Word: herrnsteins
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Professor Herrnstein is not merely one voice out of many, and his article not merely one more proposal to be weighed in the cool balance of intellect. Political circumstances are not to be ignored. Ideas are not introduced into an antiseptic atmosphere of national discussion, but into a society where conflict is endemic. Herrnstein's position as a Harvard professor and a writer for a widely circulated national magazine gives him an air of legitimacy that few in a highly stratified society can hope to attain. Whether or not he consciously calculated the political effects, his article can and will...
...consider the problem as merely a case of academic freedom is to mask the political implications of that position. The point is this: that it is a political, not a scholarly, act for which Professor Herrnstein is responsible. And it is political considerations that must decide the terms of any debate...
...hope that the substance of what Professor Herrnstein is saying in his article in the Atlantic Monthly does not get lost in the crossfire of polemics about academic freedom. For his thesis is important although. I believe, deeply wrong...
...importance of the article is elsewhere. It resides not in the bulk of the text but in the last two pages, and in the very revealing, racially oriented introduction by the editors. In the last section. Herrnstein is not a behavioral psychologist but a social theorist: he presumably chose the Atlantic for publication precisely because he considered this part of his article the most important. Thus, if his message is primarily socio-political, it is entirely appropriate that it be criticized on the political level. I am a firm believer in academic freedom, indeed in all freedom of thought...
...independently. Its essence is a syllogism: "If differences in mental abilities are inherited, and if success requires those abilities, and if earnings and prestige depend on success, then social standing will be based to some extent on inherited differences among people." An alternative, more direct expression, taking into account Herrnstein's text, would be: Mental abilities are genetically determined in part. Social success and earnings depend on mental abilities, Therefore social success and earnings are genetically determined in part...