Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1   Report Post  
Posted to rec.audio.opinion
Bret L Bret L is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,145
Default Harvard Pulls A Larry Summers On Ex-Crimethinker

(( Of course it's emphatically true that the average IQ of American
Blacks is less than that of average American Whites, but above sub-
Saharan African Blacks and Australian aborigines. You just can not say
that. Bret.))


Harvard Pulls A Larry Summers On Ex-Crimethinker

[Steve Sailer]

"From today’s Boston Globe:


E-mail on race sparks a furor at Harvard Law
Student regrets questioning the intelligence of blacks
By Tracy Jan
It was a private dinner conversation among three friends. The
topic: affirmative action and race. The debate presumably was
passionate, given the divergent opinions of the Harvard Law School
students.

* Full text of the e-mails

Stephanie Grace, a third-year law student, felt she had not made
her position clear, so she followed up via e-mail, according to a
person with direct knowledge of events.

“I just hate leaving things where I feel I misstated my
position,’’ Grace wrote. “I absolutely do not rule out the possibility
that African-Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be
less intelligent.’’

The lengthy e-mail, sent to her two dinner companions six months
ago, ignited an Internet firestorm this week when it was leaked and
first reported Wednesday by the legal blog abovethelaw.com, followed
by other websites.

Yesterday, Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law School, condemned the
e-mail that suggested blacks are [actually, it suggested might be]
genetically less intelligent than whites.

“Here at Harvard Law School, we are committed to preventing
degradation of any individual or group, including race-based
insensitivity or hostility,’’ Minow wrote in a message to Harvard’s
law school community.

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. She also said Internet reports alleging the
association had made the e-mail public and pressed for the student’s
future employer to rescind a job offer were false.

Grace did not respond to a request for an interview yesterday.

Grace, an editor of the Harvard Law Review, is headed for a
federal clerkship in California with Ninth Circuit Court Judge Alex
Kozinski. She graduated from Princeton University in 2007 with the
highest honors and obtained a degree in sociology, according to the
university’s registrar. A Princeton website said Grace conducted
research on how the racial composition of one’s freshman year
roommates influences behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions in
subsequent college years.

In her e-mail to her friends, she wrote that while she could “be
convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see
that [black people] are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under
the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. . . .

“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,’’ she continued.

She signed off on the e-mail with, “Please don’t pull a Larry
Summers on me’’ — referring to the former Harvard president who was
pressured to resign after faculty unrest in part because he suggested
in a 2005 speech that women lacked the same “intrinsic aptitude’’ for
science as men.

On Wednesday, Grace sent an apology to leaders of the Black Law
Students Association, the president of the student government, Minow,
and several faculty members.

“I am deeply sorry for the pain caused by my e-mail. I never
intended to cause any harm, and I am heartbroken and devastated by the
harm that has ensued. I would give anything to take it back,’’ Grace
said in the apology, obtained by the Globe.

“I emphatically do not believe that African-Americans are
genetically inferior in any way. I understand why my words expressing
even a doubt in that regard were and are offensive.’’

Leaders of the association declined to comment yesterday on the
controversy.

In her statement yesterday, 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.’’

Okay, so, if you are a Harvard Law Student, you aren’t allowed to
speculate in a private email message about possibilities that the Dean
doesn’t like? Especially not on issues related to major legal
questions, such as disparate impact, which was at the heart of last
year’s Ricci Supreme Court case?

I might say that Dean Minow should notice the “chilling effect” she is
imposing on First Amendment rights in an era when more and more speech
is in the form of private but archived and forwardable text messages.
But, of course, that would be naive. She is well-aware of that, and it
is her precise intention to reduce Americans’ freedom of speech on
certain topics.

Obviously, the student is correct on the facts and the Dean of the
Harvard Law School is acting in the fashionable ignorant and anti-
scientific manner. We can’t be sure at present whether the sizable
racial gaps in average intelligence that are an absolutely
indisputable finding of a century of intense social science inquiry
are partially genetic or not. But we sure can’t rule it out.

On the other hand, my view — not a very popular one, I’ll admit — is
that the genetic debate shouldn’t matter to the law. Whether or not
the racial gaps in behavior might be quite different in the next
generation, there is massive evidence that they won’t be terribly
different for individuals currently around today. And those are
precisely whom disparate impact law operates upon.

I’ve been following social science statistics since 1972, the year of
the Supreme Court’s Griggs decision that invented “disparate impact.”
Lots of things have changed since 1972, but the racial gaps in
behavior have changed less than almost anything else in our society.
Is that due to nature? Nurture? A combination?

I don’t know. We’ll find out eventually.

What we do know is that disparate impact-based affirmative action
doesn’t, on the whole, make individual beneficiaries smarter. You
would have heard about it if it does. The social scientist who came up
with an environmental cure for the racial IQ gap would be the biggest
superstar of his age. People have been working on that for half a
century, but nothing, so far, has done much good.

Moreover, we’ve had a four decades of affirmative action, and the
racial gaps are about the same. So, we can conclude that disparate
impact law doesn’t rectify biases in tests or the like.

Now, it could be that the one standard deviation gap in average
intelligence between white Americans and African Americans could be
wholly eliminated by some environmental change. Maybe if pregnant
black women ate more arugula, their children would grow up to have the
same average IQs.

Instead, it give individuals of some races preferences over
individuals of other races to make up for the lifetime lower average
performance of their group. Now, it’s possible that future generations
of their group will have higher average performance (if the prenatal
arugula diet works, say), but we don’t see much evidence at all that
disparate impact-based affirmative action is accomplishing that for
people already old enough to benefit from affirmative action.

So, genetics doesn’t really matter for the law. The reason, however,
that everybody acts like it matters is that it serves as a proxy for
the argument over whether the law giving affirmative action privileges
to individuals causes those privileged individuals to stop
underperforming. The burden of proof should obviously be on those who
argue against the equal protection of the laws, but they have such a
weak empirical case that they maintain their hegemony by demonizing
heretics.

On a less august, cattier note, is it true that the forwarder of Ms.
Grace’s private email is a libertarian activist and that the email was
six months old? "

http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2010/...-crimethinker/
Reply
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules

Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Larry Summers and Yves Saint Laurent BretLudwig Audio Opinions 0 June 13th 08 01:25 PM
Tomorrow, pumpkins pour throughout clever summers, unless they're sharp. Jeff Johnson Pro Audio 0 June 27th 06 08:11 AM
It can taste subtly, unless Blanche pulls twigs throughout Evan's plate. John McAdams Pro Audio 0 June 27th 06 05:00 AM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 10:28 PM.

Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 AudioBanter.com.
The comments are property of their posters.
 

About Us

"It's about Audio and hi-fi"