The Left Suppresses Academic Freedom, Again
Steve Sailer reports on a lecturer at Leeds University who has been suspended from his job for publicly stating the obvious fact that IQ differs among races:
A lecturer who suggested ethnicity could influence average intelligence levels has been suspended from his job.
Dr Frank Ellis was suspended from his post as a lecturer at Leeds University [in England] pending disciplinary procedures. The university emphasised that the suspension was not itself a penalty but said it had been deemed appropriate given “the seriousness of the issues”.
The lecturer in Russian and Slavonic Studies told a student newspaper there was a “persistent gap” in IQ levels.
That there is a “‘persistent gap’ in IQ levels” is of course what makes Ellis’s offense so heinous.
More than 500 students signed a petition calling for him to be sacked. Many of them later demonstrated in Leeds against his views. Leeds University had previously said that those views were “abhorrent” but there was no evidence he had discriminated against students.
But on Thursday, university secretary Roger Gair said in a statement that details of the disciplinary process “must remain a private matter” between employer and employee. But he said three issues were being looked into:
- In publicising his personal views on race and other matters, Dr Ellis had acted in breach of the university’s equality and diversity policy, “and in a way that is wholly at odds with our values”.
- He had “recklessly jeopardised” the fulfilment of the university’s obligations under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 200 [+/-]
0.
- He had failed to comply with “reasonable requests” – for example, to apologise for the distress which his remarks on race and other matters have caused to many people, or to give an undertaking he would make no further public comments suggesting one racial group is inherently inferior (or superior) to another “unless there is no possibility whatsoever that anyone hearing or reading his comments might reasonably associate him with the University of Leeds”. Mr Gair said the university was “clearly and publicly distancing itself” from his comments.
“Given the seriousness of the issues I have been outlining, the vice-chancellor, Professor Michael Arthur, has decided to suspend Dr Ellis from his duties while the disciplinary process is underway,” he said. He added: “I must emphasise that suspension is not in itself a disciplinary penalty.”
Dr Ellis has expressed support for the Bell Curve theory, examined in a book by Richard Hernnstein and Charles Murray, which concludes that ethnicity can play a part in IQ levels.
He has previously maintained he has never treated a black student differently to a white student, and said he had “done nothing wrong”.
Labelling him a racist was “an attempt to close down any discussion” and an attack on his freedom of speech, he said.
The disciplinary process might take some time to complete – possibly months. The university said it intended to make no further public comment until it had been concluded.
August 11th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
This topic on IQ and intelligence has become worn, pardon me, over worn!! I consider the subject now pure hogwash!!
Let the professor speak. The same is being said about women right now, in the 21st century, and irrespective of their race. But the educated among us fully realize that such “reflections” on IQ is about keeping a certain segment of the population within the limits “created for them”.
Believing what is said proves more damaging than what really “is”.
March 19th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Vee,
You’re mistaken. Read some of the literature before commenting next time.
Gottfredson, L. S. (2009). Logical fallacies used to dismiss the evidence on intelligence testing. In R. Phelps (Ed.), Correcting fallacies about educational and psychological testing (pp. 11-65). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009fallacies.pdf
Gottfredson, L. S. (2005). What if the hereditarian hypothesis is true? Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11, 311-319.
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2005hereditarian-hypothesis.pdf
Also, gene alleles tied to high IQ are unevenly distributed amongst population groups (remember Chinese or those of East Asian descent average slightly higher than europeans):
“Below is a graph showing the prevelance of “beneficial” allele for each SNP for all population groups sampled in the latest Hapmap. I put the word beneficial in quotes because, as noted, candidate gene association studiees are notorioiusly unreliable. Why, then, am I bothering to post this at all? These SNPs are candidate genes in the first place because they are known to affect the brain in one way or other. Thus, if there is a pattern whereby the Japanese are consistently closer to the Chinese than either group is to the Yoruba, it shows that in the past 50,000 or so years of human evolution, alleles affecting the brain were not, as some people like to believe, magically floating free from the forces of genetic drift and natural and sexual selection.”
http://congenialtimes.blogspot.com/2009/02/evolution-didnt-stop-at-neck.html