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From here[1]: "I had a distinguished colleague - Stuart Nagel - whose tale is worth telling. He taught public policy and one day explained that black businesse
by crassus 13y ago
From here[1]:
"I had a distinguished colleague - Stuart Nagel - whose tale is worth telling. He taught public policy and one day explained that black businesses in Kenya were uncompetitive against Indian-run enterprises since blacks where too generous in granting credit to friends and family. He had been invited by the government of Kenya to study the situation and suggested better business training for black Kenyans. The topic was indisputably part of the course and thus totally protected by AAUP academic speech guidelines. Stuart was also extremely liberal on all racial issues.
Nevertheless, to condense a long story, an anonymous letter from irritated black students complained of Nagel's "racism" and included the preposterous change of "workplace violence." After a protracted and bungled internal university investigation, two federal trials (I testified at one), he was stripped of his teaching responsibilities and coerced into retirement. Interestingly, having been charged as "racist," his departmental colleagues, save two conservatives, abandoned him. A few years later, partially as a result of this emotionally and financially draining incident ($100,000 out-of-pocket for legal fees), he committed suicide. I can only speculate that he believed that years spent being a "good liberal" (including service in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division) would insulate him from being denounced as a "racist." Nor would he have anticipated that the university would spend the hundreds of thousands in legal fees to punish a famous tenured faculty member who "offended" two students. Nagel's sad saga undoubtedly provided useful lessons to many others. Stupidity can really be dangerous, even in a university. Better keep quiet."
[1] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/since-some-people-seem-to-still-think.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/since-s...
- yetanotherphd 13y agothanks for sharing that, and you also confirm my claim that, in the eyes of many, (perhaps Nagel himself) only being a proven "non-racist" would give him the right to have this opinion.
- mturmon 13y agoThis was written by Robert Weissberg. The same one who was dumped by National Review when they determined he was too racist. The one who has written about that favorite topic of racists, the difference between IQ of whites and other races. What a great source for solid information.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- nailer 13y agoWait - my race has a bearing on my height, skin colour, susceptibility to disease, proportion of fast to slow twitch muscle fibres, the shape of my nose and eyelids, the amount of various hormones in my blood. Why would it not have a bearing on intelligence?
- makomk 13y agoOh, race might well affect intelligence, it's just that we're pretty sure the effect is so miniscule in comparison to variation within the races that it's not really that interesting unless you're a racist.
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago...if race exists at all. Isn't as true to say 'people have variations in intelligence; some are slightly inheiritable.'
- newnewnew 13y agoIn America, the difference between population means in IQ is quite large between some racial groups, up to a standard deviation or 15 IQ points. The relationship holds for SAT, PISA, and pretty much any other measure of cognitive ability
- DrewRWx 13y agoThe SAT is a measure in one's ability to study for and take a test.
- mikeash 13y agoYou have some of it backwards. Your skin color and the shapes of various body parts have bearing on your race, not vice versa. Race is a human construct. That's not to say that there aren't real differences, but merely that it's a categorization based on fairly arbitrary things. Now it turns out that skin color and such in some cases correlates with other, less visible things. But it's not what the determination is based on. For example, the President of the United States is racially black. Genetically, he has equal influence from the "white" side, but racially he is not generally considered to be "half white". For an example from the other direction, consider that Africa contains more human genetic diversity than the rest of the world put together. We would generally expect to find there both the very dumbest and the very smartest of humans, at least for the genetic components of intelligence. It makes no sense to place that whole group into a single "black" race when the people in that group vary so enormously from each other. We can certainly talk about genetic differences in intelligence between different population groups. But "race" is not a good way to come up with the groups to examine.