so-called thought on this subject is the factor of fathers being absent. I don’t think there is a black I’ve ever known who was prone to deviant behavior who had male parents in the home. I’d like to see a study where the presence or absense of a father in the home is linked to deviant behavior, refusal to learn (do homework etc.), or violence (especially against women).
May 2, 2010, 3:38 pmBill Reeves says:
Interesting, no one thinks it beyond the pale to assert that ‘White’ people are more racist. Indeed major institutions assume it. Likewise Harvard demands (against overwhelming evidence and common sense) that there be no cognitive differences between Men and Women. And when a student writes a rather unremarkable email discussing sensitive but real issues Harvard loses control of its bladder.
The level of intellectual honesty and rigor at the place reminds me of a Mideval Oxford, not a 21st century American University. Seth Godin had a perceptive post about the coming collapse of the elite American University. Certainly bigoted hysteria such as that which Harvard regularly indulges indicates that future is looming ever faster.
And as far as I’m concerned it can’t happen to Harvard soon enough.
May 2, 2010, 4:25 pmzuch says:
Funny. I didn’t notice them suggesting that we take the appropriate number of blacks and raise them in a million dollar McMansion, with the best private schools, and all the other opportunities and advantages of the entrenched rich white ruling class….
I think their point was that we oughtn’t strive for (actual) “equality of opportunity”, because innate differences in ability would produce (much) the same result (and implicitly that the present distribution of material emoluments, etc., is “just” as simply a reflection of “meritocracy”). In fact, this is pretty much the entire gist of Herrnstein’s work.
Cheers,
May 2, 2010, 4:32 pmzuch says:
Hows about the horror of an “F” on your psychometrics/social psychology exam? You know, like not understanding the basic concept of heritability….
Cheers,
May 2, 2010, 4:36 pmclarice says:
zuch, Explain to me how you could discount nurture without setting up a control group which received bad parenting?
Someone up thread said there may be different sorts of intelligence. True enough. But as I understand it the thrust in American education–against all odds–is equal results and you cannot get that with unequal gifts. No one is demanding that whites be starters in the NBA in the same proportion in which they exist in the population at large, yet the demand is that schools producing engineers, doctors, lawyers and those who hire these professionals, admit and businesses later hire in the same proportion even though the candidates for admission and hire do not exhibit the same talents in any measurable way.
May 2, 2010, 4:55 pmzuch says:
What a pile’o'crapola. Even ignoring whether intelligence tests measure something like “IQ” or some general Spearman’s “g’, or actually measure “intelligence”, there is no standardized test of “IQ” measured across countries, language, and cultures.
One example, the highly rated WAIS-R (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised) — which is not designed or intended to measure small group differences, but rather as one of a number of diagnostic clinical tools for psychologists to evaluate their patients — asks “what is the colour of the American flag?” Go look up “cultural loading” for just a brief introduction to some of the issues here.
Then there’s the flaws in this supposed “data” [some manufactured out of thin air] (discussed at length here, with my comments here, here and elsewhere; read the whole thread).
Cheers,
May 2, 2010, 4:55 pmzuch says:
The cranial capacity/”intelligence” crapola was debunked a century ago. Get with the times, willya?
Cheers,
May 2, 2010, 4:58 pmclarice says:
I didn’t cite the data and cannot account for its soundness but I keep hearing about “cultural loading” of things like the standard IQ and SAT tests and I have to ask, since whites largely design these tests, why haven’t they culturally loaded them to keep Asians from getting the highest scores?
May 2, 2010, 4:59 pmzuch says:
I never said any such thing. What I said (here and eslewhere, a couple of times) was that heritability is a number valid only for a specific environment, and when you change the environment, the heritability may well change (in fact, if you put all samples in an absolutely uniform environment, you find that heritability is 100% or NAN for all traits studied). Conversely, heritability also depends on the genetic variation: If you start with a homogenous genetic sample, you find that heritability is essentially 0% for all traits.
When we talk about the desirability of changes in policy (and thus changes in environment [or perhaps even genetics]), we need to understand that heritability will be different.
Talking about heritability as some fixed number reflects a profound lack of understanding, and usually means that the person that asserts such needs to learn a bit more before their comments or opinions should be given much weight.
Cheers,
May 2, 2010, 5:09 pmzuch says:
Just as an illustrative example, yes you can get equal results: Just kill all the sample subjects and you will find they all have a uniform “intelligence” of 0. There are of course less drastic manipulations that can also influence the outcomes.
Cheers,
May 2, 2010, 5:12 pmzuch says:
How do you know they didn’t?
But do you think that the question: “what color is the American flag?” might have some component of cultural loading? FWIW, my answer was “which ‘American flag’?”….
Cheers,
May 2, 2010, 5:15 pmclarice says:
My question about nurture is in response to this remark by you:
If you are trying to determine whether the difference is due to IQ heritability or nurture, you also have to test nurture and for that you need to place some children in a bad nurturing environment on purpose. It was that I described as a “draconian” possibility, one no responsible person would suggest or participate in.
May 2, 2010, 5:17 pmclarice says:
zuch asks “How do you know they didn’t?” because on all these tests, Asians come out on top.
May 2, 2010, 5:19 pminspectorudy says:
I believe that many sincere people have doubts about many things concerning race as well as science in general. After the AGW, hoax who can be blamed for doubting the voice of academia?
May 2, 2010, 5:28 pmSome of you here act as if she is guilty of calling blacks stupid. She said no such thing. Why the thin skin? Why is it ok to say that blacks are better athleticly but not ok to express an opinion about intellect? There was a study done years ago by a South African who opined that for thousands of years Africans lived in warm lush habitats that provided food and water without much effort or thought. Their counterparts and probably cousins, in the winter climes had it much harder. They had to think ahead and prepare for winter and gather food for the long cold days ahead. They had to hunt in packs and learn to trap and heard their prey so as to be killable. They had to create clothing and and learn to use the entirety of their kills. The final example he gave in his book was the success of ANY African nation. There aren’t any if you only consider the ones that were truly founded by and for blacks. Some will jump on these words as hateful and mean but may I suggest that instead you ponder them and come up with more questions.
clarice says:
I’m afraid, zuch,I believe your definition of “heritability” is pure sophistry. If IQ is heritable, it is like eye color, fixed despite the environment.If it is not fixed, but subject to the environment, why do Asians here and abroad, rich and poor, from very sophisticated and very primitive surroundings GENERALLY, test higher than all other people in the world? It may be a cultural high regard for hard work and educational achievement.
If it is environmental, it might explain why Blacks from the Caribbean and Africa who have had traditional english educations score better and are admitted in greater numbers to the Ivy League than those educated in American urban schools.
But the only way to know for sure, would be to raise different children DELIBERATELY in environments full of intellectual stimulation and under circumstances where high achievement in school is more highly valued .
May 2, 2010, 5:34 pmclarice says:
Oh, and put another group of children DELIBERATELY in a very unstimulating environment where educational achievement was not highly regarded. It’s the latter no rational person could agree to do.
May 2, 2010, 5:40 pmLumbago says:
zuch says:
Talk about a “pile’o’crapola.” That argument against IQ tests is antiquated. Modern (i.e. last 50 years) IQ tests have been excruciatingly carefully designed to be as culturally neutral as possible. No contemporary IQ tests ask “What is the colour of the American flag?” or anything even remotely similar to that which relies on education or cultural context. The whole point behind IQ tests is that they measure intellectual capacity, not the amount of culture-specific facts one has memorized. Some intelligence tests used in other countries no longer even use words or language, but are picture- and symbol-based. Your dismissal of IQ tests based on a point of contention that has not been valid for decades shows you have no real basis on which to challenge them.
Using your faulty argument, two black professors in the 1980s wished to prove that IQ tests were themselves biased toward “white knowledge” by creating a “Black IQ Test” which wasn’t even a valid IQ test but which mostly tested one’s knowledge of African-American cultural customs and language styles. Then, in what was supposed to be a triumphant “proof”" of how IQ tests were inherently biased, they gave the test to hundreds of collage students, half of whom were white and half of whom were black, in order to get the presumed results that the black students would score much higher, thus proving that white-people’s IQ tests only measured white cultural knowledge, and that if the tables were turned, it would be black people scoring higher on “Black IQ Tests.”
Well, by now you’ve probably guessed what happened: The white students on average far outscored the black students, even on the “Black IQ Test” that was specifically designed to penalize white students.
So these two professors accidentally ended up proving the EXACT OPPOSITE of what they had presumptively set out to prove. Needless to say, they tried to bury the results, but it was published way back when and promptly swept under the rug.
If, as you claim, modern IQ tests are biased against blacks, then it should be possible to devise a test that was either designed to be unbiased, or designed to be biased in favor of blacks. And since the vast majority of the academic community is desperate to prove that blacks have on average equal intelligence to other races, you’d think such tests would have been devised over and over again.
In other words: What those two professors attempted to do should now be possible, if done by people more adept at test designing.
So: Where are these tests? Where are these results?
Show me.
Show me a single standardized IQ test or test result in which blacks score as well as whites or Asians.
You can’t, because there are none.
And if that’s the case, then why is it that NO ONE in PC-saturated academia, after having control of the reins of education and testing for 40 years at least, has been able to devise some magically “unbiased” test which evens out the scores?
Why not? Because it’s not possible. Because the test results are due to the IQs of the test-takers, not due to the bias of the tests.
You’re going to have to search elsewhere to explain the “Why?” of why blacks score lower on IQ tests. It’s not socioeconomic: poor whites outscore poor blacks, and rich whites outscore rich blacks. It’s not tester bias: These days, the testers are all DESPERATE for blacks to do well. In fact every variable has been one by one eliminated, and only one remains, the obvious one everyone assumed at the very beginning: Blacks on average are of lower intelligence, and it is due to genetics.
May 2, 2010, 5:48 pmMark Field says:
You’re wrong about this.
May 2, 2010, 8:02 pmOpenVolokh says:
Individual insects are not able to survive better than individuals of other sorts. I don’t know how many insects I have killed, but the number must be in the tens of thousands at least.
Not that I would define intelligence purely in terms of survivability either. But I think this is ridiculous.
May 2, 2010, 8:16 pmBiorealist says:
***zuch says:
The cranial capacity/“intelligence” was debunked a century ago. Get with the times, willya?***
Zuch,
How familiar are you with modern neuroscience? See the paper ‘Neurobiology of Intelligence’ by UCLA neuroscientist Paul Thompson & Yale’s Jeremy Gray.
“MRI-based studies estimate a moderate correlation between brain
size and intelligence of 0.40 to 0.51 (REF. 28; see REF. 29
on interpreting this correlation, and REF. 30 for a
meta-analysis).”
http://www.yale.edu/scan/GT_2004_NRN.pdf –
(2009). Whole-brain size and general mental ability: A review. International Journal of Neuroscience, 119, 691-731.
http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/2009%20IJN.pdf
May 2, 2010, 8:42 pmElliot says:
How does one design a math test to favor one population group over another? What question would favor Europeans? What question would favor Asians? What question would favor Africans?
May 2, 2010, 9:09 pmclarice says:
Mark Field–I stand by my statement. Interestingly, studies indicate the most accurate measurements of IQ are not to be found in infant, but older children indicating the number rises with age as the genetic inheritance expresses itself more fully.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
May 2, 2010, 9:36 pmEstimates in the academic research of the heritability of IQ have varied from below 0.5[3] to a high of 0.9.[6] A general range of 0.4 to 0.8 was given by the “Mainstream Science on Intelligence”, a 1994 declaration of 52 scientists in the field.[7] A 1996 statement by the American Psychological Association gave about .45 for children and about .75 during and after adolescence.[8] A 2004 meta-analysis of reports in Current Directions in Psychological Science gave an overall estimate of around .85 for 18-year-olds and older.[9] The New York Times Magazine has listed about three quarters as a figure held by the majority of studies.[10]
Mark Field says:
You can stand by it all you want. That won’t affect the truth of what you said.
May 2, 2010, 10:13 pmElliot says:
Suppose we did have scientific demonstration that IQ was a function of genetics, and varied from one population group to another. For those who can deal with this hypothetical, how would that effect social policy?
May 2, 2010, 10:54 pmDantes says:
The episode is a gross overreaction to what was a private email, which was essentially written to carry on a private conversation.
Now, the real issue…I am frankly appalled at all of the people who wrote that this student’s career should be over because of this email…shades of Fahrenheit 451.
May 2, 2010, 11:28 pmMJ says:
Suppose we did have scientific demonstration that IQ was a function of genetics, and varied from one population group to another. For those who can deal with this hypothetical, how would that effect social policy?
1) End mass third world immigration
May 3, 2010, 12:10 am2) End affirmative action
3) End aid to Africa, or at least send it out with less ambition
4) Recognize this “diversity” scam for the anti-white bigotry and lowering of standards that it is
5) Encourage the more intelligent to have more children
clarice says:
Yes, it is,Dante. and this statement by Mark Fields (besides being incomprehensible) reflects the desire by too many to foreclose reasonable debate on unsettled matters.
Research on this topic is demonized and ,as I noted, would be ethically impossible to do properly because of the “nurture” component.
OTOH,Elliott also has a point. Since we are talking about groups within which there are such variations and we cannot know simply by appearance or family history where on the spectrum any given individual is, it is a bit difficult to ascertain what the impact of this is on social policy.Perhaps it would put paid to the noxious notion that we should expect equal outcomes, but I don’t see where else this leads us.
May 3, 2010, 12:12 amzuch says:
Probably have more published papers in neuroscience than you.
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 12:32 amzuch says:
You do understand that they said “correlation”, right?
There is a lot to read there, including an explanation of heritability that all of you folks ought to peruse, seeing as they explain what I’ve been saying in these threads about this as well.
Ahhh, yes. the tiny-pricked J. Phillipe Rushton, of the racist Pioneer Fund.
I’ve been watching his ilk since before you learned to read, I’ll bet.
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 12:47 amzuch says:
You’re missing my point. Heritability is not some fixed value. In fact, it is dependent on on the environment, and once you change that, talking about the same heritability is just an error.
But FWIW, we don’t need to produce “bad nurturing environments”; society and gummints do a pretty good job of that. That’s also the point. If you agree that bad environments are bad for children, maybe we ought to do something about it?
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 12:53 amzuch says:
Why does that mean that they didn’t? Are you assuming that people would purposefully construct tests that favoured their own (presumed) ethnic group? Why?
And you didn’t answer my question about the “American flag” question. Do you really think such a question is equally difficult for people from all countries and cultures?
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 12:56 amzuch says:
I’m afraid your understanding of heritability is deficient. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.
This demonstrates my conclusion. You just don’t understand the scientific concept of “heritability”. Please do some more reading on this.
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 12:59 amzuch says:
This was the WAIS-R circa 1995. Pretty recent. I know this for a fact; I took it (my psychology doctoral housemate at the time needed to practise administering tests, and I was a ready guinea pig). It also had lots of math questions; think there might be some cultural loading there? Think an uneducated goatherder in Mongolia would have as much arithmetic and algebra as, say, someone like me? If not, then how does the WAIS-R measure “innate intellligence” rather than a number of things such as achievement, education, and perhaps some grab-bag of innate abiltities?
I note further that the WAIS-R gives somewhere around five different scores in various areas (it is a diagnostic test, afterall). If there’s a Spearman’s “g”, then why not one? If there is no one “g” score, that talking about group differences n this is meaningless, much less the heritability of such in various different environments.
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 1:07 amzuch says:
You misspelled “legend”.
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 1:09 amzuch says:
You don’t have to. Make it a math test, and it will pretty much invariably “favor” groups who have had better math education. That should be obvious.
And it brings up the point: The tests don’t have to be intentionally created with cultural loading and bias to have such. Such bias is pretty much inevitable in any test of finite extent that you can construct.
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 1:14 amzuch says:
Stop before you really embarrass yourself.
How would you know the measurement is “more accurate”? Compared to what?
And if it “rises with age”, why would you think that this is due to “genetic inheritance”? Think about this (alleged) phenomenon for a second, and see your ‘explanation’ really makes sense, much less is the best explanation.
Really. Just stop.
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 1:18 amzuch says:
I think I’d said in a previous comment that this was precisely the impetus behind the ‘research’. Well, that, and also self-serving ‘consolation’ by some ‘researchers’ for their own tiny penises. Shrek said it best: “You think that maybe he’s compensating for something?”
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 1:29 amIntellectuallyhonest says:
I’m black, and I do not believe that a genetic basis for racial differences in intelligence can be ruled out either a priori or by the evidence that currently exists. I don’t think either claim should be controversial, especially the first. Note, however, that that point goes both ways: it can’t be ruled out that blacks are genetically inferior to whites in intelligence and it can’t be ruled out that whites are genetically inferior to blacks in intelligence. (If you think the former is true, but not the latter, you are either deeply confused or ignorant of the evidence. Certainly, current and past white advantage in intelligence does not show that whites are not genetically inferior in intelligence to blacks.) Now I do believe the evidence favors the view that in identical environments racial differences would disappear. But this evidence is admittedly not conclusive. Anybody who is informed and honest should admit that.
All of that said, I don’t think this issue should be treated like any other scientific matter. In my view the open discussion of this would undoubtedly be harmful to blacks, and it shouldn’t be hard to see why (I’m thinking of Steele’s work on the stereotype threat, among other things). And indeed I think acting (individually or as a society) in any other manner than that the races are equal genetically in intelligence is seriously problematic.
May 3, 2010, 4:36 amUCLA Law Student says:
for all your talk about inquiring into scientific facts, you provide none. you want to disguise grace’s racist rhetoric (which you probably share given your capacity as legal advisor for Proposition 209) as scientific inquiry, when the reality is you are pontificating and throwing around racist assertions as if they are plausible with NO EVIDENCE, meaning NO SCIENTIFIC FACTS, to support such a claim.
since there is no scientific basis for your/grace’s claim or her inquiry, the issue is really a political one. similarly, the backlash against grace is not about “science” it is about her politics emanating from a racist vantage point.
your ability to disguise racism as logical and scientific inquiry is quite clever. i can see why people think you are intelligent. however, there are many others who know better and see through this colorblind racist rhetoric.
May 3, 2010, 6:07 ampazzah says:
There are some telltale passage in the original email:
She didn’t say “as intelligent, or more intelligent” – which would indicate a two-tailed approach. And that indicates she had already formed a conclusion before asking the question.
In the middle of discussing a sensitive topic, this just sounds narcissistic, and again assumes the inferiority of a childhood in Nigeria. The narcissism somehow makes the whole email particularly distasteful. She seems to be comparing herself as a paragon of beauty and intelligence, presumably against people of African heritage.
So yes, it’s a distasteful email, because it approaches an extremely sensitive topic without any of the care or caveats required to address something like this.
With that said, the Harvard response has been genuinely chilling towards speech and inquiry. The charge of racism is such a potent one that people should not apply it lightly.
May 3, 2010, 7:17 amIfNotGoodBeer,Rainier says:
For American social-democrats this topic is like erectile dysfunction; it will only be acceptable to talk about when there’s an effective treatment. This doesn’t seem to be the case with the foreign s-d.
Of the 100-meter sprinters to beat 10 seconds, 68 of 70 are of West African descent. Must be something in the water… oh, wait!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-second_barrier
May 3, 2010, 8:26 amclarice says:
zuch, I’m not going into all this today again but I want to address these issues:
(1) Inherited characteristics which are not fully expressed at birth. You took issue with those researchers who found that IQ appears not to be fully expressed until people are about 18. Of course, this complicates the nature/nurture debate, but there are inherited traits like this. For example, while many babies are born with blue eyes those eye colors change with age.
(2) You suggest we have enough examples of bad nurturing and we should do something about that.
May 3, 2010, 9:44 am(a) Those examples are not set up scientifically and we have incomplete powers of observation to test that. As I have noted, to test this issue scientifically would be immoral.
(b) We live in a liberal democracy in which parents have considerable power (and responsibility) for their childrens’ upbringing. I doubt there is much more we can do than we already do.
Libertad de expresión y cultura universitaria | Blog jurídico | No se trata de hacer leer says:
[...] sobre el particular en varias partes defendiendo, a mi juicio acertadamente, a la alumna (I, II, III, IV) y da cuenta de un e-mail enviado por un alumno de Harvard donde éste aporta su [...]
May 3, 2010, 10:52 amzuch says:
SFW? I take issue with even the concept of “IQ” (Spearman’s “g”). If “IQ” is measuring things like arithmetic ability (which one section of the WAIS-R obviously does), it ought to be obvious to even the most pedestrian observer that newborns are not going to do very well on such (their ‘genetic potential’ for arithmetic is obviously not expressed … to choose your interpretation, but my interpretation that they haven’t been to freakin’ elementary school where they teach that stuff is dismissed). For this reason, children’s IQ tests (such as the WISC) are not the same as adult IQ tests. You know … like testing different things!!!. Why would they test different things? And if we’re testing “innate” intelligence, we’re obviously testing the wrong thing(s), because the freakin’ genetic complement is (essentially) unchanged throughout life.
I’m not suggesting we test it. I’m suggesting we freakin’ fix it. Whereas, the proponents of innate differences in intelligence (such as Herrnstein, Jensen, Murray, Lynn, Rushton, and the rest of that parcel’o'rogues) are saying (wrongly) “we have the science to know it’s futile; why bother?” As did one accommodating commenter above as well.
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 11:45 amclarice says:
I’m not suggesting we test infants on arithmetic . Certainly the tests used are scientifically determined to track standard abilities at age appropriate levels.
We can’t fix what isn’t fixable and we can’t know what portion of nurture can be involved in the “fix” until we can devise a moral means to test for that.
May 3, 2010, 11:50 amElliot says:
Can you provide an example of a question that is biased against some given population group? What population group?
May 3, 2010, 12:08 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
I guess you’ve heard the adage about pounding the table when you don’t have the facts or law on your side. What “claim” or “racist assertions” do you think he made that requires “scientific facts”?
It’s pretty astounding to treat support for an anti-discrimination statute as a sign of racism, though.
May 3, 2010, 1:04 pmMark Field says:
You took my statement out of context and misinterpreted it.
May 3, 2010, 1:06 pmjack says:
Curious. Why isn’t anyone wondering about the conversation this e-mail was written to clarify a point from?
The writer is clearly trying to say something objectionable–something she feels, in her gut(despite the fact that she believes it), is the wrong thing to say–as inoffensively as she can.
And she is aware that it’s being sent to people who aren’t wholly trustworthy(the Summers comment).
And yet she sends it. Why?
It’s clear that she, like so many others, feels that blacks are lacking something in cogitation. It’s clear that she knows that feeling this way is wrong(as do so many others). And it’s clear that she’d like an answer to this question, perhaps even a way to rectify it.
That brings me, oddly enough to ‘zuch’.
This is simply an amazing troll. There is just enough content in it’s posts to make one want to respond. The wording seems to hold intelligence and point. And then, when one is getting fired up to respond, it just slips into classic trollery.
Take my ‘rectify’ comment. Another poster suggested that looking into the question might allow us to do something to eliminate the problem. At no point did that poster offer any violence towards blacks–yet ‘zuch’, seeing the word ‘eliminate’, was able to use a sentence in which it suggests that the initial poster might have been suggesting the euthanising of black infants/children.
An amazingly deft twist–one that allows the basest accusation on the flimsiest of grounds.
Truly, an excellent troll.
I must confess, I used ‘rectify’ in the hopes of drawing it out.
May 3, 2010, 1:07 pmclarice says:
Troll? Or standard issue humanities major?
May 3, 2010, 1:17 pmTed says:
Since the question contemplates a singular “color,” I assume the correct answer is “blighted?” The test writer must not have been culturally familiar with our flag, which has three colors, not one.
But how much on top? Maybe Asians posted a 7% increase over whites, but, had the test been fair, would have posted a 250% increase?
WTF? Let’s see if I can reduce what you said here. IQ tests are not memory or cultural tests. Some claim that IQ tests, while not overtly cultural, may be influenced by cultural biases. To disprove this theory, two “scientists” devise a test that “tested one’s knowledge of African-American cultural customs and language styles.” That is, they devised a memory and cultural test or a “non-IQ” test. White students did better on this non-IQ test. This “proves” that IQ tests are not biased. Did I get that right?
BTW, I read your really long post above. I was going to suggest that having mixed racial genealogy is itself an environmental variable, as “white” customs, knowledge and tradition will be passed along to children, not just genes. However, since you so skillfully foreclosed all counter-arguments in advance, I guess I must be wrong. Next time, just write something along the lines of “I’m racist and black people are stupid.” It’ll save everyone time.
I f***ing love this blog.
Well, it probably would have a just and good effect if people accepted it rationally. Perhaps more resources would be put into educating or helping certain races succeed. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t have this effect. More likely, it would justify racist fears and result in harmful policy changes. For instance, finding out that Hispanics have lower IQ on average would justify a racist’s belief that Hispanics are inferior. That racist belief could cause a lax view of equality. If this lax view of equality were held by a few politicians in a South Western state, it might have a law requiring Hispanics to show ID upon reasonable suspicion of having a low IQ. of course such a law would be stupid and irrational, but it would pass muster and being signed by the governor because Hispanics are, after all, inferior. This is not rational, but it is likely.
Have you ever seriously wondered what kind of rationalization the Nazi’s must have used to carry out their business. I mean, a large number of otherwise reasonable and loving people decided it was a good idea to exterminate a particular “race” because of their perceived inferiority. Maybe we’re more reasonable now, and don’t need worry about such mass rationalization. But I doubt it, since a good portion of america still exhibits willful irrationality every Sunday.
May 3, 2010, 1:21 pmElliot says:
Equality of what?
May 3, 2010, 1:44 pmTed says:
Equality of treatment and opportunity, and not in the egalitarian sense. The IQ disparity will be used to justify the disparity of results but probably not be used to justify a solution to the disparity. Such as, “Oh, it’s ok that there is an unrepresentative number of black CEO’s because, well, on average they have lower IQ’s, but we won’t bother to fix that — or even try — because they are inferior.”
May 3, 2010, 2:04 pmclarice says:
So, it’s MORE equal to have blacks in high cognitive positions even if their IQs and standard test scores are under those for other races among applicants for those positions? (Not general, mind you–specific persons in a given pool.)
I think SCOTUS just said no to that notion.
I do not understand the attacks on the student who wrote the email. On one hand the AG says we are cowards for being afraid to honestly discuss race, and on the other hand we see what HLS and the media have done to a person who has in every way possible expresses her desire for an honest, fact based discussion of race.
May 3, 2010, 2:16 pmTed says:
I have no qualms with the email being released; if you write something, you might lose control of it. However, I think it should only affect her image/job prospects, etc. if people are willing to assume she is actually racist. This would, I think, require the context of the emails. The email certainly makes her appear racist. That is, she does not make a purely innocent arguement for more research. As other comments have pointed out, she assumes only two potential results from research, that blacks are less intelligent or as intelligent as whites. Of course, there is a third option.
Personally, I don’t know the context of the email, maybe others do. And I don’t judge a person’s personal beliefs on what was said during (a small portion) of a dinner discussion. I, for one, have vigorously defended, crazy, stupid ideas of all sorts (including overtly racist positions) in the interest of devil’s advocate or to highlight ambiguities. That does not mean I personally subscribe to or adopt those views. Of course, IAAL, so maybe such detachment is in my genes.
P.S. – I took the “genius and beautiful baby” example to be tough-in-cheek, insincere immodesty. Maybe I’m too forgiving, but are there really such arrogant people who think their kids will be geniuses and be beautiful and are willing to so state during a dinner conversation?
May 3, 2010, 2:38 pmzuch says:
We can test for the efficacy of various interventions. In fact, they work. And we don’t need to know beans about the ‘heritability’ of ‘innate intelligence’ to do this. Hell, I’d bet that most of the lawyers here paid for LSAT-prep materials. Did they waste their money?
You’re suggesting that supposed “IQ” tests actually measure some mysterious something innate (and immutable, that is to say, unvarying). But since the tests obviously measure different things, at least some of the tests do no such thing. Not to mention, you yourself say that the early tests are:
1). Not “accurate”.
2). Give lower scores (hard to see how this is true with normalized scores, BTW … go look up “normalized”) than later tests.
If some of these test aren’t “accurate”, why would you assume that the others are? And if they give different answers, WTF are they measuring?!?!? If you’re assuming that the later tests are giving a better estimate of some heritable component of some supposed “IQ”, you need to explain why these later tests are more accurate after we’ve given various (and differing) environmental factors more time to have effect…..
See the problem? I doubt it, but I can try to help you. We’ll see.
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 3:17 pmzuch says:
I think I’ve mentioned one previously:
“What colour is the American flag?”
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 3:20 pmzuch says:
Oh, I was open to suggestions. How would you rectify the prevalence of innate but deleterious (or disadvantageous) genetic traits? Do you have any other suggestions than euthanasia (or eugenics)? Maybe comprehensive gene therapy using foetal stem cells to rectify those “stoopid” genes the blacks have that keep them from achieving like us white folks do?
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 3:24 pmzuch says:
The thing that makes me want to respond here is someone who accuses me of trolling and lack of “content” who has difficulty with their punctuation (or usage, take your pick).
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 3:27 pmricky says:
Zuch – only four mendacious content-free comments in a row? You had a 10-comment-combo going earlier. What’s wrong?
May 3, 2010, 3:52 pmclarice says:
We can and do employ a variety of means to improve the academic capacities of children from impoverished backgrounds and children with special needs. But the notion that an even greater infusion of money and personnel will turn those with below average capacities for high cognitive work into brain surgeons and corporate lawyers seems impractical.
The enormous sums of money spent trying to mainstream children with substantial cognitive deficits are lost resources IMO, resources that would be better spent elsewhere–like helping average children improve and learn more.
It would be like taking a klutz like me and deciding that since basketball stars make so much money, every child–including me when I was one– regardless of interest and natural ability should receive substantial coaching in basketball to even out the field.
May 3, 2010, 4:02 pmzuch says:
Ignoring your “straw man” here (which is often the hallmark of a weak position), yes, it may “seem impractical” … to you. Who cares?
This is a policy question (and a question about priorities). And legislatures have spoken. Feel free to ask for adjustments in such policies, but if you do, make sure that what you’re presenting as facts are in fact facts. And make sure you identify unsupported opinions and your own policy preferences and personal priorities as such.
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 4:41 pmTed says:
No, it wouldn’t. It would be as inefficient to train genetically poor athletes to be pro basketball players, as it would be inefficient to train imbeciles to be CEO’s. However, it is not inefficient to use more resources to improve the IQ of groups with lower average IQ. That is, we have an obligation to help those groups who are genetically predisposed to lower IQs increase their IQs. To analogize to physical traits, we also have a corresponding obligation to invest more resources in physical education generally for groups that might be genetically predisposed to being less fit or active. Education (cultural subsidy) is the only remedy we have for negative genetic dispositions currently, at least until gene therapy or eugenics becomes available or legal.
As mentioned above, people will likely only use the half of the truth that supports their position. They will use the fact that blacks have lower IQ to justify white (or other races’) superiority, which will then be used to justify disparate treatment of blacks, but it will not be used to justify spending resources to remedy that deficiency or treatment.
May 3, 2010, 4:47 pmclarice says:
Actually Zuch it’s a federal mandate under IDEA for which the states are not compensated.
Per Wiki:
Costs: Schools are required to provide special education services but may not be given additional financial resources. The per-student cost of special education is high. The U.S.’s 2005 Special Education Expenditures Program (SEEP) indicates that the cost per student in special education ranges from a low of $10,558 for students with learning disabilities to a high of $20,095 for students with multiple disabilities. The average cost per pupil for a regular education with no special education services is $6,556. Therefore, the average expenditure for students with learning disabilities is 1.6 times that of a general education student.
Cato has estimated that the cost per pupil for education in D.C. is $29k p.a. And we are not turning out large numbers of literate, employable grads even with such huge costs. I expect its because we are paying huge administrative costs AND a great deal to educate pupils under IDEA.
The public till is not bottomless. I do not believe that people appreciate the enormous costs to states of the IDEA program, esp. where as here, smart lawyers have figured out how to game the system to force DC to pay huge private school costs for so many of these kids.
The money might be put to better societal use by applying it to average or slightly below average kids and improving their education and employment opportunities.
May 3, 2010, 4:50 pmclarice says:
Actually Zuch it’s a federal mandate under IDEA for which the states are not compensated.
Per Wiki:
Costs: Schools are required to provide special education services but may not be given additional financial resources. The per-student cost of special education is high. The U.S.’s 2005 Special Education Expenditures Program (SEEP) indicates that the cost per student in special education ranges from a low of $10,558 for students with learning disabilities to a high of $20,095 for students with multiple disabilities. The average cost per pupil for a regular education with no special education services is $6,556. Therefore, the average expenditure for students with learning disabilities is 1.6 times that of a general education student.
Cato has estimated that the cost per pupil for education in D.C. is $29k p.a. And we are not turning out large numbers of literate, employable grads even with such huge costs. I expect its because we are paying huge administrative costs AND a great deal to educate pupils under IDEA.
The public till is not bottomless. I do not believe that people appreciate the enormous costs to states of the IDEA program, esp. where as here, smart lawyers have figured out how to game the system to force DC to pay huge private school costs for so many of these kids.
The money might be put to better societal use by applying it to average or slightly below average kids and improving their education and employment opportunities.
May 3, 2010, 4:50 pmzuch says:
TS. It’s still legislatively enacted.
I understand that you’re opposed to such, but there’s plenty that feel that such is good policy. Perhaps you will be blessed with a “special needs’ relative some day and rethink your personal opinions here. That said, such personal opinions are not particularly relevant to the subject at hand, except perhaps to illuminate the positions of one side of the dispute.
Cheers,
May 3, 2010, 6:51 pmContemplationist says:
I agree with leo marvins post as far as it goes but here’s what it overlooks. Socialism DOES exist, and as Joe McCarthy pointed out, its grosser expressions are no longer acceptable, so socialists are forced into subtler forms. When someone asks, “Is there a market failure in finance?” the challenge is to divine whether he/she is motivated by a sincere interest or is using the question as a fig leaf for Communism. There are no doubt people in both categories, and it’s wrong to smear the former for their curiosity. But they should be mindful that there are Communists hiding under their beds, and should try to avoid being used for that sort of cover.
May 3, 2010, 7:02 pmclarice says:
zuch , it was a decision , not by “legislatures”, not even by those who must pay for it, but by Congress and mandated to the states and paid for by people who I think are not fully aware of the costs or extent of the program. Most thought, I think, it would be for physically disabled children or minimally disabled children, not a substitute for full time day care for those better cared for elsewhere.
This is getting far afield from the subject of this thread, but the point is that cost-benefit considerations are not immoral. Indeed refusing to even consider them has put the vast majority of public school children at a considerable disadvantage.
May 3, 2010, 7:18 pmBleepingDeadAlien says:
I find it rather tiresome that we use the term “race.” There is only one “race” of people, and we all belong to that “race.” Culture, on the other hand, is what is being debated is it not? There are cultural differences, and it is these cultural differences on which we base our assumptions, and our biases. To study these assumptions and biases as a scientific proposition is as close to eugenics one can get; and eugenics as a scientific discipline has been disproven. I found the original e-mail author’s argument lacking in substance.
May 3, 2010, 8:06 pmAye Queue says:
Suppose scientific research confirms what everyone reading this blog knows deep in their soul, but never says publicly:
Jews have a higher mean IQ and have more of whatever it takes (measureable or not) to be successful in business and academic pursuits than the rest of the population. Blacks are the reverse.
Now that we’ve stipulated the facts, we come to why is this true?
There are a myriad of possible reasons: bigotry, genetics, cultural practices, values, etc.
Now here is my response. So what?
Would learning that blacks have a genetic disadvantage in IQ change our commitment to the theologically-based political-legal fantasy that “all men are committed equal”? Not everything in life that is useful and good is necessarily true. We should just be grow-up enough to admit that human equality is not based on science, but on morality, and religious mysticism. A large segment of the intelligensia is afraid to admit that they’re not much different than George Bush and Sarah Palin when it comes to political positions.
Suppose that Jewish superiority was developed over 40 generations of female-influenced mate selection that placed a higher value on cerebral traits in their mates than non-Jewish females, who placed a higher value on physical prowess and beauty.
That would explain why Jews are smarter and less attractive than non-Jews. Interesting theory. Who knows if it’s true?
As a non-Jew, I’ve learned to accept my inferior average position and learn all I can from my Jewish friends and mimic their success instead of manifesting envy, resentment, and bigotry.
The other gentiles should do the same and work harder copy success if they want it.
May 3, 2010, 8:13 pmDavid Lieberman says:
Perseus says:
Kevin MacDonald’s scholarship on Jewish difference is demonstrably based on fraudulent practices. Faculty at his university have taken the highly unusual step of formally dissociating themselves from his work.
See: http://www.people.hbs.edu/dlieberman/lieberman.jewsRaceEmpire.pdf
May 3, 2010, 8:59 pmclarice says:
Tom Maguire and Professor Jacobson both of whom I admire are also having discussions on this. Here’s a link to Maguire .http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2010/05/not-guilty-does-not-equal-innocent-and-related-fallacies.html
He cites to Jacobson’s article and others on the subject.
May 3, 2010, 10:25 pmJamieMc says:
This WOULD be a thoughtful response to the situation IF you had done any research whatsoever.
This is all speculative nonsense. “Race” and “intelligence” are such complex, culturally specific constructions that the original question is nonsensical. Are “black people” (that’s a lot of genetic diversity. . . that term doesn’t “scientifically” mean much. . . there is in fact more genetic diversity in Africa than the rest of humanity combined) have less genetic potential to be “intelligent” (this is a useful concept, but it is a complex idea that is culture bound in important ways).
So basically it’s a bullshit question. Sorry, it just is.
Why is it a bullshit question. . . . well, because depending on how you ask it, on what kind of data you use, you can get slight differences or no difference. The question, as you are expressing it, is not falsifiable. Are there falsifiable questions that we could ask about heritability, intelligence, and race? Sure. But “are black people less intelligent than white people” isn’t one. Because you are talking about constellations of very contentious and very poorly defined terms. So it’s a bullshit question.
Here are popular article with lots of quotes by people who actually study genetics pointing out that “race” doesn’t mean anything:
http://www.skepdic.com/iqrace.html
http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0010014
Why is it an offensive question? Because the ONLY reason that anybody would ask it is because of a long history of colonialism and racism. I’m not saying you (or the student, for that matter) is a “racist,” but the assumptions of racism and the legacy of the inequalities that colonialism and slavery inflicted upon millions of people inform the question. “Black people, as a group, aren’t as successful as white people in a world designed by white people. Huh. They must not be as smart. History could have nothing to do with it.”
Of course, there is always the possibility that the little genetic groups that split off from Africa to become Europeans inherited the ability to be SMARTER. But again, the data we’ve got is so conflicting, so confused, and the question we are asking (about a complicated set of abilities we call intelligence) is so poorly defined (in terms of biology, it is very poorly defined.
The rhetorical move of saying “hey, it’s just a question!” is rather weak sauce, honestly. Is it P.C. to call bullshit? Maybe. But I’ve got lots of good reasons to call bullshit. You’ve got “hey, it’s just a question! About FACTS!” The preliminary work we would need (about heritability and intelligence) is so incomplete (and perhaps in-completable) that jumping ahead to asking questions that are so problematic, both epistemologically and politically, seems really irresponsible.
I’m actually NOT for any action to hurt this student’s career. It was conversation that seems ignorant and silly to me, but it isn’t a mark of a drooling racist. And it was a private correspondence. Out of bounds.
But the stance of “intellectual freedom means we should be able to ask anything!” is a stupid stance if we can’t discern (and argue about) what kinds of questions are intellectually legitimate. Since this particular wild goose chase has real consequences, it might be wise to leave it alone, and it might be wise to take seriously the complaints of people who are irritated about this issue.
And there is the issue of reinventing the wheel. Claims about race and intelligence pop up every so often, and they get debunked. When an idea starts to look like a game of scientific whack a mole, it might be time to move one.
May 3, 2010, 10:31 pmJGabriel says:
Eugene Volokh:
I don’t know about anyone else, but this quote convinces me that we certainly can’t rule out the possibility that at least some white people are genetically predisposed to stupidity.
.
May 4, 2010, 12:02 amCalifornio says:
So it is all about the secret coded language. Sounds like thought crime to me. Er, I mean – “Onward to a bright and fraternal cooperative future, Comrades!”
May 4, 2010, 12:59 amJoanne D says:
q, what you say is accurate as far as it goes. As a disclaimer I am not a lawyer and refuse to pretend to be one. I’d go so far as to say I am not a fan of the profession at all.
As an engineer I consider the entire discussion to be a little tendentious in the way it avoids the next obvious question. Well, it’s obvious to me, at any rate. Whether or not blacks are genetically predisposed to lower intelligence, does this matter in the larger scheme of things.
It appears that everyone here has determined this to be the case as a standalone criterion for goodness. I’m crazy, I suppose, for being more interested in a person’s capacity to contribute something worth while to society. I may have been blessed, some too many decades ago, with a somewhat overpowered brain. My “intelligence” as measured by traditional means is relatively high. (I hesitate to say I am in Mr. Volokh’s class. I’ve met him non-professionally and he impresses me tremendously.) I am not convinced that makes me better equipped to contribute to society. I suspect a willingness to work employing all one’s particular endowments matters more than raw intelligence. The latter merely equips a person to contribute in a rather specific manner that requires that intelligence. I’d be a particularly poor fireman despite my size. And I’m not temperamentally suited to be a police or FBI officer.
Is the hooraw over intelligence obscuring the real questions? And even if not, does it matter so much what one thinks as what one does? Bobby Kennedy, it appears, was quite a racist in his private rhetoric. In public he transcended, or at least appeared to transcend, any private racism he had.
Can the young lady in question transcend any concepts she might have about “probability of intelligence” and look to the individual when dealing with people, white, black, yellow, red, big nosed, little nosed, tall, short, left handed, right handed, or any other “obvious” distinction? It sounds to me like she can. That’s what matters.
{^_^}
May 4, 2010, 3:39 ambeejeez says:
A reminder here. We’re talking about a student in an e-mail exchange not intended for public consumption. It’s bad enough that her privacy has been invaded, but we shouldn’t blame a bloody student for trying to address a scientific question, no matter how clumsy, tasteless or even proceeding on false assumptions is her effort. As a freshman in college, I once addressed a Thai dude as “Chink,” thinking that was his nickname, since others had referred to him that way and I’d never heard the epithet before. I’m glad that Thai dude won’t be asked to be a character witness for me.
Further up in the responses, it was suggested that liberals object to scientific inquiry on genetic variation because for them the suggestion of an opportunity to whine about victimization outweighs respect for science. No. Liberals object to fascination with such inquiry because it is almost without exception motivated by a desire to justify prejudice.
May 4, 2010, 10:40 amRob says:
Maybe it’s just me, but I feel as though a lot of people are missing the point. I’m an engineer, so when I see a problem — such as a substantial disparity in academic performance when you compare two ethnic groups — I start thinking about what might cause it and how we might fix it.
Is it not obvious that one of the reasons that an ethnic group might do less well in academics is that they are genetically predisposed to lower “intelligence” level, as measured by those academics (regardless of which ethnic group you’re talking about)? Is that not one of the most clear possibilities when considering the data? How could you look at an issue like “lower academic performance by one ethnic group versus another” and not consider that it might be genetically related to the ethnic groups? Not draw a hasty conclusion that this must be the case, but consider whether it may be, factually?
All this debate about what “intelligence” means is so entirely beside the point — we observe an ethnic group which consistently performs lower on the academic measurements we have, not just IQ but also grades in school and graduation rates. How can it not be legitimate to consider why this might be?
Why is it okay to say in public that the entire disparity between ethnic groups’ performance in academics is and must be due to discrimination (putting all the blame on a different ethnic group as some malign, intentional force), but it’s not okay to consider other possibilities, such as inherent average intelligence differences?
To me, if one were truly trying to solve the problem above (disparities in academic performance between ethnic groups) the first step is to fully and completely understand the problem; and that means considering potentially uncomfortable questions, like whether there might be inherent differences in average intelligence level. If you really want to solve the problem, you need to know what the facts are so you can proceed. If, as others have stated, there are different kinds of intelligence, can we teach in such a way as to take advantage of the strengths of a particular ethnic group? Will that help close the gap in achievement?
Putting this subject out of bounds for discussion makes it impossible to seriously consider a solution. A truly non-racist person has to start by trying to understand the facts, but will then be told that even considering facts we’d rather not have be true is itself racist. We can’t make progress like this.
May 4, 2010, 11:06 amSebastian Dangerfield says:
Quoth Volokh: “Whether there are genetic differences among racial and ethnic groups in intelligence is a question of scientific fact. ”
Wrong. This statement is about as sensible as one stating: Whether the tooth fairy exists is a question of scientific fact.
Why is this so? Because in each example, the proposition includes — as an embedded assumption — a category that has not been shown to be one that is scientifically valid. In the case of the Volokh statement, the phrase “racial and ethnic groups” serves the function of the tooth fairy in my example. What “racial and ethnic groups,” kemosabe? Are those valid sceintific categories? If so, how are those categories determined? The HLS dipshit threw around the term “African Americans” as if that had any fixed meaning. It doesn’t. It exists in the eyes and ears of the HLS dipshit. She knows when she sees an hears an “African American” and likes to think that what she understands as “Afircan American” is a valid sceintific category (just as she seems to think that a theory that her super-genes will survive what she posits as the most fearsome test of intellect — a Nigerian orphanage). Again, how does HLS dipshit or Volokh propose to design this object of scientific inquiry? Will they invoke the one-drop rule? Or will they confine the subject group to the quaint designations “mulatto,” “quadroon,” and “octoroon”? You cannot simply take any question, no matter how preposterous and pre-loaded with ignorant, unscientific garbage (in this case, the concept of readily ascertainable and meaningfully differentiated “racial and ethnic groups” — and say that it is a meet subject for scientific inquiry. And you can’t pretend for a moment that HLS dipshit or Volokh are actually engaged in scientific endeavor; they’re not in the right field, and don’t have the training.
May 4, 2010, 12:32 pmLuther says:
I’ve been reading Brian Leiter’s blog on this subject. Its very frustrating that he doesnt allow comments in response to his self-righteous diatribes.
On this question of the Harvard student’s email I find that Volokh is making much more sense than Leiter. Leiter is reading things into the student’s email that simply arent there. He suspects they are hidden in the student’s heart of hearts, but he has no objective evidence of this. In his most recent rant, Leiter concludes his examination by saying:
“If a purported piece of evidence is logically compatible with P and ~P, then it can’t actually be evidence for either. But Ms. Grace argues as if there were evidence for one of the propositions in question, and that she makes that inferential leap, unsupported by evidence, in favor of a vicious racist stereotype is precisely what opens her up to criticism.”
He says here that “Ms. Grace argues as if there were evidence for one of the propositions.” That is simply incorrect. Nowhere in her email does she state that there is evidence for either position. She only says that she is open to evidence either way. Leiter’s entire condescending position is premised on this unfair reading of the student’s email.
I would like to say that for me the most disturbing thing about this incident is how the politically correct police, including Leiter, have jumped all over this poor student for an email she wrote privately to some friends. They have blown this incident vastly out of proportion, and have made envenomed attacks on her for expressing a sober and conservative (little c) view about a scientific question. As Volokh reminds us, she is discussing a question of fact. Not a question of morality or normativity. It is a question on which there does appear to be probative, yet inconclusive evidence on both sides of the question. I am very disturbed by our academic culture which will not permit sober and serious interrogation of evidence on factual questions, simply because one possible answer to the factual question would be inconvenient for some peoples’ view of the world or sense of morality. It is ironic how people like Leiter have taken over the role of suppression once exercised by such maligned institutions as the Catholic Church (I’m thinking Galileo). I honestly think that Leiter’s behavior and arguments are susceptible to greater criticism from an academic perspective than are Ms. Grace’s comments. And while on that subject, I think that the Harvard Dean’s public condemnation of this student was spineless and disgraceful on several levels. A victory for our national culture of fear of saying anything not sanctioned by the political correctness police, and a real low point for Harvard Law School.
May 4, 2010, 1:16 pmRob says:
The problem is that we discuss issues in terms of ethnic groups all the time. Politicians are constantly talking in those terms, we have a constant drumbeat of “diversity” talk discussing why people in different ethnic groups don’t perform exactly the same, and it’s well established that people in different groups do not perform the same. It’s only natural for there to be some consideration of whether there may be genetic differences underlying that. As mentioned above, women have been shown to have a differently-shaped curve when it comes to ability in mathematics. It doesn’t seem crazy to wonder if similar issues might apply to ethnic groups.
Now, of course, you may be completely right when you say that ethnicity is not a meaningful scientific category, and theorizing on that basis may be invalid (though I’ve never read or heard of a study saying this, your point about where we draw the line is certainly valid). But it’s not evil, nor invidious, nor calling for insults to wonder about it, among various possible theories to explain the differences. Probably a lot of what I think about science is not very valid or scientifically accurate because I’m not a specialist, but amateur speculation about fields in which we’re not experts is pretty much what we all do most of the time, is it not?
The other point is that eventually, this issue is going to go in the direction of public policy. We all want to bring all ethnic groups up to the same level of academic performance, if it’s feasible, and indeed we’re spending huge amounts of money to do so based on various theories. If the differences were genetic, that would lead us down a different road when it comes to solutions, and again I believe that we must really consider the possibilities if we really want to solve the problem.
May 4, 2010, 1:18 pmJamieMc says:
Just to weigh back in with the (or at least “a”) “liberal” position here:
1. I think that punishing someone for a private statement, while boneheaded, doesn’t reveal the kind of evil “capital R Racism” that should set off alarms, would be wrong. This young lady deserves the benefit of the doubt. I’ve said much more offensive things in private. You have too.
2. What she said is still stupid. It’s a “fair question” only if don’t know anything at all about genetics or history. I’m not an expert at either, but I’ve read enough about both to be able to explain why it’s a dumb question.
3. Some questions are useful. Some are not. This particular question is not, and if we interrogate the assumptions behind the question, it’s problematic and offensive. Instead of asking it in a hypothetical, “hey, why don’t we figure this thing out,” why not turn to the public science written by people in the field who write about this stuff? If you do that, you’ll discover that it is in fact, not an unsettled, contentious, question among the majority of people who work in related scientific fields. They mostly think that it’s a stupid question. OR at least, the simple, politicized (because “black people” is not a genetic category but a historical construction . . . there’s a lot of genetic diversity in “black people”) version of it here is stupid.
4. Assuming for a moment that it’s not a stupid question, it is such a complex, interdisciplinary question that it’s not particularly likely that we’re gonna get anywhere with it anytime soon.
So is it a GOOD question? Since we know a lot about how environment shapes intelligence, and we know enough about sociology and history to account for the difference in performances among black people and white people in Western culture, is this speculative bullshit session styled interrogation of a poorly defined question based on badly defined terminology a GOOD way to talk about anything at all? The real political issue here “why aren’t black people as successful” can be answered in lots and lots of useful ways already. So what do we gain from this?
I would indeed take the position that “this is a question that shouldn’t be asked because it’s offensive,” not because I’m worried about what we might learn, but because it’s offensive AND wrongheaded. If it was an epistemologically good question, I’d be all about courageous, un-politically correct exploration. And hey, the real scientists who are thinking about this should keep on thinking about it.
But come on. Seriously.
Here’s are pretty good arguments about a few reasons this is a non issue:
http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2010/05/01/11087
http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2010/05/01/11092
We are talking about “intelligence” and “race” as though they are well defined categories that we can discern the boundaries of. Since that is idiotic, we should maybe talk about something else. If that makes me “afraid of inquiry”. . . well, I’m actually more contemptuous of some inquiry than afraid of it. Get your question figured out before you bring it to the grown up table.
May 4, 2010, 1:50 pmclyde says:
the jews are greedy theme has a serious flaw that is cuurently being used against successful people on wall street.people earn a lot of money did it by being geedy,and nobody could become wealthy if they were a really good person.reductio ad absurdum
May 4, 2010, 2:43 pmclarice says:
Leiter’s backtracked from his earlier position–leaving his criticism of the email rather without any basis at all.
I do have a question. Is it just me, but aren’t the very same people who argue that race is a meaningless construct with no genetic components at all, the very same people who argue diversity is so important that it should give a leg up to anyone who self identified by checking the correct boxes on the application/admissions forms?
I mean if it is really CULTURAL diversity we want, why give the leg up to the upper middle class black kid from Collegiate who lives on Park Avenue or why NOT give a leg up to the conservative tenure candidate in areas like academia which are overwhelmingly left?
May 4, 2010, 2:52 pmFroufrou says:
“How would you rectify the prevalence of innate but deleterious (or disadvantageous) genetic traits? Do you have any other suggestions than euthanasia (or eugenics)?”
It’s blindingly obvious! The government should allow preferential immigration for Chinese men willing to marry African American women. If the IQ-race theory is right, and Chinese are more intelligent than whites, Blacks less, then their progeny should roughly equal the white “average” and average is what we want, right? Furthermore, this is a plan that can’t go wrong, because if it turns out the whole IQ link to race is a bunch of hooey, which is not unlikely, the fact remains there are lots of African American women who can’t find reliable mates and likewise lots of Chinese men whose potential wives were aborted. These lonely people will now have partners, increasing global happiness. Plus, Blasians are frickin’ hot.
May 4, 2010, 3:08 pmChris Protopapas says:
The first lines of our Declaration of Independence go something like this:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Now it’s fairly obvious that this is a “legal fiction”, in the sense that everybody knows that all people are not exactly equal. The Founding Fathers did not believe that women, or Blacks, were “equal” to White Males, for example. But it’s an important “legal fiction”, because it really means that we treat each other as equals, both under the law (a very important concept) and as citizens of a Democracy. The danger behind genetic theories of racial superiority is that it inevitably follows that this “scientifically proven” inequality should somehow lead to action of one sort or another. “Inferior” people should be discriminated against for the good of the State or the Corporation, take your pick. I would argue that even if certain racial groups are “proven” to be inferior in some objectively measured way (fat chance!) we are not allowed to actually do anything about it. The concept of equality as described in the Declaration of independence means that we are all equal, come hell or high water. It’s made our country great.
May 4, 2010, 3:22 pmJamieMc says:
Clarice weigh in with some silly conservative resentment trolling.
She writes:
“I do have a question. Is it just me, but aren’t the very same people who argue that race is a meaningless construct with no genetic components at all, the very same people who argue diversity is so important that it should give a leg up to anyone who self identified by checking the correct boxes on the application/admissions forms?”
While this is a pretty reductive view of how admissions policy works, it’s moer or less the case. And it is BECAUSE we think that CULTURAL, rather than inherent, factors are responsible for the differing access to success. If white people “were just smarter” then the under-representation of black people in some parts of society would have never been anything to get upset about. .
She writes:
“I mean if it is really CULTURAL diversity we want, why give the leg up to the upper middle class black kid from Collegiate who lives on Park Avenue or why NOT give a leg up to the conservative tenure candidate in areas like academia which are overwhelmingly left?”
The first sentence is absolutely true, and it IS in fact how contemporary college admissions typically works. The only mistake here is that you have a stereotype about what “affirmative action” is that doesn’t match reality. Or to the extent that it does match reality, it’s a problem. We all agree with you on this.
One problem with conversations about racial preferences in higher ed is that they usually talk about Ivey League, high profile stuff. I don’t know much about how Harward does it, but in the less prestigious public Universities where I’ve worked, “diversity” is a bigger term than what you think it is. To the extent that the machanisms people use are a problem, we agree that they are a problem.
The second sentence is idiotic, and it suggests that you have spent no time in academia. Academia is a “track” system where people who do there jobs generally succeed. Most people who are eligible for tenure get it. (In the parts of academia that I know about, which are considerable but not exhaustive this is true anyway.) Show me a bunch of disgruntled conservatives who were discriminated against, and I’ll show you the motley cast of that silly move Ben Stein made. Those guys were kicked out for not publishing. That’ll do it.
The evidence that we have suggests that there are fewer conservatives in academia because conservatives don’t want to be there. Academia is difficult and competitive, and if you are smart enough to succeed there, you could go somewhere else and make a lot more money. There is a huge element of self selection there.
May 4, 2010, 4:47 pmFroufrou says:
“If white people “were just smarter” then the under-representation of black people in some parts of society would have never been anything to get upset about. . .”
Never understood this logic. Why do folks — usually conservatives — think that proving a racial correlation to IQ means there should be LESS affirmative action? If the black-white achievement difference is merely cultural then a few years of affirmative action should suffice and we can end the program. If, however, there is a genetic IQ gap, unlikely to end in the immediate future, it makes sense to keep Affirmative Action in place more permanently, because otherwise there will be insufficient diversity at the university. If racial differences are real, the goal should be to ensure that the top % of each “race” gets a chance to go to college, so if IQ differences are also real, then quotas are necessary to ensure the cream of the various crops are rewarded.
May 4, 2010, 7:47 pmChristoph says:
Snaphappy,
Obviously you SHOULDN’T rule out either of those “as a matter of scientific fact” (you numbskull).
If serious convincing evidence of either of those emerged, we would have an obligation to take them seriously because they are both possible. The second being a more common possibility than the second.
Now I have little doubt that they are both false. The first because Barack Obama hasn’t terrorized anyone, and there’s no evidence he was born in Nigeria, but significant evidence he was born in Hawaii. I doubt the second one because the majority of people aren’t child molesters, because Professor Volokh comes across as a decent and perhaps more importantly very transparent man.
So your examples are stupid on 2 levels. One, they gratuitously associate the names of 2 men (on of whom I dislike and another whom I like) with awful immoral actions without any evidence at all… and second, that you do this while not even coming near making a point.
The opposite is true: We should be open-minded to possibilities, but skeptical and demand evidence.
May 4, 2010, 7:57 pmChristoph says:
Mark Fields,
If it turns out in the end she suspects something is true that actually is, is she somehow at fault for not being more intelligent and insightful than others?
Is she supposed to turn off her thinking brain even to the point of denying her “suspicions” of how things might be?
Will this advance science or human understanding of truth?
Mark, I know you somehow think you’re being clever in showing us you’re aware the field of epigenetics exists, but you really aren’t.
Yes, the environment has a big impact on how (and which) genes express themselves… and further that these influences act on us on a moment by moment basis, with the changes adding up over time (it’s a really fascinating field and I recommend everyone read up a bit about it if they haven’t already)…
… but you are missing a key component, Mark: It’s only one factor. Heritability still determines the range and relative likelihood of gene expressions which are possible.
A women giving birth in water doesn’t mean her daughter will become a carp.
May 4, 2010, 9:43 pmChristoph says:
To clarify, Mark didn’t say, “If IQ is heritable, it is like eye color, fixed despite the environment.” he was (quite rightly) debunking it. I should have included Mark’s debunking in my blockquote.
But while Mark is right, a more complete understanding reveals heredity and environment are both important. In other words, it isn’t a violation of biology to say skin color is hereditary and Sun exposure has something to do with it too.
May 4, 2010, 9:46 pmMark Field says:
I agree with this (in all my non-cleverness). My point was limited to correcting a misstatment of the meaning of the term heritability, nothing more.
May 4, 2010, 10:25 pmJames Dunet says:
If you believe in equality it should be your resposibility to fund it as well as live it. End Affirmative Action and uplift Blacks yourself if you feel it to be a worthwhile persuit. Since you will have a larger talent pool (assuming racial equality and reciprocity for your good deeds) to draw from, your non-racist society will very likely out perform any racist one.
If you are not interested in such a lifestyle, then you don’t really believe in true equality. If you are White and live in a majority White society but preach equality you are living the same lifestyle as a White racist except for the words you speak.
Your Actions determine whether you are racist or not. When you preach equality/diversity but live like a racist, you are being tellingly inconsistent with your words and actions.
Let me be clearer. I am a White Nationalist. I believe in conquest and understand that Whites have not always been on top. I do not care why you think I should not be in favor of conquest. I see that it works better than pacifism when multiple groups (racial or otherwise) vie for power in a given setting.
This whole world is a power game. Play it, work for it or try to get distant from it.
I will play it. You assume either too much or too little about White racism to really threaten folks like me. Consider that you are attacking a girl over something you claim is already decided, i.e. the theroy of racial differences.
If you really didn’t believe in racial differences you would not care about her statement because it would offend no one. However because you deeply care about her statement it reveals that deep down, you are sure that Blacks are less intelligent.
Yeah, you think denial will save you but I’m studying the prospects of a second Civil War in the USA. If the situation does turn to Civil War II, don’t go looking to the “mighty” Black man or the “Wise” Latino/a.
Lol. On second though, do exactally that. I’ll work with any White person who is also a nationalist. I won’t rub my beliefs in their face. I don’t need them to be racist in words, only in actions. If they live White and breed White I can work with them very easily.
May 4, 2010, 10:27 pmChristoph says:
And I was wrong to apply that term, both because it was unnecessary on its face and also because I misunderstood and thought you were making a broader point that you were making.
I apologize.
May 5, 2010, 12:37 amAnonymous says:
I realize that I am coming late to the party here, but how can Prof. Volokh seriously make this argument?
The e-mail in question cleary states the author’s position that the burden is on those arguing that blacks are equally intelligent to convince her that this is the case:
What makes the e-mail offensive is not that she is open to the argument that blacks might not be as intelligent as whites, but the dubious burden-shifting that is inherent in her comments. This burden-shifting is implicit in her first sentence. However, when the first quoted sentence is taken in context with the introductory sentence (“I just hate leaving things where I feel I misstated my position.”), one could give her the benefit of the doubt and not read any such implication into the first sentence – until one reads the second quoted sentence, where the point is made explicitly and unequivocably. I think Prof. Volokh is certainly being naïve to argue that the e-mail itself does not very strongly infer a racist position – i.e., I believe blacks are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent, but am willing to be convinced otherwise.
I call this a racist* position because it seems pretty clear that there is no compelling (or particularly strong) evidence that genetic differences give rise to a predisposition for blacks to be either more or less intelligent than whites (or, more broadly, for race to have any correlation with intelligence) – a point that Prof. Volokh makes in his post. The proper approach (both from a scientific as well as socially-acceptable point of view) is to start from the position that there is no correlation between race and intelligence until proven otherwise.
* Yes, this is a loaded word, but I think that the core meaning of the word “racism” is the irrational belief that one race is inherently inferior. The presumption that a race is less intelligent in the absence of strong supporting evidence seems to qualify pretty squarely within this definition.
May 5, 2010, 1:04 pmXandalar says:
This student has met with a tricky debate topic, indeed. The whole intelligence/genetics topic is a wonderfully interesting debate for dinner conversation because of the visceral feelings such a topic evokes, however, as a topic of general debate, such an unproven (or unprovable) theory is relatively pointless unless it is between people involved in active science on the subject. Either genetics DO NOT influence a person’s intelligence or they DO influence intelligence (or possibly something in-between). Judging from the comments here on both sides of the debate, I suspect any such intelligence/genetics theory may be unprovable in general. If it is unproven or unprovable, then any and all viewpoints taken are logically valid.
If we look at the student’s email on a semantic level (which is, I believe, the main thrust of Volokh’s response) the student is, correctly asserting that it is not axiomatic that genetic factors do not determine intelligence. However, since the inverse is also non-axiomatic, I assume that someone at the “dinner debate” had taken the opposite viewpoint and this student felt the need to send an email in order to clarify her position (as well as try to win the debate).
I’m sure there might be a few out there who are truly sincere and have “righteous anger” and think that the student is racist and should be punished for her intolerance. But I also think we sometimes jump on the bandwagon to stamp out the very things we dislike about ourselves. Before we come down violently against this student, we should at least take a good look at our own demons (and biases). I suspect most of the angry responses are from those who desire a scape-goat to assuage their own guilt.
May 5, 2010, 6:48 pmTy Right says:
I am not sure I understand why the first and very first principle here is that a person’s private communications are not entitled to be revealed or judged, unless they are a clearly stated intention to commit a crime, or intention to be part of a conspiracy to commit a crime. If this is not the case then private mail, email or snail mail or Pony Express mail is not our business, not anyone’s business. There was a time, that some of us here must be able to remember when such publication and such discussion would be considered dishonorable, a concept that seems to have escaped all consideration in this matter.
Simply stated, the student has the social contract privilege and the moral right not to have her private mail publicized. Given her age it’s stupid to judge her, and who she will be, on the basis of a leaked email.
She trusted a friend, and that friend proved to be unworthy of trust, and the example of worrisome lack of character lies with the leaker, not the leakee… (ok I had to have the fun of being sophomoric on a distinguished law blog, as I know very little of law, and less of it’s Jargon)
There was nothing criminal in the email, therefore it’s not anyone’s business.
Publicizing it is bad, ethically and judging it is also bad, ethically. The young woman committed no moral or ethical transgression, nor a criminal transgression, therefore everyone should have first spoken up for her right to privacy, and questioned the ethics and moral behaviour of her friend who leaked the email.
There’s been a lot of discussion on whether or not her message is somehow reprehensible, and that discussion is based on the premise of treating this material as though it was a public statement, or as though it was of such critical interest that like the Pentagon Papers, the Public’s right to know was paramount.
There neither an over riding right to know or disseminate this message, nor was it a public statement. This is a private person, and she has a greater right of privacy, than a politician, a Harvard Dean, a baseball player or a starlet. She is not a person of public interest or of influence. In any case even a celebrity is entitled to the privacy of private personal correspondence.
Nor was her statement in any way remarkable, and certainly those of us with any honesty at all, know that private message statements that are truly nasty are pretty common amongst human beings , young and old, and amongst Ivy Leaguers and illiterates, amongst professors and the untutored.
The student did not deserve to have her email publicized, and the substance of the email is unremarkable, and indeed, unless you are an unthinking ideologue, this is a grey and unsettled area, which probably has a great deal less importance than we give it.
Certainly by being publicly shamed and broken to make statements of contrition, the student has been made by all concerned into less of a free mind, any one who did not defend her right to privacy shares in the totalitarianism of this Big Brother behaviour. Another mind has been enslaved, whipped to the conformity of whatever the popular orthodoxy of the moment is.
Believe as we do, or you will be destroyed. Enquire and think not what to the current PC and you will be destroyed..
I would not be able to consider this young woman for any position that required courage, because she broke so easily when she was morally in the right.
I would not be able to trust the dean in any position of power, whether pedagogical or not, because she proved to be a shill of a political Orthodoxy, when she should have actually protected this student. She showed herself to be a tool of a totalitarian political Orthodoxy of thought.
I could not trust her friend in nothing, because she is a betrayer, the most despised of character traits, in all times and all societies.
Ty Right
May 23, 2010, 4:00 amKenneth Livingston says:
Hi,
You know the funny thing I found about that e-mail that she sent and the outcry that came from it is that what she has said is true and their are studies to back it up. The one thing that I think that she stated incorrectly is that maybe without the stigmas and cultural differences that there is a possibility that this may not be the case. Forgive me for not being able to name the study I have not seen it in a very long time… it was done in our developed North America and the groups that were studied were identical in class cultural realities and financial status they studied white and black people both in poverty and in comfortable financial situations and it found that on average people of African decent did have lower grade scores than people of European decent. I can’t remember the study but am shocked that it has not been brought up by another person speaking about this issue… it’s not a racial slur and in fact the way she speaks about shows that she is acknowledging it which is more than is being done by the people who are creating an outcry over someone who is stating something that has been discovered through study, testing and research.
Thank You,
Kenneth R. Livingston
September 15, 2010, 11:27 pmKenneth Livingston says:
Thank You for writing that e-mail… sometimes controversy can be the best teacher when people do not want to look at something because someone might accuse them of not being politically correct especially when being politically correct is dishonest…
What a great woman!!!!!! I’m proud there are educated people out their who are not so brainwashed by their surroundings that they can find it to be honest even amongst the worst controversies… for she was it was spoken about at a dinner party previous to the e-mail
Kenneth R. Livingston
September 15, 2010, 11:31 pm