In the NYT
Yes, if CC is any indication, opposition to Murray was based more on the book the Bell Curve, which he wasn’t there to discuss, than Coming Apart, which was the topic of his speech.
Crickets…
^ It’s been less than 40 minutes since this was posted… and it’s around dinner time for most of us.
It is not all that surprising, or unique to Murray, that identifying an idea with a speaker or writer known for specific controversial or political views will prime listeners or readers to have a tendency to favor, oppose, or otherwise judge the idea based on what they think of the speaker or writer.
“Crickets…”
Or, why are we rehashing this again? Charles Murray has gotten more CC airtime than he warrants, IMO. 
Are you sure? If there’s one thing CC needs, it’s more discussion of phrenology.
I am left wondering if there were ever any consequences for the protestors who shut down the event. If not, them we can probably count on a repeat performance for future speakers who are on the wrong side of current campus politics. There does not appear to be any rhyme or reason to these protests - he speaks at many colleges without incident. Middlebury never struck me as a particularly “protesty” campus.
I think this is true, and while asking people to keep an open mind would seem to be a hallmark of true intellectual inquiry, it appears to be a bridge to far for some. The article even highlighted this distinction in the difference in scoring when the author’s name was known, although even accounting for that bias the survey participants still scored his speech well within the bounds of normal discourse.
To me, one of the interesting points of the article was that even presumptive academics need to work to guard against preexisting biases and take ideas on their own merits. The other interesting thing was the relatively muscular defense of Murray’s work even in the Bell Curve as normal academic scholarship. I find it fascinating and somewhat heartening that there seems to be a consistent effort from academics presumptively on the left who have defended Murray’s work. If we are ever going to get back to a more rational discourse, it will start there.
Very interesting.
But I can’t help thinking about how I would react if I were told that there was going to be a speech by Phyllis Schafly at my school. I think I would be there with a sign, although I would not shout her down or try to actually prevent her from speaking.
I wouldn’t (necessarily) protest Murray because of his claims, but I would be highly disappointed that someone who did such shoddy work is being propped up by my university.
I am fine with dissenting view points. I don’t support poorly done academic work though… and to me, Murray falls squarely into that category.
Honestly, the eugenicists I study at the turn of the 20h century did a “better” job of “proving” Murray’s points than he did. His work was just not that good. IMO, Bell Curve has only survived because of the controversy and definitely not because it’s a solid, well-researched and well-argued book (because it’s just not…)
There are plenty of non-Murray examples where associating an idea to a person with a known political viewpoint (or a political party) tends to lead to people changing their views on the idea to align with their support or opposition to the person (or party). So it is not unique to Murray (or academic environments) that people tend to judge ideas by proxy (the person (or party) that the idea is associated with) rather than the idea itself.
I never said it was. In fact, the point was that we should be able to expect less such bias from presumptive intellectuals than the great unwashed. The reason, of course, is because guilt by association (judging ideas by proxy) is fundamentally anti intellectual. Education and scholarship should work as a brake on such biases.
What is so shoddy about Murray’s work?
She’s cut back on her speaking engagements since her death. There is a fight over leadership of the Eagle Forum, so her succession plan was not well constructed.
Yes, not only is she dead, but I am not in school. (I hope you got the drift of the example?)
I thought this was going to be about A Wrinkle in Time (the book by Madeline L’Engle).
That was an interesting book, which I did read. Haven’t read anything by the guy featured in this thread.
Interestingly enough, very few people seem to read what he has written. I did read this many, many years ago (so my recollections may be a bit off). When The Bell Curve came out, it and Murray were vilified. In those days (and earlier when I was in college), the politically correct ethos was that each child born was a tabula rasa who was to be shaped by environmental influences / parenting. When our generation began to raise children, it became pretty clear that children are not tabula rasas but instead come with a lot of pre-programmed wiring. That doesn’t mean that environment doesn’t influence also – it does – but it is clear that many things are inherited. There are some reasonably strong studies of twins separated at birth that give evidence of heritability of IQ. The Bell Curve observed some heritability of IQ and somewhat controversially looked at heritability by ethnic groups. The latter was, and probably still is, verboten under the rules of academia. Asking the question presupposes that you think there might be differences between ethnic groups. We are allowed to observe differences of other kinds between ethnic groups and speculate about heritability, but he crossed a line, which has made him something of a pariah in academia. That doesn’t mean he is wrong to investigate or wrong in his conclusions, but they are just not acceptable in academia at the moment. This is not my field but I suspect that much that has transpired in molecular biology and genomics over the last 20 years enables us to know much more about heritability of traits than coarser statistical analysis. When I was a grad student, Robert Trivers’ sociobiology was excoriated in much the same way as Murray but my sense is that his work has become the de facto standard set of assumptions about the world.
Moreover, after Murray argued that there was some heritability of IQ among ethnic groups, he looked at policy implications. To me, these were a bit dangerous. Putting on my hat as a Bayesian statistician, I’d say that if such group differences exist, one would still want to define policies based upon individual’s capabilities and not group differences, but could not ignore factors that would give one data about underlying individual capabilities. I think he tended to ignore the big within-group variability and focused only on the between group variability.