Elsevier

Journal of Criminal Justice

Volume 59, November–December 2018, Pages 127-131
Journal of Criminal Justice

Academic freedom and race: You ought not to believe what you think may be true

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2017.05.010Get rights and content

Abstract

There should be no academic sanctions against those who believe that were environments equalized, genetic differences between black and white Americans would mean that blacks have an IQ deficit. Whether the evidence eventually dictates a genetically caused deficit of nil or 5 or 10 or 20 IQ points is irrelevant.

The hypothesis is intelligible and subject to scientific investigation. If that is so, you must have already investigated it if you are to know what is true or false. To prohibit others from investigation or publication of their results is to designate certain truths as the property of an elite to be forbidden to anyone else. It is to insulate them from whatever new evidence the scientific method may provide that would modify belief. A word to those who seek respectability by banning race/gene research: how much respectability would you get if your position were stated without equivocation? What if you were to openly say genetic equality between the races may or may not be true; and that is exactly why I forbid it to be investigated. Or: “I do not know if genetic equality is true and do not want anyone else to know.”

Section snippets

An intelligible hypothesis

Four arguments are used to challenge the coherence of the hypothesis that “on average black Americans have inferior genes for IQ than white Americans.” First, that it makes a racial distinction and that there are no such things as pure races, that is, there are no groups of humans that have interbred exclusively within one another during their evolutionary history. That is true but the hypothesis asserts only that there are two sociologically identifiable groups in question. Those who deny this

Not believing what you think may be true

This piece of moral advice is psychologically impossible. You cannot ask someone to deny to themselves what they think may be true. Coercing thought gets you into the realm of sanctions (the rack and the thumb-screw, or at least making job applicants for university posts take a loyalty oath about racial traits).

Not discussing what some think to be true

I am happy to discuss the race and IQ debate with colleagues who hold contrary views and do so at conferences and in the common room. I want to persuade and that is much more difficult if we both know that I have hidden behind my back an instrument of coercion. Telling someone that what they believe is morally remiss or telling them that if they persist in disagreeing, I will expose them is not my style. I got enough of this when defending democratic socialism during the McCarthy era. I take it

Not using science to investigate the truth

To advise scholars that they should not systematically investigate race and IQ seems to me to raise the question of what we are afraid of: that we will discover that genes do play a significant role? A few years ago I addressed scholars at one of America's most distinguished universities who admitted that they had never approved a research grant that might clarify whether black and white had equivalent genes for IQ. I had some suggestions and said I knew that they might have reasons for

From advice to sanctions

Everyone knows that universities apply sanctions to alter behavior among academics that refuse to accept the advice given thus far. A stated intention of doing race/gene research on a vita will mean no job; doing that research may mean no tenure, no promotion, no research grants, or even a campaign for dismissal. Some like Jensen, who are at a prestige university such as Berkeley, survive.

In the Emile, Rousseau included a long footnote in which he addresses the world of scholars. He knows that

The dead hand of ignorance

By ignorance I mean unawareness of what science reveals about the real world. It always extracts a price. Let us assume the “worst” possible outcome of this debate: black American school children have a genetic deficit worth 20 IQ points. I cannot make this very plausible given that the present IQ gap is far less than that. We would have to assume either that blacks today are privileged environmentally or that some unlikely event had occurred: cosmic radiation has struck only black

The appeal to paradigms of irrationality

Are there to be no limits on what the university will tolerate? Will academics offer courses on holocaust denial, or on the extraterrestrial sources of crop rings, or teach a course in Algebra using roman numerals? In passing, anyone who wanted to hire a room on the university campus to speak on such issues should be free to do so and treated with formal courtesy. If they are willing to have a critic nominated to debate their views, fine. If not, someone can hire the same room for a

Compromises

Universities are the focus of irrational pressures that hope to compromise their purpose. I sympathize with an American university president who says something like the following.

You don't know how hard I struggle to maintain what freedoms we have. We are free to debate evolution versus intelligent design, atheism versus theism, socialism verses the welfare state versus the free market. Within limits, we can freely debate US foreign policy as long as we do not say too much about the Middle

The bright light of knowledge

I want to summarize some results that have come to light only because scientific investigation was not banned. They are not chosen to show that an evidential approach was worthwhile only because some of the evidence favors an environmental hypothesis. Rather they are chosen to show that knowledge is better than ignorance. The reader should assess whether or not we would be better off if the research had not been done.

Moore (1986) did a study would have been forbidden by a prescription against

Armageddon

My most important point is this. The race and IQ debate has taken on the role of Armageddon, a war between the forcers of righteousness (the environmentalists) and the armies of the night (those who posit genetic differences). This fixation has overshadowed the fact that there are real people out there. When they try to improve the prospects of their children, they will not be attempting to score one more point for the environmental side of the race and IQ debate. Enormously helpful things have

Some history and rhetoric

Once Christians admitted that blacks had souls, slavery was doomed. As Thomas Sowell says, once you grant that black and white so overlap that the brightest person in America may be black, the real ball game is over. Whether all people as individuals, no matter whether black or white, get justice as fairness will be a test of our humanity. Nothing will be gained by systemic sanctions that protect ignorance.

Having made a rational case, it is allowable to use rhetoric to try to bring people's

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