April 30, 2010

Harvard pulls a Larry Summers on ex-crimethinker

From today's Boston Globe:
E-mail on race sparks a furor at Harvard Law
Student regrets questioning the intelligence of blacks
By Tracy Jan

It was a private dinner conversation among three friends. The topic: affirmative action and race. The debate presumably was passionate, given the divergent opinions of the Harvard Law School students.

    * Full text of the e-mails

Stephanie Grace, a third-year law student, felt she had not made her position clear, so she followed up via e-mail, according to a person with direct knowledge of events.

“I just hate leaving things where I feel I misstated my position,’’ Grace wrote. “I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African-Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent.’’

The lengthy e-mail, sent to her two dinner companions six months ago, ignited an Internet firestorm this week when it was leaked and first reported Wednesday by the legal blog abovethelaw.com, followed by other websites.

Yesterday, Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law School, condemned the e-mail that suggested blacks are [actually, it suggested might be] genetically less intelligent than whites.

“Here at Harvard Law School, we are committed to preventing degradation of any individual or group, including race-based insensitivity or hostility,’’ Minow wrote in a message to Harvard’s law school community.

Minow said she had met with leaders of Harvard’s Black Law Students Association on Wednesday to discuss the hurt caused by Grace’s e-mail. She also said Internet reports alleging the association had made the e-mail public and pressed for the student’s future employer to rescind a job offer were false.

Grace did not respond to a request for an interview yesterday.

Grace, an editor of the Harvard Law Review, is headed for a federal clerkship in California with Ninth Circuit Court Judge Alex Kozinski. She graduated from Princeton University in 2007 with the highest honors and obtained a degree in sociology, according to the university’s registrar. A Princeton website said Grace conducted research on how the racial composition of one’s freshman year roommates influences behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions in subsequent college years.

In her e-mail to her friends, she wrote that while she could “be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that [black people] are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. . . .

“I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African-Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner,’’ she continued.

She signed off on the e-mail with, “Please don’t pull a Larry Summers on me’’ — referring to the former Harvard president who was pressured to resign after faculty unrest in part because he suggested in a 2005 speech that women lacked the same “intrinsic aptitude’’ for science as men.

On Wednesday, Grace sent an apology to leaders of the Black Law Students Association, the president of the student government, Minow, and several faculty members.

“I am deeply sorry for the pain caused by my e-mail. I never intended to cause any harm, and I am heartbroken and devastated by the harm that has ensued. I would give anything to take it back,’’ Grace said in the apology, obtained by the Globe.

“I emphatically do not believe that African-Americans are genetically inferior in any way. I understand why my words expressing even a doubt in that regard were and are offensive.’’

Leaders of the association declined to comment yesterday on the controversy.

In her statement yesterday, Minow called the incident “sad and unfortunate’’ but said she was heartened by the student’s apology. She added: “We seek to encourage freedom of expression, but freedom of speech should be accompanied by responsibility.’’

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.

I've been following social science statistics since 1972, the year of the Supreme Court's Griggs decision that invented "disparate impact." Lots of things have changed since 1972, but the racial gaps in behavior have changed less than almost anything else in our society. Is that due to nature? Nurture? A combination?

I don't know. We'll find out eventually.

What we do know is that disparate impact-based affirmative action doesn't, on the whole, make individual beneficiaries smarter. You would have heard about it if it does. The social scientist who came up with an environmental cure for the racial IQ gap would be the biggest superstar of his age. People have been working on that for half a century, but nothing, so far, has done much good.

Moreover, we've had a four decades of affirmative action, and the racial gaps are about the same. So, we can conclude that disparate impact law doesn't rectify biases in tests or the like.

Now, it could be that the one standard deviation gap in average intelligence between white Americans and African Americans could be wholly eliminated by some environmental change. Maybe if pregnant black women ate more arugula, their children would grow up to have the same average IQs as whites.

Instead, it give individuals of some races preferences over individuals of other races to make up for the lifetime lower average performance of their group. Now, it's possible that future generations of their group will have higher average performance (if the prenatal arugula diet works, say), but we don't see much evidence at all that disparate impact-based affirmative action is accomplishing that for people already old enough to benefit from affirmative action.

So, genetics don't really matter for the law. The reason, however, that everybody acts like it matters is that it serves as a proxy for the argument over whether the law giving affirmative action privileges to individuals causes those privileged individuals to stop underperforming. The burden of proof should obviously be on those who argue against the equal protection of the laws, but they have such a weak empirical case that they maintain their hegemony by demonizing heretics.

On a less august, cattier note, is it true that the forwarder of Ms. Grace's private email is a libertarian activist and that the email was six months old?

58 comments:

  1. Why do they always recant?

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  2. Maybe she can land an internship at VDare.

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  3. Yesterday, Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law School, condemned the e-mail that suggested blacks are [actually, it suggested might be] genetically less intelligent than whites.

    Steve Diamond, at the Santa Clara Law School, was the first to expose the decades-long Minow/Obama connection.

    You can get a more complete overview here; in particular, Martha Minow's sister, Nell, was dispatched by the Obama machine in their attempt to destroy Matt Taibbi.

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  4. She's too trusting to be a lawyer. And too cowardly to be a heroine.

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  5. “Please don’t pull a Larry Summers on me"

    Larry Summers pulled.

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  6. Why do they always recant?

    In her case, because she wants a job and a life. Racial differences aren't that big a deal to her anyway, I don't think; supposedly this is a six-month-old email that an enemy of hers dug up and forwarded.

    More generally, I don't think anyone who hasn't had a media/internet firehose turned on them has any idea what it's like. I have no direct experience myself, but I am married to a television producer so I've seen it.

    One minute, Stephanie Grace was a successful law student with a brilliant future; the next, she's Dr. Mengele.

    You'd simply have to not give a damn what anyone thinks, or even get a positive charge out of being hated, to resist.

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  7. The American Psychological Association acknowledges the existence of an average IQ gap between blacks and whites. They affirm that it is not the result of bias in the content or administration of tests, but hedge by proclaiming there is no adequate explanation for it. On the other hand, they consider it settled science that individual IQ differences must result from some combination of nature and nurture.

    However, taking the APA positions at face value, from elementary statistics it can be shown that any group differences must also arise from some combination of nature and nurture -- race is just a summation index. Stephanie Grace seems to be guilty of using simple inference.

    Perhaps it's time to ban probability, statistics, and logic.

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  8. Let's hope more and more will go after Minow and her ilk for being scientifically challenged.

    In addiition, it seems to me that those who reject the weight of evidence of cognitive differences between population groups (races) ought to be called what they actually are--ignorant racists. Yes, the time has arrived for that term to be relentlessly
    applied to those who claim to be educated, yet are not, those who claim not to draw incorrect conclusions based upon race, yet who consistently do.

    Ms. Minow, you are an ignorant racist, the very worst kind, for your ignorance and your racism exist for the very worst reason-- you have chosen them.

    A growing number of good and decent, and yes, educated people, hear you and laugh and their contempt for you and your ilk grows by the day.

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  9. She must have somehow missed the ample luminary heads-on-spikes lining that avenue of approach. She blind....terribly near-sighted?
    You go girl, with your 24hr older but wiser degree in hand for guessing wrong which of the equal animals were more equal.

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  10. Anonymous said: "Why do they always recant?"

    Because they can't afford not to. Our intrepid but clueless emailer had a solid academic record behind her and a bright future ahead of her. Now her entire career is in jeopardy and with it, a monetary investment of many tens of thousands of dollars.

    With all due respect, I think if you can even ask that question, you have not yet plumbed the depths of vindictiveness and hostility on the left. She will be made to pay and pay and pay.

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  11. Remarkable, Ms Minow's mendacity. The sour old fish. I wonder when (if) we will tire of this sort of thing.

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  12. Maybe she can land an internship at VDare.

    I keep fantasizing that Clarence Thomas will offer her a clerkship.

    You know, his son was a Keydet, so it's not completely unthinkable...

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  13. For people who shriek so much about McCartyism, the left sure do love to use his tactics.

    "Are you now or have you ever been a person who wondered if there might be a genetic component to intelligence?"

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  14. She'd be lucky to get Larry Summers-ed. She's going to get Wattsoned.

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  15. ferefvsdfwefe4/30/10, 12:30 PM

    "Why do they always recant?"

    Fear of losing privilege. It's often been said that those who have the least to lose have the most courage. Viet Cong didn't have big houses, lots of money, and career prospects. They had a bowl of rice and an AK-47.
    And poor whites are more likely to be courageous than rich or soon-to-be-rich whites. Rich whites feel a need to guard their wealth, respectability, etc, etc.

    Rosa Parks didn't give up her seat and move to the back of the bus. But affluent whites always do. They are willing to give up truth and honor in order to salvage their career and future.

    The people who leaked the email are liberal scumbags, but I'm glad this happened. The whole nation now gets to see what happens to those think freely in US colleges.

    Btw, if the Harvard dean is sooooooo sensitive, why does she allow Marxist ideas and views? Surely some students at Harvard came from formerly commie nations which killed millions.
    This is another case of white cowardice masquerading as sensitivity. It is really fear of blacks that's behind this decision to censure the woman. If blacks were not a vocal minority who scream and holler and make threatening demands, the woman would have been left alone.

    And why isn't Steven Pinker fired when he's written articles about racial differences in IQ?

    Anyway, this is much like the Duke Lacrosse case. And even though the woman did apologize, we all know she did it under duress. We need to NEVER LET THIS STORY GO. One possibility is more whites will be scared and cowered, but another possibility is more whites will become angry and become emboldened to speak the truth. We need to keep the flames alive to spread the fire of courage than chill of cowardice.

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  16. Capt. Obvious4/30/10, 12:36 PM

    Damn, what she did is now public record. That e-mail is going to haunt her for a long time.

    As for the aspies on this site who are mad at her for recanting, what planet do you live on?

    This girl has more important things to worry about than impressing HBDers, like making sure she is still able to get a job as a lawyers after all this.

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  17. fadfafasdfsfds4/30/10, 12:36 PM

    When Linda Tripp ratted on Monica Lewinsky, she was said to have violated privacy and decency as a friend, but the liberals don't seem to mind as long as politically correct scumbag Tripp the politically incorrect.

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  18. Henry Canaday4/30/10, 12:57 PM

    This is getting hilarious. Is there anyone at Harvard, college or grad school, student or professor, who did not: 1) notice sometime in late grade school or early high school that he or she was smarter than most other students; 2) notice sometime in high school that this advantage was at least partly innate and not entirely based on harder work; 3) realize either in high school or college that this innate advantage was somehow connected to who their parents and ancestors were?

    In other words, even if Darwin, Jensen, Murray or all the rest had not existed, these people would strongly suspect that ancestry has something to do with cleverness. How hard is it for SAT-beaters to figure out that it is at least possible for groups with very different ancestors to differ in average cleverness?

    Smart institutions and people, which Harvard certainly is and has, can make public asses of themselves in deeply satisfying ways.

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  19. While I like and respect John Derbyshire very much for his brave stance in favor of the truth, I don't think this young woman should have sent the e mail.

    I am quite a bit older than many of the people that post here, I have a position that is exceptionally well paid and that depends on me maintaining the good will of members of the general public. I know HBD to be true, but I will not ever talk about HBD. Not in public, not in private, not in my e mails. My closest friends don't know that I believe HBD to be true because I would lose most of them if I came "out of the closet" so to speak.

    With a little age and maturity, this young woman would have better understood the way the world works. There are certain truths that can not be spoken, certain taboos that can not be broken. This young woman has permanently reduced her ability to earn a living. There are all sorts of opportunities that are now closed to her.

    I would urge the other young people on this blog to not throw away their opportunities in life the way she did. If you want to discuss HBD, do it within the confines of a private forum like this one. Do not discuss HBD in the real world.

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  20. If I were this student I would sue the Harvard Dean for libel. She did not "suggest that black people are genetically inferior to white people" as the Dean wrote in an open letter and which, if true, would had would have been grounds for moral opprobrium and possible ostracism.

    The Dean's mistake was in assuming that people of extremely high intelligence are superior (a common mistake at Harvard) when in fact there is no evidence that high intelligence is correlated with moral character in any sense, let alone with the moral worth of the individual. Most of the moral monsters of history, after all, have been highly intelligent human beings -- Hitler, Goebbels, Marx, Lenin, Napoleon, Pol Pot, Sadam Hussein, to name a few recent examples -- while throughout history the ruling classes have been people of above average intelligence, which did not prevent them from treating ordinary human beings as domestic animals.

    And to judge by the frightening intolerance to which this student has been subjected by her peers for privately entertaining a perfectly innocent idea in a non-prejudicial, open-minded way, the situation has not much improved.

    The damages to this woman's public reputation and future employment prospects have been immense, to say nothing of the personal pain and suffering. And even if she did not win, the educational value of such a trial would be immense. I hope she does it.

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  21. "Harvard professor argues for 'abolishing' white race"

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/744237/posts

    Speaking of saying hurtful things, what about this dude?

    Needless to say, it sounds like another Leftwing Jew.

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  22. The way to handle this is to never in your publicly stated opinions even mention DNA or genetics or anything immutable, but be absolutely uncompromising about the bald facts of group differences in test scores. Say "invalidating a test because of disparate impact is stupid because WHATEVER THE REASON for Blacks scoring lower on the test, it is literally undeniable that they do score lower, and it is better to use the test to hire as many of the smartest blacks as the law demands and as many of the smartest whites as the law demands, then to have no test and get dumb blacks and dumb whites too."

    In other words, someone should defend race-norming or quotas as obviously peferable to the current system.

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  23. adfasdfasfda4/30/10, 1:24 PM

    I am quite a bit older than many of the people that post here, I have a position that is exceptionally well paid and that depends on me maintaining the good will of members of the general public. I know HBD to be true, but I will not ever talk about HBD. Not in public, not in private, not in my e mails. My closest friends don't know that I believe HBD to be true because I would lose most of them if I came "out of the closet" so to speak.

    It's thanks to coward like you that we're in this PC mess. You should have spoken up on matters like this BEFORE PC took over. During the 50s, it wasn't a good career move for leftists to be anti-American and commie-sympathizing, but they didn't give up. They eventually defeated McCarthy and took over the culture. Yet, your suggestion to us is 'shut up and cower' EVEN WHEN we know the truth. I suppose Sailer should shut up too then.

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  24. To my comment above let me add that two of our greatest statesmen, George Washington and Franklyn Roosevelt, combined high moral achievement with modest intelligence. And there have been a lot of simple-minded saints shrouded in obscurity. I've known a few myself.

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  25. "Damn, what she did is now public record. That e-mail is going to haunt her for a long time."

    She ought to wear it as a badge of honor, and we should help her.

    Of course, even if she may agree with us, she wants to socially mingle with the elite crowd--fashionably liberal--than with us losers, and so she'll likely to mea culpa a millions times and kiss every black ass.

    What is a fashionable liberal? It is one who practices racial elitism while preaching racial egalitarianism. Since their elite world often happens to be unfashionably short of blacks, they pick and choose the best of the blacks--like Obama--for their private company and leave all the Mike Tysons for the rest of us. Rich liberals mingle with clean cut negroes and feel themselves to be soooooo progressive and then admonish the rest of us for not embracing integration in the same spirit. Never mind it aint the likes of Obama we have to mingle with but with the likes of Tyson.

    Rich liberals choose the filet mignon blacks for themselves and leave the chitlin blacks for us.

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  26. It looks like all of the little Minow's are goo-goo good government types. Nell Minow is a good corporate governance type. Their father was Mr. "TV is a Vast Wasteland" FCC commissioner, who was from Milwaukee. The mother, Jo Baskin Minow, appears to be jewish, perhaps related to the Baskin Robbins fortune.

    So this conforms to my Minnesota-Massachusetts Axis theory: that many in the new establishment are the result of Scandinavian and Jewish marriages. (Nearly half of my Scandinavian relatives married Jews).

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  27. What is happening is that more and more, PC dogma is closing off anything at the upper levels, like Harvard.

    While at the lower levels, people know that there are vast racial differences and resent being told that their unfortunate skin color (White) makes them the source of all evil and discrimination and poverty.

    Eventually the top spots in places like Harvard will be ENTIRELY non-Whites and very connected White folks (the Kennedys, and so on). That's a recipe for social disaster.

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  28. A:
    " I am quite a bit older than many of the people that post here, I have a position that is exceptionally well paid and that depends on me maintaining the good will of members of the general public. I know HBD to be true, but I will not ever talk about HBD. Not in public, not in private, not in my e mails. My closest friends don't know that I believe HBD to be true because I would lose most of them if I came "out of the closet" so to speak."

    B:"It's thanks to coward like you that we're in this PC mess. You should have spoken up on matters like this BEFORE PC took over. During the 50s, it wasn't a good career move for leftists to be anti-American and commie-sympathizing, but they didn't give up. They eventually defeated McCarthy and took over the culture. Yet, your suggestion to us is 'shut up and cower' EVEN WHEN we know the truth. I suppose Sailer should shut up too then."

    I'm somewhere in between these two. I certainly don't hide my views among close friends and family, but I'm not going to talk about HBD at work, or at any rate I'm going to be careful what I say and how I say it. Also I'm not going to say anything which implies I don't think my black students can do as well as my white students - partly because IME they can indeed do just as well, despite the differences in the average IQs of their population groups/races. Maybe it'd be different at a more elite institution, but not among our intake.

    I absolutely won't lie though, I won't say something I know to be untrue. You have to have some integrity.

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  29. Whiskey:
    "Eventually the top spots in places like Harvard will be ENTIRELY non-Whites and very connected White folks"

    And Jews of course, Whiskey. >:) Over half the white intake at Harvard is Jewish.

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  30. catperson said:


    I'm convinced that not only is the black-white IQ gap in the U.S. genetic, but that it is 100% genetic. The proof of this is the Minnesota transracial adoption study where blacks adopted into white homes scored more than 1 SD below whites adopted into white homes.


    This is likely the case for the simple reason that in the US pretty much all children get adequate nutrition during gestation and childhood, so the environment does not come into play.

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  31. "So this conforms to my Minnesota-Massachusetts Axis theory: that many in the new establishment are the result of Scandinavian and Jewish marriages. (Nearly half of my Scandinavian relatives married Jews)."

    Is it mostly Jewish males and blonde Scandi-American females? I wouldn't be surprised.

    Should the kids of these couples be called Scanjewnavians or Scanjews?

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  32. So Steve one of the side stories on this has to do with whether the HBLSA played a role relative to arguing against the clerkship. HBLSA now says no it played no such role. I cannot find any evidence on line that supports its involvement. What is your sense of this at the moment? Is there evidence of such?

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  33. sfasfafsafsa4/30/10, 2:15 PM

    If I were this student I would sue the Harvard Dean for libel. She did not "suggest that black people are genetically inferior to white people" as the Dean wrote in an open letter and which, if true, would had would have been grounds for moral opprobrium and possible ostracism.

    Hot damn, that is genius!! What we really need in order to gain the moral, intellectual, and publicity upperhand is a new Scopes Trial where a decent and honest person who believes in the scientific genetic basis of racial differences is persecuted by the bigoted, socially superstitious, and politically correct powers-that-be. It will be national news and even highschool classrooms will be talking about it. It will show the nation and the world that it's bogus to assume that honest discussion of racial differences is KKK or Neo-Nazi stuff.

    But for this we need a man or woman of true courage, a white Tubman and Parks, and they seem to be in short supply.

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  34. Anonymous said:
    "I am quite a bit older than many of the people that post here, I have a position that is exceptionally well paid and that depends on me maintaining the good will of members of the general public. I know HBD to be true, but I will not ever talk about HBD. Not in public, not in private, not in my e mails. My closest friends don't know that I believe HBD to be true because I would lose most of them if I came "out of the closet" so to speak."

    adfafdsaffd replied:

    "It's thanks to coward like you that we're in this PC mess. You should have spoken up on matters like this BEFORE PC took over. During the 50s, it wasn't a good career move for leftists to be anti-American and commie-sympathizing, but they didn't give up. They eventually defeated McCarthy and took over the culture. Yet, your suggestion to us is 'shut up and cower' EVEN WHEN we know the truth. I suppose Sailer should shut up too then."

    Here is why I think Anonymous gives good advice, at least for now: many of the people interested in HBD tend to be on the autism spectrum and as such, may have a hard time distinguishing between friend and foe.
    I found at the Hoagie's site for the gifted about those with Asperger's that such people are "prone to being taken advantage of and/or corrupted because they have a harder time reading people and picking up the cues that indicate a hostile personality, a hoaxer/con-artist, or otherwise any ill-meaning person".

    This is my worry for all the young and bright people here, but especially the men. This woman was done in by a true believer who I'm sure is extremely proud of themselves for having helped stop evil.

    Further, anonymous seems to be surrounded by intelligent people on a daily basis. The more intelligent the egalitarian, the riskier the position of the hbd'er. Smarter people are more sensitive and passionate and will passionately believe he is evil.

    So, adfafdsaffd, I do get what you're saying. Some have an obligation due to position and talent to speak out, others don't, and some who would like to need to bite their tongue until they have some more social and world experience lest they harm themselves and achieve nothing.

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  35. "She will be made to pay and pay and pay."

    All the more reason for her apology to have said "Sorry if you don't have the courage and integrity to face the data."

    She's toast anyway in the world which disdains her so why not butter her toast, put some jam on it, and maybe be invited into a different world, one that can offer opportunities that are just as lucrative as those she just lost?

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  36. "Damn, what she did is now public record. That e-mail is going to haunt her for a long time."

    She ought to wear it as a badge of honor, and we should help her.


    You bet. In his speech to AEI, Charles Murray pointed out that this decade will make the data on this subject (and on other biologically/ genetically determined traits) impossible to ignore--it's already happening, don't you think?

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  37. Why is "less intelligent people are genetically inferior" an acceptable viewpoint

    If you ask The Derb [or Charles Murray, for that matter], in re: the semantics of "evolution" -versus- "devolution", then you'll get the absolutist position which holds that their shortcomings in intelligence allow the lesser races to breed like rabbits, which actually makes them genetically superior.

    Go figure.

    EDITED TO ADD: The absolutist darwinians don't want to make the distinction between change for the better [evolution] and change for the worse [devolution] - to them, ANY change is just "evolution".

    They're kind of like the Global Warming Hoaxers in that regard - when that crowd can no longer [plausibly] maintain the myth that the earth is warming, then it turns on a dime and re-christens its dogma as Global Climate Change.

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  38. In the email she only says it is possible that genes are a factor. I think the reaction she got shows that "epistemic closure" is far from just a right wing phenomenon and that liberals are not "reality based" when it comes to racial issues. I wonder how many conservative pundits will have the guts mention this incident.

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  39. If I were this student I would sue the Harvard Dean for libel. She did not "suggest that black people are genetically inferior to white people" as the Dean wrote in an open letter...

    Yes Luke, you are exactly right. In the email Ms. Grace never stated that, if the racial IQ gap is genetic that..anything. She didn't say affirmative action should go, or disparate impact, or anything. She did not present anything as a neccessary consequence.

    She should make Commissar Minow say under oath that less intelligent people are inferior. Under Minow, HLS uses the LSAT as part of its admission decisions. Black people on average make lower scores on the test. AA reduces the disparate impact, but does eliminate it. Admission under lower criteria obviously influences perceptions of black students. Harvard needs to stop using the LSAT as part of its admission decisions.

    In all states, a larger percentage of black testees fail the bar exam compared to whites. People who don't pass the bar can't practice law. That is an obvious disparate impact. The bar exam has to go too. I'm honestly surprised that no black law school grad has sued a state bar association over that.

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  40. Why did she recant? So she can get a top corporate or legal job for the next 35 years of her life.

    Won't work though. She won't get her upcoming clerkship pulled, but forget the Wall Street millions or the policy position with the Obama white house. She has been outed, and her "crime" can be googled with her name until the end of her days.

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  41. Anonymous wrote:
    "For people who shriek so much about McCartyism, the left sure do love to use his tactics.

    "Are you now or have you ever been a person who wondered if there might be a genetic component to intelligence?" "
    ============================

    I was thinking the same thing. This is just like McCarthyism. It is quite chilling.

    I hope Steve doesn't decide to ruin my career by outing the fact that I post here. I have been using my real email address, which his not very prudent I suppose. So much for freedom of thought.

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  42. You bet. In his speech to AEI, Charles Murray pointed out that this decade will make the data on this subject (and on other biologically/ genetically determined traits) impossible to ignore--it's already happening, don't you think?

    No, not for a second. The data has been "impossible to ignore" for as long as there has been data. And yet, it's been ignored.

    This is hardly an original thought, but the modern mindset is to assume that what you see with your own eyes is false. In the Above the Law threads, someone wrote approximately,

    "I think the correct thing to do in the absence of any [emphasis mine] evidence that there is a difference in intelligence between races is to assume that no difference exists. Hardly any of the studies that have been conducted have controlled for all the confounding factors..."

    There are a lot of posts to that effect there. The belief seems to be that if there is anything that can lead you to question the data, the data is completely worthless.

    In fact I think a lot of people conceive of education as the process of learning not to take things at face value.

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  43. erefafsdafdfd4/30/10, 4:53 PM

    To Harvard liberals--who donated most to Obama's campaign--, no problem that Obama sat in Wright's church for 20 yrs screaming about whitey.
    No problem that Obama, in a closed meeting, referred to white working class as bitter gun-cling bible-hugging morons.
    And never mind the nasty things Obama wrote about white people in Dreams of My Commie Pa.

    But a white student sends a mildly controvesial email on race, and it's off with her head.

    It seems as though whites like to sympathize with victims but don't know how to be victims themselves. When non-whites are victimzed, they know how to play noble and courageous. When whites are victimized as this woman, they just cower and pee in their pants.
    It's like EVEN AS VICTIMS they act like all-powerful villains who must apologize for their evil ways.

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  44. Why do they always recant?

    I'm sure you're well aware of the answer. But will there ever be just one white man or woman who says, "Go stick it! I have a right to speculate on human differences. It's just thinking out loud, for God's sakes!"

    Can you imagine that a discussion cannot take place if some clown complains about his "hurt" feelings. Why isn't he simply dismissed as a pussy, and laughed at?

    One possibility is more whites will be scared and cowered,

    They always are. Could there be two more groveling cowards than Trent Lott and Don Imus? And those are the celebrities that we know of. The numbers of ordinary souls that have been trounced on are probably beyond numbering.

    I keep fantasizing that Clarence Thomas will offer her a clerkship.

    Now, that would be a ballsy thing to do! After all, Thomas can't be hated any more than he is.

    I don't think this young woman should have sent the e mail.

    It is puzzling how, by this late date in her life, she had not spent some time tip-toeing around on eggshells, in order be "correct." How could she not know about blacks, especially? How is it that she could reference Larry Summers and still not understand how the game works?

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  45. Henry Canaday:

    I'll give my answers:
    Is there anyone ... who did not: 1) notice sometime in late grade school or early high school that he or she was smarter than most other students;

    If not in Kindergarten, by the 1st grade. Seriously, anyone who 1 sd above average knows this the first time they are made to sit in a row of desks.

    2) notice sometime in high school that this advantage was at least partly innate and not entirely based on harder work;

    YES, in fact the opposite of hard work ("coasting") is possible all the way through through most high schools

    3) realize either in high school or college that this innate advantage was somehow connected to who their parents and ancestors were?

    That one for me was a little longer in coming. My family, while not dumb, is mostly not Harvard material. But the general gene pool, yes.

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  46. Harry Baldwin4/30/10, 5:31 PM

    Anonymous wrote: For people who shriek so much about McCartyism, the left sure do love to use his tactics.

    The Left hates McCarthy because he used its own tactics against it. The left was using McCarthy tactics before the senator came along, and continues to use them after his demise. There was a brief, horrible interlude in between when the left was itself subject to those tactics, and it can never forget the horror. Jonah Goldberg's book is quite good on this topic.

    Melykin said... I hope Steve doesn't decide to ruin my career by outing the fact that I post here.

    Last year the membership rolls of the BNP were leaked in Britain and many members lost their jobs as a result. In California, people who contributed to Prop 8 have been harassed and hounded. I expect that, unless things change, those of us who have posted non-pc comments on the internet will be exposed, put on a database, and denied various jobs, scholarships, etc. That is, if this country survives that long.

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  47. "many of the people interested in HBD tend to be on the autism spectrum"

    What a fascinating comment! Do you have any evidence to back it up? And why would there be a correlation between autism & HBDism? Is it because autistics look at humans like objects and thus can be more objective? Or is it because autism is extreme male brain which makes them more rational, in sharp contrast to delusional schizophrenics who suffer from extreme female brain? Or is it because autistics lack the social intelligence to understand why HBD is so offensive?

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  48. 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.

    Really? Tell us what you think that the odds are that say there is at least a 5-10 point natural gap in IQ between blacks and whites in identical conditions. I'd say I'm at least 99% certain. What about you, Steve? Are you 50/50? 80/20? I'd be surprised if you wouldn't bet your house on it if you could.

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  49. >It's thanks to coward like you that we're in this PC mess. You should have spoken up on matters like this BEFORE PC took over.<

    Ditto. "Greatest Generation" my ass. Closer to the opposite.

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  50. "I would urge the other young people on this blog to not throw away their opportunities in life the way she did. If you want to discuss HBD, do it within the confines of a private forum like this one. Do not discuss HBD in the real world."

    Concern troll is concerned.

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  51. >Why do they always recant?<

    Don't rule out these possibilities:

    1 - The email was a hoax, like KMac says of this demonstration. Purpose? Chilling effect. If there aren't enough Watsons, one MAKES them.

    2 - The email is not a hoax, but its writer received threats - even direct death threats - from influential student organizations or employees high up in the Harvard hierarchy. People whom you don't cross. People who, for example, can have you or your parents or your boyfriend arrested and railroaded into a penitentiary on trumped-up charges (or merely bankrupted in court), or can simply arrange to have something happen to you or them Sopranos-style.

    Put nothing past the elites. They are thugs and scum.

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  52. Melykin: I've had the same experiences. Whenever I tell people I think the IQ-gap is partly genetic, people say "oh so you must believe blacks are less worth then" like they have cornered me - but in reality they have only exposed themselves.

    The irony here is that liberals, anti-racists and ethnic activists will deny reality because they harbor opinions, that, coupled with certain facts will force them to conclude that blacks are genetically inferior- a "nazi" opinion if there ever was one.

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  53. "Why do they always recant?"

    Something very similar happened to me in law school, and far from recanting I continued to attack. But I generally don't give a damn what people think.

    If you want to help ensure that fewer people recant, I think you need to create a real social network, outside of the internet, that such people can get support from when they are demonized.

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  54. Monday morning quarterbacking here. The most awesome response would have been "Minow, if you think that less intelligent people are subhuman, or even just inferior, you're a fucking monster."

    I think a good tack might have been to say she was taking the worst imaginable situation, and arguing that, even if that were the case, the principles of the Federalist Society are still the right ones, because it's better to be near the bottom of a just, free, and wealthy society than higher on the totem pool in a less just, poorer nation.

    Hell, she could have claimed that her position was that even if the gap is genetic, no one should ever talk about it, affirmative action should continue forever, and trillions of dollars should be poored into trying to remediate the gap, even though it's pointless. Not only that, the genetic difference in intelligence means we need to pick up the white man's burden and bring in 100 million more Africans.

    Really, she could take any tact, since she didn't say anything about political or social consequences of the IQ gap being genetic.

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  55. I think institutions like Harvard only have a finite time for conferring social legitimacy. I think this is obviously a desperate attempt and judging by the viscious personal comments on the SWPL sights, they are spent intellectual force. I believe by necessity most bright whites bypass the IVY's as it is, sensing it is an alien institution.

    Harvard offers "soft" legitimacy as
    it is a signaler of who should be
    priviledged and powerful to mainstream America. But remember
    the folks that come out of Harvard
    are an alien elite to the masses
    of foot soldiers that wield that
    hard-power. And the contradiction
    bubbled to the surface, shit would
    change mighty quick.

    The thing is that most of us on the
    board still see change being mediated through socially legitimate institutions, and the
    reality it will be the rapid
    deligitimization of such institutions that will bring about real change.

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  56. Anyone who denies that there are IQ differences between the races is extremely ignorant. Only a damned fool could possibly be blind to this easily observed fact. I really believe that the white people who think that blacks would test at the same level of intelligence and whites and asians must have been raised in all-white privileged communities and therefore never had much interaction with blacks when they were growing up.

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  57. "No problem that Obama, in a closed meeting, referred to white working class as bitter gun-cling bible-hugging morons."

    In a closed meeting? I believe it was a speech to a large audience.

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  58. A tiny little factor in all this is the extent to which Harvard undergrads may have "rubbed shoulders" with a more or less random sample of American Blacks.
    Or may have worked for a year in and among the representative population, say. of Nigeria or Uganda. A radom sampling of Blacks and Black behaviors taken from large audience TV programs
    IF IF
    juxtaposed to covert samplings of video taken at large of American Blacks
    would be one of the most dramatic contrasts imaginable. A book published several years ago had the title THE INVENTED INDIAN
    Where's THE INVENTED BLACK?

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