Academic freedom and race: You ought not to believe what you think may be true
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
References (9)
Arthur Robert Jensen
Intelligence
(2013)- et al.
Black Americans reduce the racial IQ gap: Evidence from standardization samples
Psychological Science
(2006) Race, IQ, and Jensen
(1980)Where have all the liberals gone? Race, class, and ideals in America
(2008)