Charles Murray is a conservative political scientist and author, perhaps most famous for his book The Bell Curve, co-written with Richard Herrnstein. I confess that I haven’t read it, but I’ve certainly read enough to about it to know that Murray and Herrnstein’s hereditarian views of IQ have been strongly attacked by some other scholars, largely on the Left. Further, from what I’ve read of the criticism from people I respect, the book seems misguided and plagued with misconceptions about genetics (this, of course, is hearsay). But Murray has written many other books and articles about other matters, and in respectable venues like the New York Times and The New Republic.
Yesterday afternoon, Murray was scheduled to speak at Vermont’s traditionally liberal Middlebury College; he was invited by the campus chapter of the American Enterprise Institute Club. That, of course, got up the nose of many, and, according to the school newspaper, over 450 alumni protested, considering Murray’s appearance at the liberal school as “immoral and unethical.” A section of their letter gives the recurrent, tiresome, and incorrect claim that “free speech” doesn’t include “hate speech”. When you read sentences like the first one below, you know that you’re about to see a justification for censorship (my emphases):
This is not an issue of freedom of speech. We think it is necessary to allow a diverse range of perspectives to be voiced at Middlebury. In college, we learned through thoughtful, compassionate and often difficult discussions inside the classroom and out — conversations in which our beliefs were questioned and our assumptions challenged. We fully support the core liberal arts principle that contact with other intellectual viewpoints and life experiences than one’s own is integral to a beneficial education. [JAC: when you see this, you know a “but” will follow immediately.]
However, in this case we find the principle does not apply, due to not only the nature, but also the quality, of Dr. Murray’s scholarship. He paints arguments for the biological and intellectual superiority of white men with a thin veneer of quantitative rhetoric and academic authority.
. . . We, the undersigned, want to make clear to Old Chapel that the decision to bring Dr. Murray to campus is unacceptable and unethical. It is a decision that directly endangers members of the community and stains Middlebury’s reputation by jeopardizing the institution’s claims to intellectual rigor and compassionate inclusivity.
Needless to say, Murray’s talk didn’t go as planned. A protesting mob showed up and began interrupting Murray the moment he started to speak (see accounts here and here):
As he took the stage in Wilson Hall, students booed, rose and turned their backs to the stage before reading a statement in unison. Students broke into chants of “Hey hey, ho ho, Charles Murray has got to go,” and “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray go away!”
Murray, wearing a suit and tie, stood at the lectern and waited to be heard. The shouts continued:
“Your message is hatred; we cannot tolerate it!”
“Charles Murray, go away; Middlebury says no way!”
After about 25 minutes, and when it became clear the chants would not abate, faculty came onstage and announced plans to move the lecture to a different location. The administrators said Murray’s speech would be live-streamed so he could speak without interruption. Questions for Murray to answer could be submitted using a Twitter hashtag, they said.
But worse things happened after the talk was over, and these were confirmed by College officials:
Professor Allison Stanger was assaulted and her neck was injured when someone pulled her hair as she tried to shield Murray from the 20 or 30 people who attacked the duo outside the McCullough Student Center, said Bill Burger, a vice president of communications at Middlebury College.
Burger said people in the crowd, made up of students and “outside agitators,” wore masks as they screamed at Murray
. . . . About half an hour after the event ended, Burger said, the two, accompanied by a college administrator and two public safety officers, tried to leave the building via a back entrance and hurry to a car. But protesters had surrounded various entrances and swarmed to the fleeing Murray and Stanger as they exited, he said.
Once Murray and Stanger were inside the car — and after Stanger had been assaulted — the crowd began jumping on the hood and banging on the windows, according to Burger. The driver tried to inch out of the parking space but the angry crowd surrounded the vehicle and tried to keep it from leaving.
Burger said someone threw a stop sign attached to a heavy cement base in front of the car. It finally got free of the crowd and then left campus..
Talk about “endangering members of the community”! Murray would have offered words, not fists or metal objects, and had the mob left him alone, the only thing injured would have been some students’ feelings.
Those who consider words to be violence might ponder the actual violence that their mob behavior inspired: violence that was immediate, deliberate, and intended. Middlebury College and its students should be ashamed of themselves. Regardless of how odious Murray’s views were, the best way to deal with them is let him speak, ask him questions, or stage peaceful, non-disruptive protests or counterspeeches.
When did college students become so ignorant and twisted?
h/t: Don
As Chris Hitchens said, boring, dense, selfish people see identity politics as their big chance.
I did read “The Bell Curve” and have always felt that a significant insight has been lost in all the shouting. The shape of the bell curve dictates that if two populations that differ only modestly at the mean (or even just in variance) are compared for representation in the extreme tails of the distribution (say NBA players or physics professors at elite universities)one population will be vastly over-represented. The same applies, of course, at the left hand tail. And the fundamental argument does not depend on whether the differences are genetic or environmental.
A fat-tailed distribution could mean one group is over-represented at both extremes but since people only care who is at the top of society and not at all about who is at the bottom this will be dismissed as an attempt to justify inequality.
True enough. In fact, the ratio of two normal densities having the same variance but distinct means is exponential in the distance out along the tail.
Moreover, the rate of exponential growth is proportional to the difference of their means.
Yes. But that is not the only one I think…
I haven’t read the Bell Curve yet, but, from what I have gathered a significant amount of the reaction to it was of the “knee jerk” sort, from people with little or no expertise within these areas.
Or from people with very strong previous ideological biases like Stephen Jay Gould.
Many of the claims made was just plain wrong, scientifically outdated, misunderstandings or straw men.
One interesting aspect of this was (as far as I can understand) that few during this rumpus, took the time to ask the opinion of the real scientific experts.
In response to this Linda S Gottfredson wrote a statement in Wall Street Journal, “Mainstream Science on Intelligence, later published as an editorial in the Journal Intelligence.
Mainstream Science on Intelligence: An Editorial With 52 Signatories, History, and Bibliography
I too have read “The Bell Curve” (1994) and the Afterword (1995). It is a moderate, well documented, book with plenty of reasoned arguments which you may agree or disagree with.
Quote from the Afterword:
I guess there are taboos about discussing race (particularly in America), politics and equality – and nothing to do with science. How easily taboos trump rationality.
Absolutely true – the majority of the critics have not read or understood the book, which is boringly factual. As to genetic vs. environmental causes for IQ differences, it doesn’t matter to critics who believe that this cannot be discussed as it is politically impossible for such differences to exist. It seems highly unlikely to me that hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution in various environments has resulted in differences in many facets of our anatomy and physiology except for our brains and their functioning. It doesn’t change reality when you refuse to discuss it, and if there is a difference we ought to be doing our best to understand it so as to be able to correct what we can. I think environmental factors are probably more important here, but who can tell if we can’t study it, or even talk about it?
Such a willingness to impose what one feels ought to be true on the real world reminds me of another Murray bon mot – he described the No Child Left Behind as a law mandating that all children are to be above average. So true.
“…the majority of the critics have not read or understood the book…”
Deja vu.
When the fatwa against Rushdie was fresh and big crowds were demanding its execution, many commented that of the thousands of protesters, few had actually seen the book and almost nobody had read it.
Earlier, when Boris Pasternak was given the Nobel Prize and Soviet authorities orchestrated a campaign against it, letters by community members typically started with: “I have not read Pasternak, but, like every Soviet person, I am deeply outraged…”
The Bell Curve is one of the most boring books I’ve ever read, but there *is* some scollarship in it. I know that Steve Gould and others got their noses out of joint, and I partially agree with them, but the solution is to refute the book, not attack its author.
Pulling women’s hair? Since when has that been a valid form of protest?
Who knew this slope could be so slippery? Just imagine who’s next? I’ve heard rancor from some of left regarding even Jonathan Haidt and his views on Affirmative Action.
This crowd may not have even represented the broad “Left” view on campus, but the tactics used by other protestors in this vein have certainly inspired or provided justification for these actions.
The message is clear: If you don’t like what another person has to say or disagree with their arguments, just make a lot of noise and beat them up. So glad liberal principles are collapsing into tantrums and bullying.
Until I heard him on a podcast I thought ‘Haidt’ was pronounced ‘Hate’ rather than ‘Hight’.
That must be so disappointing for those who want to ban ‘Haidt speech’. All those puns they could have made…
The self delusion (or cynical hypocrisy) of the students’ letter is staggering. When this sort of reasoning is employed by students educated in a mature constitutional republic with the first amendment, it is easy to understand real Nazi stormtroopers and Mao’s Red Guards with their brutal behaviour and blind faith in totalitarian ideas.
Until colleges stand up for free speech and begin suspending/expelling students for violent violations of its principles, we can expect more of the same.
At some point, admin might have to start treating these little brats like the babies they are and ban any and all non- education extracurricular activities and clubs. And of course it might not be too long before the Alt Right gives these spoiled little brats a taste of their own medicine, eye for an eye and all that. I shudder to think how that might play out.
That film has already been made – though it’s comic gnius wasn’t much appreciated.
Were any of the perpetrators arrested?
If these Middlebury College students really opposed Mr. Murray’s views and believe they are racist, then why are they not there debating him? Wouldn’t they want to expose his faulty and/or racist reasoning? Or how about just not listening to him? The twisted logic in which they state that they are all for free speech, BUT Mr. Murray’s speech endangers the community is duplicitous. They might as well come right out and say we believe in shutting down all speech we disagree with and we will use violence as necessary if we don’t get our way. The left-wing dictatorship strikes again.
They don’t possess enough intellectual ability to debate someone of Mr Murrays caliber and this is the only way they have to object to his ideas, such a shame to see the level of discourse deteriorate to this extent in American colleges.
There’s an argument that we are dopamine addicts always searching for the next pleasurable hit of novelty. Apparently ‘taking offence’ generates such a hit, and being offended alongside a lot of other like minded people generates a bigger hit.
And like all addictions bigger and bigger hits are sought.
So, sad news. Expecting the ‘offended’ to use reason (other than in some tortured justification for their actions) is like expecting addicts to voluntarily go cold turkey. It happens, but not very often.
Because the regressive left’s justification for their intolerance, vituperativeness and even real violence is dependent on the threat narrative. Hence their claims of feeling unsafe and threatened by the airing of disagreeable views. I do wonder sometimes if this is the Reds having the last laugh. It is no secret that cultural Marxism was the brainchild of Marxists who grasped that they had little chance of winning mass support in the affluent West, so they devised a political philosophy that could give the comfortably off and spoiled people with daddy issues a feeling of moral virtuousness. They infiltrated academia with their disease vectors and now we see the result. This may appear to be a nutty conspiracy theory, but it looks like a very practical way of subverting the West and right in the Soviets wheelhouse.
>”Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray go away!”
I had never heard that Murray was anti-gay. In fact, Google quickly found me an article about Murray arguing (in 2012) for acceptance by conservatives of same-sex marriage.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/charles-murrays-gay-marriage-surprise
You’ve not got the hang of this alternative-facts thing, have you? 🙂
The authoritarian left is using the tactics of jihad to get their way. They left liberalism behind a long time ago. They disgust me. They’re a bunch of spolied brats still yelling “shan’t” then holding their breath like three year olds. They need to grow up and learn to engage with others.
You can’t go through life behaving like this whenever you disagree with somebody. This is the time to learn the tactics of constructing a good argument and debating effectively.
Except that this does not represent the left. Just some dumb kids at 1 college.
Sadly, whenever this kind of thing happens, the Right use it as proof to themselves that we are all like that. Which then makes them retreat even further into their own narrow minded views. Then we end up with 2 groups of fools we have to deal with.
That’s why we true liberals who believe in actual freedom (including freedom of speech, thought, and expression) need to keep speaking out against this. It only seems to be getting worse, and it seems to be part of the curriculum of many far left academics and even schools.
So don’t let anyone say, whenever we point these incidents out, that we’re talking about unimportant things when we really should be talking about Trump/the right/whatever else. We need to keep speaking out and show that real liberals are disgusted by these actions.
+1
Both are possible
Sorry Somite, this has been happening at many, many colleges and universities for a few years now.
And it’s overwhelmingly the left doing it. It’s going to be interesting to see who reports it given the fact that Murray is a fairly known writer.
No True Lefty
It’s on pg. 14 of the hard-copy 3/4/17 NY Times, mentioned in a bottom-Pg. 1 blurb stating that the event “ended in chaos.” Well, more specifically and accurately, it ended in assault and battery and injury, and in damage to property.
“When did college students become so ignorant and twisted?”
Caused by a profound sense of entitlement, and urge to dominate others, which is part of human primate nature generally (genetically)?
A result of “Amuricun Exceptionalism” in particular in this precious, self-regarding U.S. culture?
(Lack of) Parenting?
K-12 education? (I don’t see it from my over ten years full-time laboring in pedagogical vineyards. Are teachers/the system trying to too much protect students? Possibly. I subjectively (objectively?) perceive that college students are significantly more juvenilized (if not infantilized) than they were a generation or two ago.) Students don’t generally learn from teachers how to bully. I confess that I don’t keep quiet in response to a student hurling a gratuitous, egregious ad hominem insult, in a room full of students in public, at another student who has done nothing to deserve it.
As if readers here need another panel discussion on free speech and safe spaces (featuring Maryam Namazie and Sarah Haider):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ5cOdmoZNo
This is what is known as “whistling past the graveyard”.
How many universities does it have to happen at, and how many times, and against how many speakers, before you will accept that this represents the far left on many college campuses across America?
And in many other threads, you’ve been arguing for shutting down any and all speech that you personally deem “hate speech,” so why would you even have a problem with what these students did?
True, though it does seem to be happening more and more.
By no means are all lefties like that. But a lot are. Far more than can be dismissed as a fringe, because they seem to face no social repercussions for such behavior, indicating a large number of people who are sympathetic.
However, there is also a large number of people who quietly condemn such far-left violence, so I suppose it will have the unintended consequence of getting Mr. Trump re-elected.
Quietly condemning violence is hard to distinguish from quietly condoning it. Quietly ignoring it if it serves an agenda is to tacitly accept it, or at least to let people think that. Unless perpetrators feel social stigma they pay no cost. It’s on other, better, liberals to not let them feel their actions are acceptable within liberal circles.
Talk against violence is important among liberals, to prevent violent people from overtaking the Left. I think Prof. Coyne does a good job here.
Non-leftists are more interested to prevent the violent from overtaking the country, and address this by voting, which I think is appropriate. Elections produce government which can legitimately handle violence.
The violent leftists wouldn’t accept a stigma from non-leftists anyway; they would interpret it as just another proof that their opponents are numerous and vicious and need a good beating.
And because the Democrats keep pandering to the identity politics-obsessed crowd.
Sub. And you beat me to it. They have taken on the tactics of jihadist muslims such as Isis and others who hide themselves from recognition as they commit atrocities.
In addition: After learning that the Black Bloc was responsible for the violence in the most recent Berkeley protest, I question who is behind violence at other college talks and marches. Why are just colleges and students targeted? Why are far left speakers targeted? Must we assume these actions are taken only by young, ignorant, misguided students? What a tactic it would be to have an extreme right group (or groups) attend speeches and marches specifically to cause disruption and violence to have it blamed on those attending the speech or the marchers? Is this too far fetched?
A message came out of Russia today indicating that what’s happening here is like a return to McCarthyism, which reminded me once again of
the FBI taking photos of students attending a film on the HUAC at LA State in the McCarthy era. It also reminded me of Russian tactics in use now that we know of to affect the American political process.
This is not some right-wing conspiracy. We’ve seen tons of videos over the past couple of years showing very clearly that it’s far left students taking these actions. And I don’t think Berkeley was *just* Blac Block. They were just part of it, and I’ll bet many of the people in that group themselves were students there. Berkeley is an absolute breeding ground for regressives.
It’s amazing, when you think about it. I mean, Berkeley is the same place that was one of the major sites for the 60s free expression movement started.
There was an analysis of how riots form I read a while back making the case that once a few people who are willing to go too far start doing so, this to a small but significant degree makes following suit become acceptable to people who otherwise wouldn’t act in such manner. It’s essentially crowd mentality at work – once part of the group starts doing something, the rest join in. You don’t need a crowd full of violent people for a crowd to turn violent – you just need a handful, and they’ll turn the rest violent themselves.
I do agree that there is little to no evidence that the Black Bloc people are right-wing plants, but they ARE provocateurs that seem to make situations worse when they show up.
Or, in Terry Pratchett’s words…
“The kicking and punching stopped only when it became apparent that all the mob was attacking was itself. And, since the IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters, it was never very clear to anyone what had happened.”
Yeah. It’s hard to know what’s a realistic situation and what’s a crazy conspiracy theory anymore. Putin is doing stuff that were previously just in the imaginings of conspiracy theorists, and we know his tentacles are stretching far and wide in his attempts to undermine the institution of democracy to his people don’t start wanting it and also to keep his opponents off balance so they can’t unite against him.
Ann German noted there’s some more weird stuff on Trump’s Twi**er feed today as well. He’s paranoid and delusional which makes him ripe for committing McCarthy-type stuff. He just needs to set up a separate agency with Bannon in charge like the Austrian midgets blackshirts or something – they’d do his bidding without questioning whether it was OK behaviour.
And once again, the real problem is … Trump.
Worth noting that the actions that follow are in direct, multifacet contradiction to their statements made earlier. They say they care about well-being, and that is the reason to shut someone up, only to physically harm later. They say their goal is to not have him speak there, but when they want to stream it, or they are to leave, they prevent that, too. Unsurprisingly, such people are also hypocrites whose words and rationalisations matter for nothing, as they’ve demonstrated too many times.
It is also is (and was) the chief reason why I reject their “trigger warning” or “safe space” demands. Because no matter how reasonable some application may be, they made it overly clear that it serves a sinister, thought-policing, book-burning attitude.
Appalling.
If I’m not mistaken, Andrew Sullivan and Charles Murray are friends…and Murray attended Andrew’s wedding to another man.
But I guess the “racist, sexist, anti-gay” mantra is just too catchy….
“We think it is necessary to allow a diverse range of perspectives to be voiced at Middlebury….except for yours.”
The saddest thing about it is that the violence only gives the right-wing media more examples of just why conservatives should use the word, “libtard”…..
I think college students became more ignorant and twisted as soon as they decided that “feelings were more important than facts.”- there seems to be a lot of it going around in BOTH liberal and right-wing circles these days….have the Russians put something in the water?
Flouride.
I noticed that Murray was being talked about a bit, but I was unsure of why until now. As a Middlebury alum, I am not at all happy with this publicity for the old alma mater. I’ve always thought the “Bell Curve” brouhaha was overblown. But, at the same time, I believe it did become something of a shibboleth for racists during the 90’s and aughts. I would have been chuffed had the students chosen to either protest silently, or (better yet), sponsor a counter-talk. Still, I find myself constrained to say….go Panthers. Thanks.
Exactly the sensible thing to do would be to sponsor a counter talk or even a debate where they could explain in what ways the theory has been abused.
I’m not condoning violence.
BUT (there it is!)
I think what we’re seeing is backlash as people become more and more angered by the current administration. I think there is a feeling of helplessness and desperation. There’s the fear that discussion and debate didn’t stop a racist, misogynistic, greedy and willfully ignorant government to come into power.
I saw the same in the ’60s…When talk and peaceful demonstrations didn’t work, physical resistance became the next stage of dissent.
It may be that Murray isn’t completely on the Trump side of ideology, but he was perceived that way…and so one straw too many was added to the camel’s back.
The outrageously rude Congressional interruptions of Pres. Obama’s speeches seem to have taught many “liberals” (whatever that means) how to emulate bad behavior. Perhaps the decision to “live-stream” the talk was one we’ll all have to adopt in future?
Do we understand that the man never got out more than a few words before he was insulted by those who “already knew” what points he wanted to make?
Sounds like some discussions here, actually.
“There’s the fear that discussion and debate didn’t stop a racist, misogynistic, greedy and willfully ignorant government to come into power.”
But was there really much of this taking place during the campaign? Then, IIRC, the college vote was typically and maddeningly low. Plus these tactics on the part of the CTRL-left have been going on far longer than just the past political season.
I wonder, is there any chance that the faculties of the lib arts departments at schools where such newspeak flourishes will ever come to their senses and decide to crack down on all this pernicious nonsense? Scholar, heal thyself.
By “much of this” I meant the “discussion and debate” you referred to.
Indeed, many of these students are being taught this type of intolerance by their professors. I don’t think they’ll learn from their continued embarrassment; in fact, they seem to be only increasingly emboldened and ideologically rigid.
I utterly loathe Trump, and of course some of his supporters are racist or voted for him primarily motivated by racism. Many voted out of frustration with the existing system, economic desperation or ignorance. But if someone is racist they are not going to change their views because no one will even debate them and opponents think they can set up a parallel state. That just drives people further into their “tribes” which is the whole problem with fox news and social media and the alternative facts phenomenon. Some of the left are likewise embracing their own alternative facts.
The students arrogance of thinking they can just close down anyone who likes trump or is even deemed to hold conservative views per se is breathtaking – closing down more and more speech is the sort of thing that actually contributed Trump getting elected in the first place – and further empowers him to luxuriate in false truth.
Somer,
I think it is, in many ways, even worse.
The evidence seem to indicate that political affiliation is partly heritable, and has a genetic component, which means that hating someone for being a republican, is (to some regard) equal to blaming or hating a person with Downs Syndrome because the way he looks, or the way he acts.
In both cases, they are what they are, because they were born that way, and, they can not (in critical aspects) help it or change it.
This goes to the very core of the failure of the left (as I see it) that now comes back to haunt them, because the very foundations and assumptions on which they have build many of their public polices (e.g. the blank slate), are false, and, we are now beginning to reap the consequences of this, i.e. the Trump presidency.
Instead of taking a step back an reconsider and reevaluate, they attack even harder, raging as it is, against the proverbial windmills of nature.
Contrarily, I think any human society need to take the full range of human variance into consideration, and that means that not all dreamed up (Utopian) societies are possible, and that any realistic society will (probably) need to be a compromise (on both ends), and need to take into account that it contains both democrats and republicans.
While the labels are arbitrary, and has shifted during the course of history, what they represent are (I think) more invariant and more permanent.
This is one aspect that (to my mind) makes these attacks so utterly mindless, ignorant and futile.
Contrarily, I think any human society need to take the full range of human variance into consideration, and that means that not all dreamed up (Utopian) societies are possible, and that any realistic society will (probably) need to be a compromise (on both ends), and need to take into account that it contains both democrats and republicans.
Very well said, I couldn’t agree more.
Oh, I missed your comment there… Thank you 🙂
I saw the same in the ’60s…When talk and peaceful demonstrations didn’t work, physical resistance became the next stage of dissent.
All of a sudden, I have visions of Kent State…
“I think what we’re seeing is backlash as people become more and more angered by the current administration”
So how do you explain all the protests like this that took place long before Donald Trump became POTUS?
exactly
“I think what we’re seeing is backlash as people become more and more angered by the current administration. I think there is a feeling of helplessness and desperation.”
Do you really think these people are helpless and desperate? I’d say they were assertive, ideologically committed. It’s been going on long before the current administration. We’re at least 3 years into these (often successful) actions to silence free speech.
Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I’m not advocating violence. I’m just describing why it happens. Seems to me there’s been an uptick in this behaviour since the shrub was president. The obstruction of Obama, the election of Trump…it pisses people off. When they don’t see any other remedy they go ballistic. Did none of you live through the ’60s ?
“Do you really think these people are helpless and desperate?”
I think they FEEL helpless and desperate from their perception of their ability to affect the system. I think they feel overpowered by the Trump regime…so they lash out. We have come to the point now where anything that smells like bigotry gets slapped down. It’s reactionary IMO.
Except there hasn’t been an uptick. Even if this is the only site where you read about this stuff, surely you’ve noticed that this has been going on for years now. Trump doesn’t explain it at all.
There may have been some student violence in the 60s in response to govt policy but the situation was much more extreme:
* arrests of students for violent behaviour was pretty much assured – and police violence towards protesters much more common. these students who continuously disrupted the talk then assaulted staff and tried to smash the car would most likely have been carted off to lockup pending trail
* the Vietnam war had much more far reaching effects. There was actually an involuntary military draft in effect. Thousands -even millions were being subjected to napalming or bombing directly by the US govt. Racism against black people was overt, discrimination official in many states, lynchings not completely unknown.
Back in 1995 (in the Afterward to The Bell Curve) Murray said he was vaguely Conservative but made the point that the aim of The Bell Curve was to promote greater equality – if [certain people] were disadvantaged by genetics *and* the environment you could choose to modify the environment to make [American] society more equal.
It seems to me that a good share of the feedback against objectionable speakers should be turned on those who host them. They are the ones who really need clobbering.
They are the ones who really need clobbering.
…
Could you please explain?
Speakers shouldn’t be shouted down, they should be rebutted and those who sponsored them should be criticized and protested.
Too much energy is being focused on speakers. They aren’t even being allowed to speak. That excess “close them down energy” should go toward holding sponsors responsible for the message.
Ah, now I understand. We need to stop objectionable speakers. I guess that includes creationists, evolutionists, religious people, atheists, liberals, conservatives, pro-choice, pro-life, pro-gay, anti-gay…
Let’s just stop talking about everything.
Maybe you intended your response for another comment?
No.
“It seems to me that a good share of the feedback against objectionable speakers should be turned on those who host them.”
Wrong.
“They are the ones who really need clobbering.”
Wrong.
Wrong.
Both should be done.
You favor censorship and repression. You just want to do it obliquely, without street scenes to call attention to it.
You don’t seem to know what you’re talking about.
I’ve said repeatedly in this thread that I’m for free speech, against shouting down speakers.
No, you have said repeatedly you are for shutting down speakers indirectly. You want to “clobber” those who invite or host speakers you don’t like. “We don’t ban movies, we ban projectors.”
The one here who apposes free speech is you, Craw.
You don’t want speakers to be spoken back to.
So, you’re condoning violence not just against speakers the left doesn’t like, but now against anyone who even invites them?
Your comment is disgusting. You clearly don’t believe in free expression, and think anyone who doesn’t agree with you should be “clobbered.”
Hmmmm….I wonder what would happen if that became policy. Considering which party has power now in the US, which views and people do you think would end up suffering? It never seems to occur to people like you that the tools you wish to build to censor those you hate will inevitably be used against you if you are successful.
I should have known better that to use the word clobbered. I meant it figuratively.
So…force them to censor? How? And why? And how do you think that this power will always stay with the people with whom you agree?
Who is talking about forced censorship?
I’m for free speech and am disgusted that speakers are being shouted down.
I’m sorry if I’ve misunderstood your posts, but what is it you’re advocating, then? It seems like you’re suggesting protests like this should continue, except target the administrations of the schools and the student clubs inviting these speakers, so they don’t give the speakers platforms in the future.
If someone like Milo Yiannopoulos is invited to speak by The College Republicans, they should be criticized harshly for promoting his ideas – instead of deplatforming him.
You know that groups and organizations often invite speakers with whom they dont completely agree, right? Like, for the sake of debate, or intellectual diversity, or in the hope of learning something new/being challenged, or…….
Your grasp on “what you really meant” seems tenuous
If a speaker seems so obnoxious they need shouting down, don’t do it. Object by arguing back against the speaker’s ideas and by criticizing whoever sponsored them.
You know that speaking back – against the speaker and those who help promulgate a message, is also free speech?
If a sponsor explains that they don’t agree with the speaker, then fine. If they’re all about the message then they are one of the messengers and should be criticized. Criticism isn’t smashing and burning, you know.
And who will decide “obnoxious”? You should reelly think these things through before posting them.
The youths who pulled the professor’s hair to injure her neck had apparently got this deep insight by themselves.
Exactly! She got clobbered. This is what Curt Nelson is advocating.
Look at how someone who doesn’t use their own name uses someone else’s in a libelous way.
Come on over to our college and we’ll show you some hate speech. Free of charge other than the hospital bill you are likely to receive. Is juvenile delinquent the replacement definition for many college students. It use to be Junior High but it has evolved to later years.
Tennessee state republican legislators are proposing an ‘intellectual diversity’ office at UT that will encourage more conservative voices on campus. Those idiots at Middlebury are providing justification for it.
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/01/lawmakers-move-start-intellectual-diversity-office-ut/98601840/
It’s not a bad idea, considering study after study has shown that teachers at most colleges are overwhelmingly (as in, up to 95%) left-leaning.
Well first, in Tennessee, there are plenty of conservative faculty, and second, there is no evidence of conservative students being harassed or discriminated against. The biggest problem here is religious faculty imposing their beliefs on their students in the classroom.
But the intent of this proposal is to force UT to sponsor conservative speakers on a regular basis (4 times a year, according to the proposal). So in effect the legislature wants to do exactly what they’re accusing liberal faculty of doing, indoctrination. As usual, republicans offer solutions to non-existent problems, and in the process create problems.
Do you have a reference for that 95%? The highest I’ve seen is somewhere in the 70’s.
Also, the situation is far more nuanced. For one thing, the liberal bias persists in the sciences, even engineering. This probably doesn’t reflect purposeful political selection on behalf of employers but a variety of other reasons (including some research suggesting that conservatives self-select out of academia).
Surely, in the sciences, the main qualification for hiring should be mastery of the material, regardless of political bent.
I believe it was an article by Johnathan Haidt. I think the 95% referred to the Liberal Arts subjects, so your overall 70% may be closer to the truth.
That makes sense.
This violent protest of any speaker visiting Middlebury College is so far off the just college values I know that it is hard to believe! I could easily be called a liberal, as well as on who has absolutely no respect for those even suggesting white superiority or supremacy. But the crowd’s attempt to silence Charles Murray, a conservative political scientist and author,as a campus speaker, and then attack him and Professor Allison Stanger is beyond shocking. It is criminal! It harms the reputation of reputable, peaceful protests of truth from those opposing today’s ridiculous Trump presidential administration with its racist and right wing overtones.
Any idea, you know, what Murray actually, um, said? Surely he’s not still talking about the Bell Curve.
I couldn’t find any information about the content of his talk, but surely it’s not about that book. He’s still being punished for it, though.
You might want to consider actually reading TBC. For example, buy the e-version and search on the word “gene” and read the surrounding text. Just for fun.
Read the book? No thanks, I made up my opinion about this nazi already /s. Everyone just thinks that whole book was a racist diatribe. Everyone assumes that it was 800+ pages of “whites are just dandy aren’t they?” I was actually surprised about the reaction to the book after skimming through it and finding out that the majority of it had nothing to do with race.
It is an empirical fact that the mean black IQ hoovers somewhere around 85 in the west and 70 in Africa, it is also a fact that the Ashkenazim population have an above average IQ of 108/112 (almost a standard deviation above the mean). He never said that the differences were all genetic, he just examines the possibility of there being a genetic component to these differences. He also explicitly says that these are just averages and that it is irrational to judge a human based on the color of her skin regardless why these differences in IQ exist among populations.
He also argues that the higher average IQ of Asians compared to Whites is possibly due to genetic differences between Whites and Asians. How come he is not derided as an Asian/Jew supremacist? He has also openly stated that he supports gay marriage, earning him much push-back from the right. He has also accused Donald Trump of being racist. He has also said that women are better fit (on average) to procure high paying jobs in the future due to their higher conscientiousness and for being more people oriented on average.
Due I agree with him? Well, I think we should be open-minded and not traduce people for asking difficult questions. Even if he is 100% wrong, I do not think he is a bigot, at least I have no evidence that he is.
Toby Young (editor on the Spectator) has an excellent article on IQ, socioeconomic status and meritocracy. He doesn’t touch on race but points out an uncomfortable fact – meritocracies will stratify along the lines of IQ and other advantageous traits (assuming there’s a high hereditary component in these traits). He suggests that this is why social mobility seems to be stagnating.
======The Fall of the Meritocracy======
“The left loathes the concept of IQ — especially the claim that it helps to determine socio-economic status, rather than vice versa — because of a near-religious attachment to the idea that man is a piece of clay that can be moulded into any shape by society”
Toby Young.
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/09/fall-meritocracy/
…because of a near-religious attachment to the idea that man is a piece of clay that can be moulded into any shape by society”
Shoot, beat me to it!
That is a great article!
The left are hard to be understood in this respect. One would think that the traditional champions of the poor will be glad about the chance of gifted poor youths to improve their socio-economic status, and also about the likelihood that descendants of rich families without high IQ of their own slide down the social scale.
Good points, although I do have to point out that the protestors don’t actually care about Murray’s measurements. They’re not operating with rationally-debating-contentious-findings morality; they’re operating with religious-style sacred/taboo morality. And in their religion, it is taboo to make generalizations about IQ, no matter what those generalizations actually are.
Hence their hysterical reaction to Murray. They weren’t protesting him so much as trying to stamp out his blasphemy.
As PCC(E) noted in a comment above, Murray is still being punished for his book today. It’s particularly remarkable considering that most of what angered people was him simply pointing out factual information.
There are so many fascinating things scientists could be studying with regard to IQ, other heritable traits, and many other subjects, but stories like that of Murray and many others have scared the entire community away from wide swaths of subject matter and study.
This is what people mean when they say that certain actions, ideologies, and group mentalities result in the “chilling of speech.” And social media (and many of the online media outlets themselves) have only increased this chilling effect enormously. These days, your entire life and career can be destroyed by a single tweet. And it doesn’t even have to be your tweet, nor does it have to even be true (see Tim Hunt).
“He also explicitly says that these are just averages and that it is irrational to judge a human based on the color of her skin regardless why these differences in IQ exist among populations.”
Judging by public policy suggestions such as:
The book also argued for reducing immigration into the U.S. which was argued to lower the average national IQ. It also recommended against policies of affirmative action.”
it seems despite their virtuous assertions, the authors went ahead and “judged” humans based on their race and wealth.
People just can’t help themselves!
You really need to read the book.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/course/topics/curveball.html
I read Stephen Jay Gould’s review and although he ventures into political bickering towards the end of his review (thanks to policy suggestions made by the Bell Curve), I found his scientific and technical criticism of the book really enlightening and at this point, I think I can trust Gould’s account of the book.
And my point still stands. If IQ is not a trustable measure of success in social life at individual level, why suggest sweeping public policies such as “limiting immigration to preserve national IQ average”?
What is the point? I mean, if they had measured length of index finger across races and had suggested immigration or law reforms, no one would have taken them seriously. They go about and measure “IQ”, and suddenly everyone is scared about idiocracy or some other apocalyptic future which dumb people are about to bring upon us.
Stephen Jay Gould (SJG) is most emphatically not a reliable source when it comes to psychology, psychometrics and behavioral genetics and the history of IQ testing.
He could (to my mind) not prevent his deep ideological convictions to fatally taint his writing and reasoning in these areas.
His historic descriptions of IQ testing are incomplete, inaccurate, and in some aspect directly false, which can easily be proved by going back and study the original sources.
No, H. H. Goddard’s study on immigrants on Ellis Island was not the cause for restriction and quotas set on immigrants. It was the other way around. Goddard was invited to Ellis Island by the immigration officials 1910 because they had a very serious problem.
The Congress had in 1882 passed a law restricting immigration for mental defectives, including “lunatics”, “idiots” and other likely to become public charges. In 1903 the Congress added, insane, epileptics, beggars and anarchists and in 1907 it added imbeciles, feeble-minded and persons with physical and mental defects that could interfere with their capacity to earn a living.
The problem that the immigration officers had was how to identify these in a rapid way, and, they hoped Goddard’s expertise could help them enforcing the laws already in existence!
Another aspect seriously misunderstood is that the Binet test Goddard used was designed for use with children, and the calculation of the IQ quotient relied on estimates of mental capacity in relation to chronological age, and could not be used beyond 12-14y of age when that growth stopped.
When the test was (nevertheless) used for individuals older than that, the chronological age was set to 13 by default. This is very important to know or understand before people get upset with the results.
Another things was, that the persons Goddard tested at Ellis Island was in several instances people the immigration officials suspected to be feeble minded, so they could in no regard be deemed a representable sample of Russians or Italians, or anyone else. And as far as I know Goddard never claimed it was, quite to the contrary, he was well aware of this.
And so on…
Gould’s conclusions and inferences regarding Samuel Morton have in light of a modern remeasuring of the skulls also been proven wrong. In a deeply ironical twist, it now seems that the person who failed in letting his biases influence his judgment, was SJG.
Scientists Measure the Accuracy of a Racism Claim
And, most importantly, scientific research and data since then, has proven him wrong.
Plomin, Robert, et al, Top 10 Replicated Findings From Behavioral Genetics, Perspectives on Psychological Science 11(1):3-23, January 2016
I fail to see how your response rejects Gould’s criticism, especially the first half of it where Gould specifically addresses TBC’s premises and research methods (for example the shortcomings in their regression techniques). I wish he had not ventured into politics. But I can’t blame him, given the Bell Curve suggests policies right and left!
I have read multiple critiques and Murray’s responses to them. The more I read, the more I see that the Bell Curve’s underlying research does not support the strong claims its authors peddle to receptive audience all the time.
I think you misunderstand.
Steven Jay Gould’s critic of “The Bell Curve” is wrong (among other things) because his underlying assumptions are wrong. If your underlying assumptions are wrong, no matter how well you reason, your conclusions will also be wrong.
Many of his underlying assumptions are in turn presented and made explicit in his earlier book the “The Mismeasure of Man”, and, I made explicit several examples of his lack of rigor, objectivity, scientific knowledge and expertise, that (taken in its full extent) fatally undermines not only his assumptions, but also his credibility in this regard.
And, the question is not what you believe, but, what you can (scientifically) prove!
Just to repost Linda S Gottfredson statement concerning “The Bell Curve”, and the many failures made by commentators in regard to human intelligence and the scientific evidence.
Mainstream Science on Intelligence: An Editorial With 52 Signatories, History, and Bibliography
And, from what I can gather, virtually everything you have claimed or stated in the comments you have made in this thread, are in direct conflict with the scientific data presented in Gottfredson’s and Plomin’s article.
Have you even read them?
Gould is not wrong at least about one point:
That Murray and Herrnstein essentially deem intelligence both a genetic and heritable, and immutable.
In this interview,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMCjkfp_9JQ
Murray himself boasts about how “the left” believes man is made of plastic and can be transformed into anything, while his humble findings supposedly show that this is not the case! Talk about straw man and cartoonish depictions of the other side’s positions.
Even if Gould’s assumptions about Murray’s premises are wrong, what about Murray and his co-author’s failure to impartially report their findings?
From Gould:
“…But, in violation of all statistical norms that I’ve even learned, they plot only the regression curve and do not show the scatter of variation around the curve, so their graphs do not show anything about the strength of the relationships—that is, the amount of variation in social factors explained by IQ and socioeconomic status.
…
so a 0.4 correlation yields an R–squared of only .16. In Appendix 4, then, one discovers that the vast majority of the conventional measures of R2, excluded from the main body of the text, are less than 0.1.”
—–
Could you please explain how these claims suffer from ideological bias?
I may have to tone down my criticism of Murray a little bit. But I think the main point stands. Murray (as I think he admits himself) has NOT solved the old-age problem of nature vs nurture vis-a-vis human intelligence. He has NOT established causality or anything near to it in his research. But instead of reporting this rather uninteresting result, he and his friends go about disseminating misinformation about how America needs a new welfare, racial, social, and political policies.
This is why I compare their “science” to intelligent design. Both have a magic supreme (God, IQ) which can beautifully and simply solve and explain all the difficult problems of the respective scientific field.
Thanks, but I prefer to remain skeptic of easy answers.
Don’t most countries restrict immigration to those that are seen as advantageous to their society/economy? Qualifications, skills and age seem quite legitimate differentiators. Age, for example, would bar me from residency in Canada, Australia or New Zealand.
Yes, but is IQ a legitimate measure to base immigration policy on?
I’m not aware of any country which uses a bare IQ score (but academic qualifications will tend to align with IQ).
nothing you have stated shows me that they judged indaviduals based on skin color. arguing against afermative action is not judging indaviduals, neither is objecting to immigration based on IQ
Not only do Asians have a higher average IQ, but they are being discriminated against in academic admissions under the guise of “diversity,” causing them to need a higher placement exam score than Caucasians at highly selective institutions. Yet they are an even smaller minority than African Americans and Hispanics.
But because they do “too well” they aren’t considered “real minorities” by many academics and some believe they do a disservice to other minorities by performing well(my son was taught this several years ago in an Ethnic Studies course).
All of the racial slurs, yet discrimination being justified by the defenders of the downtrodden because Asians value achievement. Gotta love the hypocrisy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve
If the above Wikipedia article’s review of the book is accurate, then Bell Curve is just another miserable attempt at reviving the “scientific racism” theories of the first half of the twentieth century.
If these “scientists” had actually identified an “IQ” gene and had measured its effect on certain aspects of individual life, then they might have been taken seriously. Instead, they go about finding statistics about crime, joblessness, etc and then try relating those statistics to race. Given the high amount of uncertainty surrounding those stats, the question is what is the point?
If IQ is really a good predictor of criminality or productivity of an individual, why stop at race level? Why not measure everyone’s IQ (including the author of Bell Curve and other race-realists) and put them in their proper place in the society? Who will decide about such matters anyways?
I might be wrong, but I really think this “IQ science” is the statistical parallel of “intelligent design” science.
I’ve always thought IQ was a factor in success in life, but not the only one.
20 or so years ago there was an article in Scientific American commenting on a substantial reduction in crimes of violence in the US. The author’s opinion was that it was due to Roe vs Wade: would be criminals were not being born at the same rate as before 1973 – their mothers were aborting them.
IQ might have some limited value at individual level. I am not sure, but I guess it could be a factor in decisions about the best strategy for teaching math or science to the child.
“IQ science” is whole another story. In addition to its clear racial and social agenda, the whole thing more or less reminds me of how intelligent design “scientists” use God to answer every question real science has not been able to answer so far. The answers are simply too intellectually lazy to be taken seriously.
I like Wikipedia but it is edited by those who care about the subject and may be biased. It’s good as a stepping off point but you really need to read the book.
I’ve often wondered what changes would appear in a ‘current version’ of The Bell Curve, but have sadly concluded that Edition 2 would attract even more uninformed criticism.
Okay, what about this (from Stephen Jay Gould’s critique of the book http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/course/topics/curveball.html)
The general claim is neither uninteresting nor illogical, but it does require the validity of four shaky premises, all asserted (but hardly discussed or defended) by Herrnstein and Murray.
Intelligence, in their formulation,
1- must be depictable as a single number, 2- capable of ranking people in linear order,
3- genetically based, and
4- effectively immutable.
If any of these premises are false, their entire argument collapses.
Maybe read the critique of SJG’s take on the book given to you above in a response by FiveGreenLeafs.
You can’t rely on one biased person and Wikipedia to make the kind of sweeping and damning statements you’ve made here.
SJG was hardly unbiased in his review. You really need to read The Bell Curve if you wish to understand what it actually said rather than what people-with-agendas-of-their-own reported.
If you only read the Conclusion of The Bell Curve you will realise that the four shaky premises you mention are gross distortions of what the authors actually said.
Foxer clearly doesn’t want to read the Bell Curve, but wants to read analyses of it that agree with his/her preconceived notions.
I also have not read the book, but from reviews I got the impression that they didn’t stop at race level.
there is no “IQ gene”, just like there is no “violence gene”. There are most likely dozens of genes that are responsible for giving people their IQ when combined with environmental factors. nothing in TBC sais anything about a single IQ gene. and all races have the same genes, just different mutations of those genes. And no one ever said that iq predicts 1,000,000 percent of the outcomes in ones life, but it is far from useless or arbitrary. Also, there needs to be a better distinction between morality and fact. It might be great if cancer were not real, but denying its existance does not make it go away. And acknowledging unfortunate truths does not lead to immoral conclusions like messuring every ones IQ and putting them in their place. that is a non-sequitur.
Well, my argument was that IF these esteemed scientists had actually found a physical equivalent for the concept of IQ (genes, something tangible in the brain, etc) their argument would have had much more weight.
With what they have, the best they can (and should) claim is that IQ *might* be a real property and *might* have something to do with individual success if all environmental variables could be controlled for.
But what would be the fun in that? They go about selling doom and gloom scenarios about an apocalyptic sci-fi future and claim “science” has proved them right.
Science has done no such thing and if anything, the commercial success of The Bell Curve and similar commentariat only shows how some clever people can circumvent or game the peer review process to obtain fame and wealth while thousands of honest researchers have to live in constant fear of losing their jobs or positions because their findings are not so groundbreaking.
To play Devil’s Advocate, we have identified sex chromosomes which (in most instances) determine sexual physiology. But that doesn’t prevent current Sociological thought from redefining gender.
What is the difference between the students behaviour and Mussolini sending thugs to break up opponents political rallies?
The difference is that the students will most likely never suffer any repercussions for their fascistic actions.
I wonder if driving over them could be considered self-defense …
Just a whisper from the darkness under the stairs in my head.
(I have stairs in my head to reach the different levels of consciousness. The elevator broke down too often.)
I think it would be self-defense. According to the report, things were beginning to look like a prelude to lynching. I am glad, however, that nobody was gravely injured, including the attackers. But they should suffer other consequences.
Remember the student at the University of Illinois (or was it Missouri?) who went on a “hunger strike” to protest the school’s supposed racism, and specifically the Dean? Video ended up surfacing contradicting his main claim against the Dean: that the Dean drove over him in his car during a protest. The video showed the student in question literally throwing himself onto the roof of the man’s car and then jumping off and cheering, as if having gained some victory.
The best part of this student and his claims of oppression: it turned out his father is an executive at a railroad company, and had earned $8 million in salary in just the previous year alone.
PLEASE STOP SENDING ME MESSAGES! My mail box is crammed with them!!!!!!!!
Thomas “Dennie” Williams
Reblogged this on Flying Tiger Comics.
“When did college students become so ignorant and twisted?”
When we allowed Gender/Feminist Studies professors to indoctrinate their kids with marxist and postmodernist ideas. When we turned a blind-eye to the overwhelming amount of fearmongering propaganda coming from there for the past 30 years. But I doubt anything will come of me pointing out the obvious…
We’ll keep acting like SJWs are a tiny minority, and aren’t just the tip of the iceberg of a problem conservatives, classical liberals, MRAs, RedPilled people, evolutionary psychologists, GamerGaters, etc., have been incessantly pointing at and being labelled bigots for.
Maybe we shouldn’t preach liberal platitudes as a form of intellectualism to kids looking for ideals and direction in life. But what do I know, I’m a transphobic racist misogynist islamophobe.
Where does this penchant for mindlessly chanting rhyming phrases over and over come from? It as if they believe doing this lends their “ideas” weight or credibility.
I don’t get it, in fact I am somewhat repulsed by it, regardless of the issue being chanted about.
Chanting seems to be universal. Reinforces group identity? Solidifies core beliefs?
Middlebury College
I’ve not been able to verify this but this has been widely circulated as the numbers from each department signing an anti Murray letter
Foreign Languages 22
English & Writing 6
American Studies 5
History 5
Sociology & Anthropology 4
Gender/ Feminist Studies 3
Economics 2
Art&Architectural History 2
Political Science 2
Philosophy 2
Education Studies 1
Food Studies 1
Environmental Studies 1
Film & Media Culture 1
Geography 1
Math&Physical Sciences 0
attempt to make table more readable
Foreign Languages__________22
English & Writing___________6
American Studies____________5
History_____________________5
Sociology & Anthropology____4
Gender/Feminist Studies_____3
Economics___________________2
Art&Architectural History___2
Political Science___________2
Philosophy__________________2
Education Studies___________1
Food Studies________________1
Environmental Studies_______1
Film & Media Culture________1
Geography___________________1
Math & Physical Sciences____0
damn
Seems as if some of those folk need to read Orwell as it was intended instead of using it as a training manual for their “utopian” society.
I would like to submit an entry from Wikipedia to remind readers as to why Louis Terman developed the intelligence quotient in 1916. Please note that “Terman promoted his test – the “Stanford-Binet” – as an aid for the classification of developmentally disabled children.” Although classification (i. e., labeling) of children has fallen into disrepute, I assume from the use of the word “aid” that Terman had benevolent intentions in developing the I. Q. test.
The third paragraph reports “The first mass administration of I. Q. testing was done with 1.7 million soldiers during World War I….
Recruits who earned scores of “A” would be trained as officers while those who earned scores of “D” and “E” would never receive officer training. The work of psychologists during the war proved to Americans that intelligence tests could have broader utility. After the war Terman and his colleagues pressed for intelligence tests to be used in schools to improve the efficiency of growing American schools.”
Again, I hesitate to suggest that Terman’s intentions were benevolent because someone is likely to play the cynic and disagree. The use of the I. Q. test for military training begs the same argument about which many people have jested, i. e., that no one wants to encounter in the operating room a surgeon who has graduated last in his medical school class.
I was watching Charlie Rose this evening (3/6/17), and my ears perked up when I heard the guests mention Middleton in the same breath as Berkeley. I would recommend the discussion as a balanced approach to the subject of student unrest at colleges and universities throughout the country during the past five years.
I was sorry to hear that my college has changed so much in the years since I graduated. I certainly knew that Middlebury was a prestigious college when I was a student, but it was not all “hoity-toity.” I had some friends who were very wealthy, but I also had friends who were at school on scholarship.
Within the last couple of decades, Middlebury has begun to lean more in the direction of the wealthy. I had planned to give $25,000 to the college but withdrew my support when, after two in-person visits with administrators who were in the alumni gift-giving office, no one responded to my offer. I came to the conclusion the college receives so many donations in the million-dollar range that a substantial but smaller gift is no big deal.
If Middlebury has become such an elitist school that students can see only their own privileged lifestyles and opinions as valid, then I can no longer respect my alma mater. Please let all of us know what the administration plans to do in response to this terrible incident on campus.
(Wikipedia text regarding Louis Terman):
Terman published the Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Scale in 1916 and revisions were released in 1937 and 1960.[4] Original work on the test had been completed by Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon of France. Terman promoted his test – the “Stanford-Binet” – as an aid for the classification of developmentally disabled children. Early on, Terman adopted William Stern’s suggestion that mental age/chronological age times 100 be made the intelligence quotient or IQ. Later revisions adopted the Wechsler cohort-norming of IQ.
Revisions (mostly recently the fifth) of the Stanford-Binet remain in widespread use as a measure of general intelligence for both adults and for children.
The first mass administration of IQ testing was done with 1.7 million soldiers during World War I, when Terman served in a psychological testing role with the United States military. Terman was able to work with other applied psychologists to categorize army recruits. The recruits were given group intelligence tests which took about an hour to administer. Testing options included Army alpha, a text-based test, and Army beta, a picture-based test for nonreaders. 25% could not complete the Alpha test.[5] The examiners scored the tests on a scale ranging from “A” through “E”.
Recruits who earned scores of “A” would be trained as officers while those who earned scores of “D” and “E” would never receive officer training. The work of psychologists during the war proved to Americans that intelligence tests could have broader utility. After the war Terman and his colleagues pressed for intelligence tests to be used in schools to improve the efficiency of growing American schools.
Please do NOT submit comments this long any more; see the Roolz. This is not a comment but an essay.
What is amazing is that Murray’s critics are still hung up on the twenty five year old “The Bell Curve” and either ignorant or dismissive of his 2010 book “Coming Apart”, a very important volume IMO which lays out the social and cognitive stratification of American society and which anticipates what happened in this election. It’s a must read if you want to understand how American society is fracturing. The biggest irony of course is that none of the protestors have probably even glanced at either book. I have said this before and I say it again: the decline of this country will not just be at the hands of the fascist right but at those of the illiberal left which eats its own and disdains actual discussion and debate.