Dare We Cite This As An Example Of Epistemic Closure?

Harvard Law School has settled the question that cost Nobel Laureate James Watson his job a few years back - any suggestion of genetic or racially-based differences in intelligence is out of bounds.

William Saletan of Slate will no doubt be resigning in solidarity with someone or other; after the Watson imbroglio he explored the available evidence and came away concluding that the case was far from closed.  Saletan was widely rebutted (or at least, denounced), and he did distance himself from a controversial author he cited, Dr. Rushton.

Meanwhile, I am still puzzling over why the same white geniuses that invented these culturally biased tests couldn't rig them so that whites could out-score Asians.  Oh, well - I bet if Asians had designed these tests they would have been able to rig them properly.

College campuses are one of the few places where there might be a suitable context for such a debate, so I will snip this from an old post of mine:

Ronald Bailey at Reason closes with this exhortation:

No matter who turns out to be right in the nature versus nurture debate over why there is a gap in black/white IQ scores, the idea that we must strive to treat every person as an individual, not as a representative of some group or other, seems right to me.

Well, yes, but in that case, a lot of affirmative action would go by the boards, since the campus quest for "diversity" (other than political diversity) is all about group identities.

I must have written that before the Sotomayor nomination kicked the New Haven firefighters into the news.

Comments

[Clarice]

Ask any sentient American who has heard Mr and Mrs Obama speak and knows the normal entrance requirements at HLS whether either would have been admitted had the race question not been determinative.
And Dean Minow can protest all she wants. The thumb was on the scale when these two dummies were admitted.

I know brilliant young blacks--most, however, did not come up through el-hi schools which had their thumbs on the scales.They were educated in Africa or the Caribbean or in international schools where everyone was held to the same standards.
The more those thumbs go on the scale the lower the academic achievement level of minorities becomes.
That's my view and , along with Dr. Sowell, and some African immigrants, I'm sticking with it.

[anduril]

Was William Saletan "widely rebutted" or was he widely excoriated? There's a difference.

[Clarice]

Ann Althouse has a good point, too--why was this even a matter for the Dean to get involved with? where these crack students too shy to debate this among themselves? I sure wouldn't hire the complaining student to represent me.

[Clarice]

Oops**were these crack students**

[hit and run]

Oops**were these crack students**

Not if they seek to emulate Obama,of course.

They'd stick with pot and cocaine (in the more traditional powder form),"to ease the pain of [their] ongoing struggle to define [their] racial identity".

[rse]

One of the most brilliant law students I met in my big firm summer clerkship was black, HLS, and a former Rhodes scholar.

Years later I would think of him as the exemplar of someone who needed no AA and wondered what became of him.

Turns out he was conservative so when I next heard of him it was a US News story on how Congress was sitting on Bush's appointment of him. Tragic.

Excellent AT story by the way.

I'm afraid I didn't think what the 3L said was wrong so things at HLS must be contentious on this issue still.

[Tom Maguire]

Was William Saletan "widely rebutted" or was he widely excoriated? There's a difference.

Good point, and I had dropped the link to the article I had in mind - I have now added it it back, with a change to read "... rebutted (or at least denounced)".

[peter]

The wording of that Harvard chick's email was so tame. I do not completely rule out the possibility.

Anyway, OT, I like PowerLine's take on the "enough" Meme. LUN

[peter]

This thread is proof that Tom does something most of us don't-- read Anduril's comments

[bgates]

"I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African-Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent."

Nobody at Harvard would have blinked if she had left out the "African-".

If she had written "Republicans" instead of "African-Americans", they'd have given the kid tenure.

[Clarice]

HIT! The editor ran it and says the hits are coming in fast and furious. He's twittering it now.

[Janet hasn't made enough money]

Clarice & Hit - one of the commenters says, "At a certain point you've spent enough of my money."
LOL!

[Clarice]

That, too, would make a great video.

[Charlie Darwin]

It's remarkable how the left sneer at creationists but believe in creationism when it comes to human beings. There are hundreds of breeds of dogs that are easily distinguishable by their looks, intelligence, and behavior. My beagle loves to chase small critters and hates the water. The lab next door loves the water and wouldn't care if a squirrel sat on her face. They could breed, though it'd be awkward, sort of like an Olympic gymnast getting it on with Shaquil O'Neil. Yet somehow, Asians, Africans, Europeans, and Amer-Indians, who all evolved in isolation from each other, are all alike except for their skin color and facial features with no differences in intelligence or behavior.

[Clarice]

People are a bit more complicated than dogs and the only way to test scientifically whether the gap is nature or nurture is too draconian to be contemplated. I do know that the thumb on the scale is a disincentive to hard academic work; diminishes the respect earned by those who did do the work and excelled and is not working as its proponents suggested it would.

It is harming those for whose benefit (ostensibly) it was created.

[anduril]

This thread is proof that Tom does something most of us don't-- read Anduril's comments

Proof that TM is smarter than most of you.

[anduril]

Steve Sailer has been blogging on this case for a few days: Harvard pulls a Larry Summers on ex-crimethinker. Excerpt:

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.

[anduril]

Good point, and I had dropped the link to the article I had in mind - I have now added it it back, with a change to read "... rebutted (or at least denounced)".

I'd call "denounced" the mot juste.

[JM Hanes]

"Proof that TM is smarter than most of you."

Rather stating the obvious. I note that it was one of your rare two line posts.

[JM Hanes]

What a coincidence:

John Mearsheimer gave a speech at the Palestine Center in Washington yesterday and called Israel an apartheid state that has practiced ethnic cleansing and will likely practice it in the future.

[Rocco]

Maybe we'll find the answer to a great question asked by Professor K.C. Johnson of Brooklyn College, after reading Sotomayor's senior thesis.

First, I'm curious as to when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence -- as she says she does in the preface.

[anduril]

Steve Sailer has posted on this again, and here's how he starts out:

Did everybody get the latest Watsoning backwards?

A reader writes regarding the Watsoning of Harvard Law student Stephanie Grace:

What's really strange is that, if you read Grace's email with a modicum of care, it seems like she is writing to people who firmly believe that racial differences in IQ have a genetic basis, and she is telling them she's still not convinced. No one has pointed this out, as far as I can see. So will the addressees get outed/Summersed etc.?

[Rocco]

Why does Harvard University practice Grade Inflation?

The one you love most in this world needs life saving surgery. Which surgeon do you want performing the surgery? The one who earned his grade or the one who was given his grade?

[Ignatz]

--Proof that TM is smarter than most of you.--

Either that or he's into ball gags and whips.

[Jane says obamasucks]

I've got it too -

[anduril]

Cat fight?

Hmmmm. From Gawker:

Now tipsters and members of Above the Law's comment board (some of whom may be one and the same?) are saying Stephanie's original email is six months old, from a dinner in November—but a fellow law student dug into her email archives and sent Stephanie's "Bell Curve" screed to the Black Law Students Association this week as part of a "cat fight" with Stephanie. The email forwarder's name has been bandied about, but we haven't been able to verify it.

Does this tell us something, if true? About human nature? About female human nature?

[Thomas Collins]

The email itself is a thoughtful piece on how nature and nurture contribute to various human characteristics. The scandal is Dean Minow's response, which starts out as follows:

"I am writing this morning to address an email message in which one of our students suggested that black people are genetically inferior to white people"

Nowhere in her email does the student suggest that "black people are genetically inferior to white people," as Dean Minow's response asserts. From Dean's Minow's either ignorant or willful misreading of the student's email, I conclude that Dean Minow is unfit to be dean of a law school devoted to rigorous intellectual inquiry. I concede that Dean Minow's response may well demonstrate that she is consummately qualified to head a post-modern pseudo-elite institution.

Much of the rest of Dean Minow's response consists of the normal psychobabble one has come to expect from most college president and grad and professional school deans. Apparently, at pseudo elite institutions today, a politically favored group's feelings is the center of gravity of what is acceptable intellectual inquiry.

In the LUN one can access both the student's email and Dean Minow's craven or ignorant response (actually, it is probably both craven and ignorant).

[anduril]

Steve Sailer comments:

Libelous Harvard Law School dean on Obama Supreme Court short list

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/04/libelous-harvard-law-school-dean-on.html

from Steve Sailer's iSteve Blog by Steve Sailer

From an AP article from two hours ago about Obama's short list for the Supreme Court:

Among the others under consideration are federal appeals court judge Ann Williams, former Georgia Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow.

It's time President Obama makes clear his views on Dean Minow's actions in mischaracterizing and denouncing law student Stephanie Grace's email, which, rumor has it, was six months old and was released by another young lady as part of a dispute over a young man. Why is Dean Minow dragging the President's law school through the mud of a petty catfight? Besides, Mr. Obama has much closer ties to the Minow clan than he did to Henry Louis Gates, and we all remember how much fun that turned out to be.