Word: kelman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Herbert C. Kelman, Cabot Professor of Social Ethics has answered my Dunster House critics on the editorial page of the Crimson. The gist of his statement is that he values academic freedom so highly that he would accord it even to me. "Those of us on the Left," he says to his partisans in Dunster House, must defend academic freedom. The Herrnstein article, he grants, "calls for response--including political response," but within the limits of academic freedom (presumably mine). I appreciate the protective impulse, but have some doubts about both its source and its goal...
...that I.Q. contributes, in some measure, and by some means, to what our society (at least) considers success. To those premises. I know of no significant empirical challenge. I should have heard of some by now if there were any. If some other premises were meant. Professor Kelman should tell us what they are and how he challenges them, not merely that he challenges them...
...disagree(s) vehemently with the sociopolitical values (my article) reflects." I am not sure I know what my article's sociopolitical values are, and I am sure I do not know what Professor Kelman thinks they are. Could it be that, like some of my other critics, Professor Kelman thinks I advocate that which I am trying to describe? When I call attention to the possibility of a society increasingly stratified according to biological factors, or to the social importance, if not the inevitability, of unequal distributions of wealth and status, I am not approving of them, nor, for that...
...felt it pointed nowhere very clearly. In other words, I felt that the data on I.Q., inheritance, and social stratification do not, by themselves, settle conclusively any of the weighty policy questions of the day. They bear on many such questions, but do not answer them. Apparently Professor Kelman agrees for note that he complains about what my article "seems" to imply. To whom should he complain, however? Not me, for I refrained from drawing such conclusions. Not the data, for they would be unmoved. The complaint, I believe, must be lodged with the one who draws the objectionable conclusions...
...response. If the form of the response, however, violates the principles of academic freedom--and, I might add, the associated principles of adherence to truth and respect for fellow-humans--then it can only result in a net loss for the values that I believe we share. Herbert C. Kelman...