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posted by on Wednesday March 08 2017, @02:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the freedom-to,-not-freedom-from dept.

Charles Murray, controversial author of The Bell Curve, which promoted links between intelligence and race, was shouted down by protesters at Middlebury College last Thursday. PBS reports:

Murray had been invited by Middlebury's student group affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank at which Murray is a scholar. [...] Prior to the point when Murray was introduced, several Middlebury officials reminded students that they were allowed to protest but not to disrupt the talk. The students ignored those reminders and faced no visible consequences for doing so. [...]

After the students chanted for about 20 minutes, college officials announced that the lecture would not take place but that Murray would go to another location, which the college didn't name, and have a discussion with a Middlebury faculty member — livestreamed back to the original lecture site.

According to Middlebury officials, after Murray and the professor who interviewed him for the livestream attempted to leave the location in a car, some protesters surrounded the car, jumped on it, pounded on it and tried to prevent the car from leaving campus.

Other sources note that political science professor Allison Stanger, who agreed to moderate the discussion, was attacked while accompanying Murray to the car, ultimately requiring treatment at a hospital for neck injuries caused by protesters pushing her and pulling her hair.

Murray himself later gave an account of his experience on the AEI blog. He emphasized that Middlebury's administration and staff displayed in exemplary ways their encouragement of free speech:

Middlebury's stance has been exemplary. The administration agreed to host the event. President Patton did not cancel it even after a major protest became inevitable. She appeared at the event, further signaling Middlebury's commitment to academic freedom. The administration arranged an ingenious Plan B that enabled me to present my ideas and discuss them with Professor Stanger even though the crowd had prevented me from speaking in the lecture hall. I wish that every college in the country had the backbone and determination that Middlebury exhibited.

But Murray notes that the outcome was very different from his previous controversial appearances:

Until last Thursday, all of the ones involving me have been as carefully scripted as kabuki: The college administration meets with the organizers of the protest and ground rules are agreed upon. The protesters have so many minutes to do such and such. It is agreed that after the allotted time, they will leave or desist. These negotiated agreements have always worked. At least a couple of dozen times, I have been able to give my lecture to an attentive (or at least quiet) audience despite an organized protest.

Middlebury tried to negotiate such an agreement with the protesters, but, for the first time in my experience, the protesters would not accept any time limits. [...] In the mid-1990s, I could count on students who had wanted to listen to start yelling at the protesters after a certain point, "Sit down and shut up, we want to hear what he has to say." That kind of pushback had an effect. It reminded the protesters that they were a minority. I am assured by people at Middlebury that their protesters are a minority as well. But they are a minority that has intimidated the majority. The people in the audience who wanted to hear me speak were completely cowed.

The form of the protest has been widely condemned even by those who vehemently disagree with Murray, as in the piece by Peter Beinart in The Atlantic that claims "something has gone badly wrong on the campus left." He argues strongly that "Liberals must defend the right of conservative students to invite speakers of their choice, even if they find their views abhorrent."

Meanwhile, student protesters have responded with their own account, disclaiming the hair-pulling incident as unintentional and "irresponsible" but condemning the Middlebury administration for their "support of a platform for white nationalist speech." They further claimed "peaceful protest was met with escalating levels of violence by the administration and Public Safety, who continually asserted their support of a dangerous racist over the well-being of students."

Personal note: My take on all of this is that the actual subject of Murray's Middlebury talk has been lost in the media coverage, namely his 2012 book Coming Apart, which (ironically) is a detailed discussion of the problems created by a division of the intellectual elite from the white working class. He explicitly dilutes his previous connections of social problems with a black underclass by noting that many of the same issues plague poor white communities. While his argument is still based on problematic assertions about intelligence and IQ, the topic of his book seems very relevant given recent political events and issues of class division. There's some sort of profound irony in a bunch of students at an elite school refusing to allow a debate on the causes and results of division between elite intellectuals and the (white) working class. I personally may think Murray's scholarship is shoddy and his use of statistics frequently misleading (or downright wrong), but I don't see how that justifies the kind of threats and intimidation tactics shown at this protest.


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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 08 2017, @04:39PM (5 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 08 2017, @04:39PM (#476517)

    That's actually not a bad paraphrase of the conclusion of the book, as I read it originally 20 years ago.

    Being ivory tower academics the authors got into other ivory towers, and one specific example was economic models assuming a billion Africans in Africa will generate quite as much economic innovation and growth as a billion asians or whatever are simply doomed to fail.

    I have to agree with some of that, after the book was published FOSS goes mainstream and its still to this day basically an asian/white male hobby.

    Look at the incredible success (sarcasm) of Zimbabwae's economy once they genocided all the white culture, and now south africa is starting to replicate that. Some day soon Capetown is going to be just another Somali of pain of suffering, but at least they won't have the whites around once they're all killed. Actually its pretty much like Haiti, that beacon of prosperity and human joy.

    I seem to recall the conclusion, or a reaction to the book, maybe, also go into policy. "everyone knows" the meme that Libertarianism only works in a population with an IQ over 110, which is why it seems to sensible on college campuses, not so much outside. But there was an argument that democracy maybe requires around IQ 100 and there's genetic IQ based reasons why no amount of imperialism can force some parts of the world to implement western democracy. No matter how many times white men with rifles beat and shoot them, they just won't do democracy right. The book implies they just don't have the mental horsepower and are not going to and punishing them by trying to force it onto them is as inhumane as whipping a chihuahua dog for not pulling an arctic sled like a huskie, or for that matter, whipping a huskie for going into heat exhaustion in the tropics, and no amount of whipping or agonizing about the political injustice of the problem will ever fix the fundamental problem. There were echos of white mans burden such that for genetic reasons if white people don't like watching African babies die of starvation and malaria well we're stuck fixing it because they're not ever going to be capable, either we fix it or we watch it happen into perpetuity. The stone age ended a long time ago, just not evenly distributed across geography or, across races.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @06:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @06:17PM (#476597)

    You cannot fix it. Any attempt to fix it will result in overpopulation, and make the problems 10x worse for next generation.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @07:24PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @07:24PM (#476658)

    No matter how many times white men with rifles beat and shoot them, they just won't do democracy right.

    But that's not about IQ.

    Take the example of wolves vs dogs. Actually many wolves are smarter than the average dog ( http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/05/whos-socially-smarter-dog-or-wolf [sciencemag.org] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf4C_EMz5Fc [youtube.com] ).

    But dogs fit in human society a lot better than wolves. The difference is dogs are _domesticated_. Dogs are less likely to rip your throat out just because they decided it was their time to be the Alpha.

    Humans aren't as "domesticated" as dogs but perhaps the whites and certain breeds of Asians may have had more generations of domestication than many Africans (who may have returned to wild after the collapse of their various civilizations, there's more than just Egypt and the Nubians).

    Most of the more domesticated people do stuff because they are following OTHER people. Mimicry etc. It's not because they understand how stuff really works, nor have they figured out the long term consequences and decided that "yes democracy is the lesser evil, I shouldn't be trying to convince my village and allies to help make me Warlord". They push buttons on a lift etc not because they fully understand how it works, but because they see other people push those buttons and the results. They go to school, highschool, etc because that's what they are supposed to do. A few might understand a lot more but they're a minority. However because of the domestication the resulting society is less likely to fall apart at first opportunity.

    The less domesticated bunch might actually be more intelligent than average but they're more likely to use that intelligence for themselves so they can be the Alpha, or for their Tribe.

    But keep in mind domesticated animals can often go back to wild within generations. So domesticate the humans properly. Educate the smart ones and brainwash the dumb ones properly (if you don't others will do the brainwashing anyway).

    Or it could be a cultural thing.

    But whatever it is, the problem is not because the Africans are too stupid or have low IQs. The Nigerians have been smart enough to scam fair numbers of whites. The issues are elsewhere.

  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday March 09 2017, @04:37AM

    by Reziac (2489) on Thursday March 09 2017, @04:37AM (#476867) Homepage

    By coincidence, a documentary I happened to watch earlier today... it might well be subtitled "Chinese frustration with Africa"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0C4_88ub_M [youtube.com]
    If you don't have time for the whole thing, at least watch the last five minutes.

    Another interesting talk, which explains much (note that the speaker started from a position of profound sympathy with Africa):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAoNhacojmM [youtube.com]

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09 2017, @10:42PM (1 child)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 09 2017, @10:42PM (#477166) Journal

    "everyone knows" the meme that Libertarianism only works in a population with an IQ over 110, which is why it seems to sensible on college campuses, not so much outside.

    I never ran into that. Instead, college campuses seem some of the most hostile places to libertarianism. I think it's for two reasons: because colleges tend to be heavily dependent on government funding and because colleges are chock full of people who know best (a powerful government being the easiest way to implement whatever top-down vision you have for society).

    Being ivory tower academics the authors got into other ivory towers, and one specific example was economic models assuming a billion Africans in Africa will generate quite as much economic innovation and growth as a billion asians or whatever are simply doomed to fail.

    And the basis for your reasoning is? Let us note that throughout Africa we're seeing the same progress towards a developed world society as everywhere else. It may lag most of the world, but it is going on. My prediction on the matter is that by 2100, the entire world with the possible exception of a few ideological holdouts (like North Korea today) will be developed world. That includes Africa.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @09:09AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @09:09AM (#477699)

      "everyone knows" the meme that Libertarianism only works in a population with an IQ over 110, which is why it seems to sensible on college campuses, not so much outside.

      I never ran into that. Instead, college campuses seem some of the most hostile places to libertarianism. I think it's for two reasons: because colleges tend to be heavily dependent on government funding and because colleges are chock full of people who know best (a powerful government being the easiest way to implement whatever top-down vision you have for society).

      Or it is the result of the terrible truth: Libertarianism only appeals to persons with an IQ below 90, those who can't get into Collage, let alone papier marche.