“Here at Harvard Law School, we are committed to preventing degradation of any individual or group, including race-based insensitivity or hostility,’’ [Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law School] wrote in a message to Harvard’s law school community.(Via TaxProf, who collects a bunch of other links on the story, including links that will get you to the full text of the email.)
Minow said she had met with leaders of Harvard’s Black Law Students Association on Wednesday to discuss the hurt caused by Grace’s e-mail....
... Minow 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.’’
Grace has apologized. Of course, she's sorry now. "I am heartbroken and devastated by the harm that has ensued. I would give anything to take it back." Note the passive voice: "the harm that ensued." A new way to say I'm sorry you were offended. She also says "I understand why my words expressing even a doubt [that African-Americans are genetically inferior] were and are offensive." She's learned something: This is a subject where you can't play with ideas and speculate. People get very angry, and the speaker had better be ready to deal with it.
Did Dean Minow handle this the right way? One question is: Why does the dean even get involved with something one student said in private email? If the answer is because the Black Law Students Association came to her and demanded a response, then maybe the question should be why did the Black Law Students Association go to the dean for help? Why didn't the students all just argue and debate and express themselves to each other? These are Harvard students. Law students. Why not dig in and have it out and show your stuff? Why go to the nearest, biggest authority figure? Stephanie hurt me!
Here's the full text of Minow's message. (By the way, Martha Minow's father was FCC chairman Newton Minow, the man who called television "a vast wasteland.")
This sad and unfortunate incident prompts both reflection and reassertion of important community principles and ideals. We seek to encourage freedom of expression, but freedom of speech should be accompanied by responsibility. This is a community dedicated to intellectual pursuit and social justice....Law school is a community with shared ideals. One of the ideals could be: When a student makes a point that contains what you think is an outrageous statement, unless she's been actively insulting to you, you should engage her in debate and not not expose her to a public trashing. And don't bring the dean into the fray as your champion. More from Minow:
As news of the email emerged yesterday, I met with leaders of our Black Law Students Association to discuss how to address the hurt that this has brought to this community. For BLSA, repercussions of the email have been compounded by false reports that BLSA made the email public and pressed the student’s future employer to rescind a job offer.I was going to say that "the hurt" to Grace and her reputation was much greater than the hurt to those students who only read the email. It's not as if she shouted ugly words in their face. But now I see that the BLSA students had reason to worry that they were the ones who would look bad because they were believed to have overreacted and taken some nasty revenge. Minow may have been activated by the need to clear their reputation.
A troubling event and its reverberations can offer an opportunity to increase awareness, and to foster dialogue and understanding.Minow tries to be even-handed and control the fallout. She frames it as a teaching moment. But what has everyone learned?
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282 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 282 of 282My original comment about Bach and Newton and who is more intelligent and the ensuing comments just illustrates my point.
Intelligence is a difficult thing to measure because we have different definitions of what is intelligence. Musical, Mathematical, Spacial, Artistic, Mnemonic....maybe all equal or non equal skills that use different parts of the brain and require different levels of 'intelligence'
There is no way you can compare and grade Bach and Newton against each other because they are not the same.
Societies will value different skill sets and different types of intelligence.
A hunting gathering society will not necessarily select for mathematical calculation skills, but will need the ability to understand spacial relationships and apply intuitive physics.
A society that is based on mercantilism or applied science will select for other skills and you will produce a Newton.
If society values artists...then you get a higher grouping of that type of intelligence and skill sets.
IF (big if) we assume that Blacks , or Asians, or Jewish, or any other group are genetically different for intelligence it may be that they have been preselected to be successful in the TYPE of intelligence that was important to their society.
Women are generally not that skilled in higher mathematics. We haven't needed the skills.
Nothing wrong with this. It is just natural selection at work.
Being a shipping and recieving clerk on a military base is a job that is full of math too. That does not mean the clerk is on a par of intelligence with Isaac Fucking Newton!
All this comment says is that you know nothing at all about music composition. We are talking about Johann fucking Bach!
Have Newton, or anyone else, sit at the piano (it WAS a piano that Fredrick the Great owned in 1748), and be played a theme designed by Bach's own son to be impossible to use in counterpoint. Then have Newton improvise a perfectly correct, 3-voice fugue, interspersed by episodes in the latest trendy gallant style, the whole thing lasting at least 13 minutes, while causing the members of the best orchestra in Europe, then present, to be "seized with astonishment," as the newspaper report had it.
And have Mr. Newton, or anyone else, do this at the age of 63, right after a two-days' carriage ride with no sleep.
Exactly. I have nothing against Newton, I think they were both brilliant, just at different things which is kind of the whole point.
@Balfegor: I stand corrected. I guess Asians can play this game too. But I'm still waiting for a Black geneticist to come forward and say, "Well, you know, as a whole, we really are dumber." In the impartial and objective scientific community, one would certainly expect this to happen!
There is no way you can compare and grade Bach and Newton against each other because they are not the same.
I propose (and don't call me surely) that it is precisely because they are not "the same" that makes the comparison irresistible. (See the origin of species)
If I'm making any sense..
But I'm still waiting for a Black geneticist to come forward and say..
I'm the greatest of all time ;)
Is she likely to believe that she was wrong?
The wrongness of her statement does not depend on her belief in it.
If you truly believed these groups could compete and win on the playing field, you wouldn't need affirmative action, only equal opportunity. The kind where everyone truly has equal opportunity
Send me in, coach. I'll show you what I can do.
- Son, we've never had a Chinese quarterback. Now why don't you sit back down and cut up some more oranges.
Isaac Fucking Newton!
That should be Isaac Figging Newton.
Lem:
Sometimes I'm right, but I can be wrong
My own beliefs are in my song
The butcher, the baker, the drummer and then
Makes no difference what group I'm in
I am everyday people
Yeah, yeah
...
There is a yellow one that won't accept the black one
That won't accept the red one that won't accept the white one
Different strokes for different folks
And so on, and so on and scooby-dooby-doo
@Scott - "Scientists" and religionists -- again, invariably white -- have been claiming since the 1700s that there is some scientific or religious "proof" that black people are inferior to white people.
Look - "inferior" is your word. The fact is that black people in America, on average, score about a standard deviation lower than whites on IQ tests and other standardized general intelligence tests like the SAT and LSAT. No one disputes that, not even Obama, who talks a lot about the need to raise black score so that they're equal with whites.
The issue of whether the differences in test scores between the groups can be attributed to nature, nurture, or some of each is where the controversy comes in.
Here's the tricky part: If there's no genetic component to this at all, and the differences are entirely due to environmental factors, some smart social scientist or statistician should be able to do a study that removes all the environmental variables and come up with two groups of blacks and whites who are equal in IQ.
Whoever did that - and empirically validated your belief in genetic equality between the races - would win a Nobel Prize and be feted by the establishment forever as one of the truly great scientists. But no one's been able to do it yet...in fact, every attempt to remove non-racial variables and demonstrate IQ equality between blacks and whites has failed to produce the desired results.
This is one of things that Grace was alluding to in her e-mail. Something to think about, but of course, not to discuss publicly.
I think Althouse should post a photo of Harvard Law School and caption it, "At the Pansy Café you can talk about how sensitive you are."
Send me in, coach. I'll show you what I can do.
- Son, we've never had a Chinese quarterback. Now why don't you sit back down and cut up some more oranges.
LOL. Are you suggesting that the NFL needs to institute affirmative action in order to look more like the rest of society?
...high IQ may also be positively correlated with...psychotic levels of status anxiety...
I left that all behind once I settled into happy loserdom...well, relatively happy loserdom.
That should be Isaac Figging Newton
Wrong..
Its Fahrvergnugen
@Lem: That was one weird ad campaign! :)
The wrongness of her statement does not depend on her belief in it.
I know, and that has nothing to do with what I wrote. Nowhere have a written or implied in any way that what she wrote was correct.
The point is that the way this was handled has made her belief not depend on evidence. Show her her error, yes! Cry foul about her speech, no.
Lem said..."It is not what you can prove that matters.. it is rather whether you can disprove the opposite... as externalities may allow, of course."
Easy for you to say...huh?
As much as I respect DBQ I think she is wrong in asserting that there are different types of intelligence. Intelligence is fungible. Let us assume that Newton and Bach both had genius level IQ (the term genius itself is vague but it is indisputable that Newton and Bach both fit the bill). Now, let us further assume that the parents of both had connections at court and positioned their young sons for careers in the diplomatic corps of their respective courts. What IQ is saying is that Newton and Bach would likely have made spectacular Metternich-like careers as diplomats. We would have lost Newton's contribution to mathematics and Bach's to music, but - intelligence is fungible - the two would have applied their IQ's to diplomacy and made marks in that field.
What IQ is saying is that Newton and Bach would likely have made spectacular Metternich-like careers as diplomats. We would have lost Newton's contribution to mathematics and Bach's to music, but - intelligence is fungible - the two would have applied their IQ's to diplomacy and made marks in that field.
I have to say, that does not sound credible to me. Intelligence or whatever IQ is a proxy for probably translates between different fields up to a point, but when you're talking about a highly specialised field, I don't think that point takes you very far. There's other personal characteristics and talents that need to be there in the raw human material, to be developed, to reach the pinnacle of those fields.
Back in the 1960's, white children in Freeman's Arkansas scored 10 IQ points lower than did black children in Ohio.* So one should be careful when making these judgments.
*I learned this from the 1967 book Biology and the social crisis, by Dr. John Keith Brierley, a biologist, a teacher, and one of Her Majesty's School Inspectors. The book is available on books.google.com.
Jesus H, Christ. This certainly settles the question of academic stupidity. What a bunch of well-educated morons.
I have personally witnessed the academic panic that sets in on racial issues. I wrote a piece published where I was trying to explain how people in the founding era of the 14th Amendment saw equal opportunity. I wrote something pretty close to this: “the color a person’s skin is technically a difference, but it is not a significant difference.”
So the day comes to sourcesite it, and a guy read that line and actually wrote in the margins, I shit you not, “poppycock! There is no difference between black people and white people.” Yes, he really said poppycock. I don’t think I have ever heard that word in conversation before or since, except in movies and in telling this story to other people.
So I called the guy out and said something close to this:
Me: “Black people tend to be black, right?”
Him: “Yes.”
“And white people tend to be white, right?”
“Yes.”
“And that is technically a difference, right?”
“Yes.”
“But it doesn’t mean one group is dumber than the other, or less moral, right?”
“Yes.”
“So its technically a difference, but not a significant difference, right?”
Grumble. “Yes.”
Sheesh. Sheer panic.
As for this 3L, nothing could be more unscientific than how they are behaving there..
Here’s the facts. Intelligence is genetic. Smart people have smart kids. Even learning disabilities run in families, and I say that as a person who has learning disabilities.
There is also no perfect IQ test. Trust me I have seen hundreds of them. intelligence is impossible to measure precisely for many of the same reasons why science is always a pain in the kiester when humans are involved. And certainly genetic based intelligence is doubly impossible to measure. Not to mention the problem of determining who belongs to what race. For instance, is our president actually black or white? As a social construct you can say he is black. But genetically I understand him to be equal portions of both.
But if there was a perfect IQ test, and we could eliminate environmental factors, or somehow quantify them and determine the true genetic IQ of everyone on earth, and solve all of those other problems, I can assure you that the chances that the races would come out exactly equal are about slim and none. I would expect a point or two difference, in the average. And indeed I would expect it fluctuate. In one year Steven Hawkings dies and suddenly white people are slightly dumber on average than black people. Or Keith Olbermann might pass away, removing his black hole of intelligence from the stats.
I would add that it is equally undeniable that there are people of both colors who are greatly above average in intelligence, and greatly below average.
Now I take it as a matter of faith that the races are essentially equal—that the difference is a matter of inches rather than miles. I also believe that even if there was a significant difference, what of it? why use color as a proxy for what you are looking for, when you can look instead to the thing itself. If you want the smartest employee, then look for the smartest. Why bother with color at all? Seriously, if you have to hire a president of a media company, and you have on one hand the President of BET, a black man, and on the other hand, some random white dude from the mailroom, do you think their skin color is the best way to make that call?
But what is disturbing here is it is just a statement of open mindedness. I may take the essential equality of the races as a matter of faith, but I recognize it as faith and not science. I am not going to fault someone for refusing to belong to my religion, be it Christianity or my faith in the equality of the races. And Harvard should be ashamed of itself for this latest crushing of dissenting thought.
It's interesting to see people debate a letter many obviously didn't even bother to read. The original email was obviously written as an adjunct to a dinner conversation. More importantly, the author simply doesn't say what many people here are claiming she said. In fact, she is saying quite the opposite. Yet the bigots here and at Harvard have their witch and their strawmen and that's that.
Given the nature of the email and what was actually written, Harvard should be deeply embarrassed as should Dean Minow.
Ultimately, the question of innate intelligence, the effect of culture, nutrition and so forth on intelligence is critical if we are to make an education system that is effective.
@Maguro:
"If there's no genetic component to this at all, and the differences are entirely due to environmental factors, some smart social scientist or statistician should be able to do a study that removes all the environmental variables and come up with two groups of blacks and whites who are equal in IQ."
You can only hope.
But of course, the influence of socialization can't be removed from any given sample. Therefore, it is impossible to assert that genetics is a greater or lesser influence than socialization in a subject's IQ test scores. In fact, in the absence of supporting neurological studies, asserting that genetics is a greater influence is much more speculative than attributing it to the obvious influence of socialization.
If socialization makes you less capable of performing well on IQ tests, then so be it. But this Harvard law school student was quick to attribute it to genetics; which, unlike a person's experience, is immutable. That unproven, unprovable component is the element that reflects racism.
"The Christian idea is that everyone was made in the image of God, and that we are all identical, therefore, and thus, equal, or the same.
At least in terms of our souls."
I don't think that is the Christian idea. I think it's more like what Lincoln said, in trying to win a racist audience over to the idea that blacks had rights:
"I agree with Judge Douglas that he is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color—perhaps not in intellectual and moral endowments; but in the right to eat the bread without the leave of any body else which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every other man."
(As William Lee Miller notes, this is a masterful job of flattering prejudice without actually sharing it, acknowledging only that the Negro is not his equal in "color," whatever that means, opening the door wide to intellectual equality while pretending to shut it, and then making a profound moral case for equal rights in plain everyday language. I'm sure it would have gotten Lincoln in trouble if, like his son, he'd gone to Harvard.)
"That does not mean the clerk is on a par of intelligence with Isaac Fucking Newton!"
"All this comment says is that you know nothing at all about music composition. We are talking about Johann fucking Bach!
And I say fuck yeah! to both Isaac and Johann, and fuck anybody who says otherwise!
(I did hear a rather melancholy little fact about J.S. Bach the other day: he has no living descendants. All that exuberance, all that genius, all that philoprogenitive gusto, and he has no more descendants on earth now than Newton, who couldn't be arsed to reproduce at all!)
Agree with ricpic. Intelligence is fungible.
Certain people can be extraordinarily gifted at a certain thing - "Blind Melon Chitlin" sorts that play Mississippi blues better than Craig Ventor ever could. But put Mr. Chitlin and Ventor to any other task common in modern society - and odds go to Mr. Ventor to learn it faster and do it better.
When you expand that to 20-30 potential careers, the odds shift to near certainty of Ventor being able to do MOST of them better than Mr. Chitlin.
Re: A.W.:
why use color as a proxy for what you are looking for, when you can look instead to the thing itself. If you want the smartest employee, then look for the smartest. Why bother with color at all?
Because you might get sued for disparate impact, if you can't show a strong enough link between the characteristic you are looking for, whatever selection procedure you put in place to select for it, and the job you need to maximise that characteristic for.
Of course, that's not what you meant. For what you meant, I agree. It'd be idiotic to try and select for intelligence by picking only White applicants, or even picking only Jewish applicants. Or excluding all Black applicants.
Somewhere in space, a large meteor is coming our way . . . .
Scott - "But of course, the influence of socialization can't be removed from any given sample. Therefore, it is impossible to assert that genetics is a greater or lesser influence than socialization in a subject's IQ test scores."
Nonsense. The nature vs. nurture debate has been pretty well addressed by studies that explored adoptions, people raised in entirely different social settings, in various foreign countries of entirely different socialization and culture.
The genetic component of IQ and dissimilarities between races and ethnicities is well established.
The only debate is over how much.
The studies do suggest that the intelligence, just like potential in athletics, susceptibility to alcoholism, and a host of other things weighs more on what you were born with than "nurturing" dramatically shifting matters.
We seem to accept that in other species or strain of the same species. No amount of nurturing will change a dumber than shit breed like an Irish Setter into a dog that can compete with a typical hunting poodle on a course. The only shot is if you get a bad strain of poodle that is even born dumber than a Setter.
And:
Wild turkeys are cunning. Domestic turkeys bred dumb to be more manageable. No amount of nurturing will change that. You can't nurture out the smarts of a wild turkey kept for breeding, you can't nurture in an appreciable increase in smarts to a domestic breed.
As much as I respect DBQ
Thank you.
I think she is wrong in asserting that there are different types of intelligence. Intelligence is fungible.
I think you are right about fungibility, but now we are talking nature/nurture.
You can have all the tools (nature)that Bach had but without the opportunity to use them or the different circumstances (nurture) the outcome might have been different. No music then (what a loss) and perhaps something else.
Some people are just inherently better at mathematics, others in music (which is pretty mathematical) others in verbal skills poetry, others in color, spatial composition and so on.
Often people will show their intellectual strengths at very young ages before there is much of a nurture opportunity to make changes.
Personally, I think that ultimately it is a combination of both. Nature/genetics and nurture/opportunity or lack of opportunity that makes the totality of our "intelligence".
(Listening to Bach's Little Fugue in G minor as I type)
I'm with Theo.
"You cannot listen to the Mass in B Minor, nor read the principia and not fail to comprehend the creative genius of either Newton or Bach."
This is Cedarford we're talking about here.
Musical ability is quite beside the point. The HLS emailer was obviously referring to the kind of intelligence that is measured by IQ tests. One can argue that musical ability should be treated as a kind of intelligence, but even if musical talent is deemed to be a kind of intelligence, it's not the kind we're discussing. For example, nobody here is claiming that whites have significantly higher average levels of achievement than blacks in regard to musical ability.
Musical ability is obviously a highly desireable trait, but it's obviously not going to be of much use in non-musical contexts.
"Musical ability is obviously a highly desireable trait, but it's obviously not going to be of much use in non-musical contexts."
That's an antiquated view of the integrated nature of human intelligence. "Abilities" are not sequestered into little compartments in the brain. They're the product of multiple processes and require the participation of multiple regions of the brain. Integration. Musical genius (of the compositional variety at least) is indicative of a larger comprehensive intelligence, not simply an isolated skill.
Well, intellects would be a lot more even if the Greeks hadn't stolen all the African's ideas.
That's an antiquated view of the integrated nature of human intelligence. "Abilities" are not sequestered into little compartments in the brain.
One of the great disappointments of this field. The sad fact is someone who has more natural talent at symbol manipulation also has more natural talent at music composition.
I learned that in the rock-scissors-paper of class victimology, race beats gender.
At least in e-mails.
It's interesting to see people debate a letter many obviously didn't even bother to read.
Legal-trained writers divide their argument into paragraphs, starting each paragraph with a topic sentence. The rest of the paragraph fleshes out the subargument. Let's see what the author does here:
Text of the email, from Above the Law:
… 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.
Then she recapitulates her thesis at the end of her first paragraph:
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.
Well, bully for her! Now we can start questioning her judgment, because obviously her opinion was more controversial than she realized.
It is Johann Sebastian Bach. Sir Isaac Newton is so cool he doesn't need a middle name, he had a title. Newton wrote more religious works than mathematical or scientific. Most of his scientific work was done early in his career. Newton hid his religious views, and if his reputation was based on those he would be considered a crackpot, and long forgotten.
Bach was a composer, and worked that way his entire career. He didn't seem to have a mostly ignored side.
Anybody ever hear of "multiple intelligences"? Since I possess multiple stupidities, I gotta believe. There are different ways to be intelligent, and we all have different types of personalities. Some people are better jurists, others are better in the emergency room. Different talents. While time honored traditions have shaped admissions policies and training regimens for professional schools, some do require adjusting. For example, women are capable of being as excellent doctors as men, so there isn't a reason to ban women from medical school. However, since most female vets want to be personal companion vets, and we have a shortage of vets working with large animals, our food supply system is at risk. But banning women from vet school isn't going to happen. We'll just let our food supply be at risk.
I digress. Did any one notice that there was a cheating scandal involving the business graduate school test? They didn't notice that some of their students had cheated on the test until after they caught the mastermind, and he turned them in. If the test was so conclusive, those who had to cheat on the test should have been missing essential skills necessary to be successful in business school. They weren't so the test must have not been testing what was really necessary. Perhaps people of "traditionally under-represented groups" can do well in law school, if given the chance, regardless of their academic qualifications. Let them try. If they flunk out, or graduate only to fail as lawyers, well then it isn't the schools fault. Does "being smarter" necessarily mean than one is a "better lawyer"?
Let them try. If they flunk out, or graduate only to fail as lawyers, well then it isn't the schools fault. Does "being smarter" necessarily mean than one is a "better lawyer"?
The number of people who pony up three years and $150k for law school and then can't pass the bar is already a scandal. They don't need to make it worse.
I wonder what Clarence Thomas would think of this.
Would he allow this controversy, or not?
I think the main problem is that it assumes that all members of one group think alike, whereas I don't think anyone has ever claimed that.
There are of course stellar members of every group in probably every category. When Woody plays the pseudo-chump in White Man Can't Jump he's playing off the prejudice that whites can't play basketball as well, and generally, I think that's true, but Woodie Harrelson, or whatever his name really is, could actually play, at least in the movie.
There are of course geniuses among the African-Americans -- Condoleeza Rice, Thomas Sowell, and millions of others.
But if there is an actual discrepancy in IQ scores it could still have cultural origins.
I think in the Bell Curve book it is argued that American Indians have the highest IQ. I don't know, because I haven't read that book, but someone once told me that. He was a sociologist at Harvard, so it's hard to trust such a person not to be biased.
"I learned that in the rock-scissors-paper of class victimology, race beats gender."
It always has...which is why it's amusing that strident feminists rarely comment about it.
Musical genius (of the compositional variety at least) is indicative of a larger comprehensive intelligence, not simply an isolated skill.
But a larger comprehensive intelligence does not necessarily translate into musical genius. See, e.g. Charles Babbage, he hated musicians.
"Nonsense. The nature vs. nurture debate has been pretty well addressed by studies that explored adoptions, people raised in entirely different social settings, in various foreign countries of entirely different socialization and culture."
The University of Minnesota studies of identical twins that you are apparently referencing prove an irrelevant point: That there is a genetic component to behavior.
These studies in no way inform a discussion of whether heterogenous groups of "black" "white" and "asian" people have quantifiable differences in measured intelligence that are attributable to their genetics -- to the exclusion of other factors, such as socialization.
You say that this is proven? Okay, prove it.
This is the internet. Link to a report of just one solid, respected academic study -- one that didn't have obvious methodology problems -- where the authors concluded that one race is generally smarter than other race because of their genes.
If it's as obvious as you say it is, then it shouldn't be hard for you, should it?
I don't think the idea that musical ability represents a different kind of "intelligence" than the kind that's measured by IQ tests is exactly antiquated. First of all, to my knowledge, IQ tests don't measure musical ability. Second, I don't think musical ability correlates so strongly with what we normally refer to as intelligence that a measure of musical ability could be used as a proxy for determining general intelligence. There are lots of sub-100-IQ people with exceptional musical abilities. You would never let those people into, for example, medical school solely on the basis of their musical abilities, because they would fail.
You are a lawyer Ann Althouse. Can this student sue the Harvard Dean for libel. She did not "suggest that black people are genetically inferior to white people" as the Dean wrote in an open letter and which, if she had, would had would have been grounds for moral opprobrium and professional ostracism in certain legal circles.
The Dean's mistake was in assuming that people of extremely high intelligence are superior (a common mistake at Harvard) when in fact there is no evidence that high intelligence is correlated with moral character in any sense, let alone with the moral worth of the individual. Most of the moral monsters of history, after all, have been highly intelligent human beings -- Hitler, Goebbels, Marx, Lenin, Napoleon, Pol Pot, Sadam Hussein, to name a few recent examples -- while throughout history the ruling classes have been people of above average intelligence, which did not prevent them from treating ordinary human beings as domestic animals. Nazism got a respectable start on elite German campuses, and social Darwinism (in the sense of survival of the fittest and the devil take the hindmost) used to be espoused at Yale. Slave trading and slave holding were largely in the hands of our educated elites, as was the Opium trade.
And to judge by the frightening intolerance to which this student has been subjected by her peers for privately entertaining a perfectly innocent idea in a non-prejudicial, open-minded way, the situation has not much improved.
The damages to this woman's public reputation and future employment prospects have been immense, to say nothing of the personal pain and suffering. And even if she did not win, the educational value of such a trial would be considerable. I hope she does it.
"Why should anyone care about an opinion expressed by a student in a private e-mail? Good grief."
Because she must be destroyed.
And the mission is accomplished. This girl will never hold a job as a lawyer, and doubtful they'd be able to get any kind of a job.
She expressed an idea at a place that will not tolerate thought.
Harvard is the place rich people go to learn that you cannot think outlandish ideas. You must conform to the "community" ideal.
This girl must be destroyed, completely, or Harvard University has no purpose.
Didn't Larry Summers' experience illuminate?
Harvard exists to identify the morons, like Summers, who are incapable of "getting it." Harvard exposes them, and then sets out to re-educate such people. Or if they cannot (or will not) accept reeducation, they will be destroyed.
This girl had a chance to renounce her spoken theory. She made the mistake of not renouncing her heresy.
Now, she must be destroyed so that anyone else who dares to express an idea that the community doesn't want expressed will understand the price to be paid for independent thought.
The lesson? It is one smart people have employed throughout the ages. Never write what you can say ... never say what you can imply ... never imply when you can wink. And don't spend three seconds trying to get the fucking airheads at Harvard to think or reason.
It's just not worth the hassle.
former law student: "Well, bully for her! Now we can start questioning her judgment, because obviously her opinion was more controversial than she realized."
I don't know about you but I'd hate to live in a country where people suppressed what they really thought for fear it was "controversial."
All the people invovled are either lawyers or hope to be lawyers or are studing how to steal and cheat as lawyers. Thus they are worhtless yuppie scum who honest people should scorn and shun.
The only thing worse than a journalist is a lawyer.
It is true that Boston Red Sox fans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent.
In fact they are known to be wicked stupid.
In dismissing musical intelligence, one thing modern people ignorant of the subject miss is that the sort of music that J.S. Bach composed—and improvised—had several layers of rigorous intellectual content.
For example, a fugue such as the three-voice fugue Bach improvised on the "impossible" theme of Fredrick the Great—that I referred to upthread—is composed according to quite strict rules. Being able to work those rules out on a theme specifically designed to defeat them is a remarkable mental as well as practical exercise that Fredrick the Great proposed to J.S Bach as a test of Bach's intellect and ability, NOT how cool a rhythm track he could lay down.
It was thought of as an "intellectual" challenge at the time precisely because trendy music during Fredrick's time was becoming much less demanding. Think pretty Mozart in-the-making. The young and cool Fredrick wanted to have fun with, and see what a fuddy-duddy like Bach could do.
Sticking it to the older generation is nothing new.
Bach showed Fredrick what he could do, alright. Bach being able to improvise a correct and musically elegant fugue on the difficult "Royal" theme is not only a musical, but a real-time, practical intellectual demonstration of the sort people can hardly conceive of today.
This was preserved for posterity two months later, when J.S. Bach sent to Fredrick his "Musical Offering," inscribed ""Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta," an acrostic for "Ricercar," the old Renaissance term for fugue-like counterpoint.
Included among the pieces is a trio sonata in f minor for flute, violin and basso continuo. This is written in trendy, gallant style, much favored by young Fredrick and all the proto-Enlightenment types of the era. None of that old, wiggy, hard-to-understand intellectual stuff. No, nice, pretty Mozart-to-be.
Bach got his point across by making the flute part—Fredrick the Great famously being and avid amateur flutist—one of the most difficult ever written for the flute of Fredrick's day. It's in the unresonant key of f minor, and has every out-of-tune and impossible-to-finger trill on the instrument.
A challenge tossed back to the king. But, of course, Fredrick, having wars to start and Voltaire to toy with, paid no attention.
So modern, that Fredrick, with his head-fake toward God and intellect, and his solipsistic rush toward glamor and action, with his hand-waving dismissal of intelligence of a kind out-of-date and no longer amusing.
She did not "suggest that black people are genetically inferior to white people"
According to Merriam-Webster, suggest means to mention or imply as a possibility. Let's look at what she typed:
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.
So, in her email, she suggested African-Americans were inferior because she mentioned their inferiority as a possibility. She suggested African-Americans were inferior because she mentioned the possibility that they were less intelligent. She suggested they were genetically inferior to white people because she used the word genetically. While it's true she did not explicitly use the words "white people," that can be inferred from her being a white person, presumably speaking to other white people.
If she had said it to a bunch of black folks, I would admire her balls.
I have a theory, essentially based on experience and empirical observation: At its core, music is a mathematical language, ranging from rudimentary (me) to advanced (Bach).
The key "IQ" factor is found in an additional trait; interpretive talent. In handwriting analysis, the math part is found in one's analytical ability (i.e., musical foundation), while the creative or artistic is reflected by one's intuitiveness.
On the analytical side, note that contemporary musicians are often technically inclined, the pure analytic. Add interpretive ability, the result is a talented musician. When interpretive ability is pronounced, a talent for composition.
Beyond the above combination, translation is complex, having more to do with inclination and personal preference as opposed to one's fundamental abilities.
I'm alarmed by the fact that Ms. Grace was excoriated --in public, no less -- for thoughts that she felt were private and made amongst friends, regardless of the value (or lack thereof) of these thoughts. And that a prominent local newspaper and her Dean (!) participated in this violation of her freedom of expression by the further dissemination of her thoughts is horrifying.
Can re-education camps be far behind?
There are no private thoughts any more.
You are really, REALLY alone.
"Die Gedanken sind frei" remains true.
Just don't tell anybody.
Here's Leonhardt playing the 6-voice fugue from the Musikalisches Opfer to which Theo Boehm refers.
"Johann Sebastian Bach was a towering genius who applied, whether he was aware of it or not, mathematics to music but with a creative flair that remains unsurpassed."
Willie Mays did the mathematics thing with respect to the trajectory of fly balls, as opposed to music, but that doesn't mean that such ability is the same thing as what people generally call "intelligence."
If being able to utilize, aware of it or not, physics to make batters unhappy is too prosaic, the same principle applies to, say, painters. That a painter can produce a work of artistic genius isn't commonly, at least in my experience, equated with intelligence.
It seems to me that the uncommon knack for writing music, or playing music, or fixing internal combustion engines is more commonly viewed as evidence of "talent" than "intelligence." Certainly the two are not mutually exclusive -- I'm looking at you, Mr. da Vinci -- and "talent" is not necessarily more or less valuable than "intelligence" but I think the words are used to describe different types of abilities.
"I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African-Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent" — and is publicly reamed."
There are two facts related to this that are know, to a very high degree of certainty, to be true:
(1): At least half of the variation in intelligence is hereditary.
(2): The mean intelligence of black Americans is below the mean intelligence of Americans overall.
We don't know why (2) is true. It could be that genetics plays no role whatsoever, and that the difference is entirely environmental (nutrition, parental education level, etc). We do know that at least part of the difference was environmental, because the gap has shrunk as the environment changed. It is, however, premature to rule out genetics as a contributing factor.
In fact, considering the fact that the various sub-populations of humanity were largely isolated from each other for thousands of generations, it would be shocking if there were no genetic differences in intelligence. That would imply that there were NO differences in genetic drift, mutation, or selective pressures for the genes affecting intelligence, among disparate groups living in very different environments, for thousands of generations -- even though there WERE differences in genetic drift, mutation, and selective pressure for genes affecting physiology and metabolism.
Personally, I like the term "neck-down Darwinists" for people who believe in that sort of thing. :)
The likes of Princeton's Peter Singer & University of Chicago's David Friedman have noted this possible implication of evolution. Singer, comments that 'A Darwinian left' would not:
"• Assume that all inequalities are due to discrimination, prejudice, oppression or social conditioning. Some will be, but this cannot be assumed in every case;"
Friedman in 'Who is Against Evolution?' notes there is no reason to expect mental traits to be identically distributed across physically different populations.
Further, University of Chicago Geneticist Bruce Lahn & Lanny Ebenstein last year wrote in Nature that the assumption of biological sameness across groups is becoming untenable.
'Let's celebrate human genetic diversity'
Nature 461, 726-728 (8 October 2009)
Race is a social construct. Why should we care ? Well when one of the students at one of top law schools in the country fosters such ignorance what does this say about admissions ? Birds of feather flock together, and I don't know about you but I don't want people who can't conceive of their own privilege running the country. This is someone who condones institutionalized racism and has the power to spread these ideas because of her supposed intellect. I read something earlier that I enjoyed: The majority of these (white) students are "born on third, thinking they hit a triple". Who helped build the america we today know and who has suffered ultimately in the process ?
We are descendents of Homo Habilus. Remains of Homo Habilus - Lucy's - were discovered by the Leakeys in the Hadar Valley in what is today Tanzania. Therefore, we Americans are all African-Americans.
I found an interesting picture of Ms. Grace at Harvard. She's the one in the middle in the hat.
What gene is responsible for intelligence? The BLSA should have appealed the argument to the scientists of the Human Genome Project.
Why is it not racist to note the difference in bone density between Caucasians and Africans?
Amber said
This is someone who condones institutionalized racism
Are you referring to the spineless Dean or the vociferous Black Law Students?
Finally, my chance to have the last word on an important subject. Everyone here overstates the importance of intelligence and the ability to quantify it. Newton and Einstein were about the two smartest people who ever lived. Newton was a foolish investor who lost all his money in the South Sea Bubble. And this despite the fact that he recognized it as a foolish investment. Einstein spent the last forty years of his life in a futile attempt at denying quantum mechanics. Smart people aren't all that smart, even in the areas that they are very smart. And beyond that, the ability to design a hadron collider doesn't help you remember the anniversary or what words to write on the card.....The trick is not to find The Truth, but to negotiate our way around it.
This fracas breaks two basic human rights as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: one's mail should be private, and one has the right to think and say anything one wants, without harassment of any kind.
Those who spread her mail, and those who contest her right to think what she wants, or to investigate any kind of idea, are the criminals.
Race is a social construct. Why should we care ?
Saying "race is a social construct" is disingenuous. That genetically distinct sub-populations of humanity exist is a fact; the "construct" part lies in how we group those sub-populations into races. The way you phrase it makes it sound like it is only a social construct that we consider, e.g., Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr to come from genetically distinct sub-populations. It isn't; their ancestors were genetically isolated from one another for tens of thousands of years.
We are descendents of Homo Habilus. Remains of Homo Habilus - Lucy's - were discovered by the Leakeys in the Hadar Valley in what is today Tanzania
Minor quibble: Lucy was an australopithecus. She predates homo habilis by a couple of million years.
And this despite the fact that he recognized it as a foolish investment. Einstein spent the last forty years of his life in a futile attempt at denying quantum mechanics.
He spent the last 40 years of his life in a futile attempt at *disproving* quantum mechanics. But if you think that means he wasted the last 40 years of his life, you really don't understand how science works. If people didn't do their damnedest to disprove accepted theories, it wouldn't be "science". It would be "religion".
But if you think that means he wasted the last 40 years of his life, you really don't understand how science works. If people didn't do their damnedest to disprove accepted theories, it wouldn't be "science". It would be "religion".
aka "global warming."
If only Einstein were blessed with the supple, pragmatic mind of Obama, what wonders he could have worked.....The IQ is genetic argument is a cul de sac. The question is not if IQ is on a hereditary gene but if it is on a dominant one. We're the products of two parents. If one is dumb and the other smart, which gene takes precedence. Here in America we're generally products of widely different gene pools. I understand that hybrid vigor is what gives Americans' their robust physiques. The dominant gene is the healthiest one. Wouldn't that same rule apply to the IQ gene, if there even is one.
***Amber said...
Race is a social construct. Why should we care ? ***
So is adolescence, but you wouldn't say it has no biological basis.
Forensic Anthropologists can identify a persons race from their skeleton and skull.
Also, self identified ethnicity corresponds to genetic clusters in 99% of cases. See studies by the population geneticists such as Hua Tang & Neil Risch
" Numerous recent studies using a variety of genetic markers have shown that, for example, individuals sampled worldwide fall into clusters that roughly correspond to continental lines, as well as to the commonly used self-identifying racial groups: Africans, European/West Asians, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans (Bowcock et al. 1994; Calafell et al. 1998; Rosenberg et al. 2002).
Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/
***The dominant gene is the healthiest one. Wouldn't that same rule apply to the IQ gene, if there even is one.***
There are likely to be hundreds of gene alleles of small effect each. The point is that genes occur in different frequencies across groups leading to average differences. An example is shown with ACTN3 in athletics:
"We know that genes influence many abilities. We also know that some of these genes vary considerably in prevalence between ethnic groups. One example is the RR variant of ACTN3, a gene that affects fast generation of muscular force and correlates with excellence at speed and power sports. The opposite variant of the gene is called XX. Tests indicate that the ratio of people with RR to people with XX is 1 to 1 among Asians, 2 to 1 among European whites, and more than 4 to 1 among African-Americans."
http://www.slate.com/id/2217571
As Professor 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
That genetically distinct sub-populations of humanity exist is a fact
I read somewhere that a majority of slaves sold/traded by Africans were genetically "inferior", ie. usually it was the sick lame and lazy that were shipped over to the Americas.
So I'm wondering if there's any merit to the idea that African-American's should be considered a sub-group of Africans when studying genetic differences?
Thought police in actuion at Harvard. No surprise here.
and this girl got into Harvard? are you kidding me? You bet they will think about screening out bigots by some clever questions added to the entrance process. I mean scientifically, did she ever ask herself if Black or white were terms that can be used in genetics? They are man made categories not scientific ones thats why race based research is a lie.. you cannot define black or white people, there is no absolute definition.
I mean scientifically, did she ever ask herself if Black or white were terms that can be used in genetics?
That's a silly-assed way of looking at it.
"Ann Althouse" isn't a term used in genetics, either. That doesn't mean there are no genetic traits possessed by Ann Althouse that distinguish her from other human beings.
There is nothing bigoted about saying "I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African-Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent". It would only be bigoted if there were undeniable evidence that no such genetic predisposition existed. No such evidence exists. Based on the information we have today, we can neither confirm nor rule out such a possibility.
Thus, any rational person shouldn't be ruling it out as a possibility.
In my view this is a tempest in a teapot.
The student said "I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent."
She never suggests that she agrees with the hypothetical only that she won't dismiss it.
He qualification "on average" clear is meant to allow for significant variation between individuals.
She never suggests that a general propensity to score less well on intelligence tests implies inferiority of any sort.
For myself, I judge people by their actions not by their IQ and the possibility that taken as a whole black folk score lower than "white" folk, who score worse than Asian folk on such tests does not mean that I think that I am better or worse,smarter or dumber, more sinful or righteous as a person, than any other human individual regardless of the groups we are identified with.
"It would only be bigoted if there were undeniable evidence that no such genetic predisposition existed. "
A bigot is:
"a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion."
I don't see how, for a person to have a belief that is proven to be false makes them bigoted.It merely makes them untruthful.
On the other hand, people who don't tolerate her having this belief, since they can't believe in the same, fit the label of bigots perfectly.
"These are Harvard students. Law students. Why not dig in and have it out and show your stuff? Why go to the nearest, biggest authority figure? Stephanie hurt me!"
This is what lawyers do, this is the essence of being a lawyer. The purpose of a lawyer is to whine loudly (the plaintiff) to the most powerful authority figure there (the government) or to use arguments to keep that figure from inflicting harm on them (the defense). What do you think a tort is, what do you think a trial is? In short, this doesn't surprise me at all, it is the core of lawyers and the law profession.
FLS
> According to Merriam-Webster, suggest means to mention or imply as a possibility.
What a silly game. Webster actually lists 7 different definitions, but you choose only one.
The fact is she didn’t say black people were intellectually inferior, or even say that she thought it was likely to be true. She just committed the academic sin of saying she had an open mind. And lord knows, we cannot have an open mind in an academic setting. /sarc.
What is becoming of this liberal paternalistic effort to uphold the collective sensitivity of every "group" against a basic individual freedom. A girl writes private email and she is chastised for it? Whether she was reporting a statistical figure or expressing an opinion, the level of public/administrative involvement is ridiculous. Last time I checked, we are entitled opinions.
Obviously, the opinion is subject to the context in which expressed. It should raise concerns if an employer refers to AA as inadequate. (he's predisposed to not hire them). But a girl, walking down a hall way can't look at a peer an feel superior? (regardless of how she might substantiate that in her head)
Oh, I forgot that most "Harvard" students don't usually comment (or reflect) on the intelligence of other students in other law schools..and even less on race.( i am a Law Student)
..."Law school is a community with shared ideals"
Maybe the Dean of Harvard Law, never went to Law School...the only Ideal a law student has is graduating law school and finding a job...ideals, for the most part, are incidental to your student loans...(unless daddy is CEO of Goldman Sachs..then you pay tuition with the Black Card..no pun intended)...
But I read a book one time, and it said something about negative freedoms....u know, those freedoms you have but only when you're in private padded and sound proofed room. Something about society converting on itself...maybe ill ponder on. Me? I would not have apologized. When an opinion is shaped by laws that persecute it, it stops being an opinion.
Define what is Black genetically (without using any phenotypical traits)? She would be hard pressed to do this therefore making her "intelligent"argument--unintelligent.
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