Something very scary and very wrong is happening

[cobrat]

I’d have preferred to see the students make superior arguments during a Q&A.

However, that presumes there’s a legitimate point to be countered and not a rehashed redressing of long-debunked ideas or someone whose ideas have been roundly criticized for serious methodological flaws unacceptable in his own academic field(Poli-Sci/social science) and operated dubiously by publishing his controversial book without submitting it for peer-review as expected within his field and handpicking reviewers which delayed scrutiny and what turned out to be widespread criticism of his research methods and methodological flaws within his field.

Would it be a good idea for universities to provide the legitimating platform being an invited speaker conveys to invite those who advocate Lysenkoism, Physiognomy, or Intelligent Design/Creationism as legitimate science even though they’ve been soundly debunked as such within the scientific community over the last several decades and rightly consigned to the dustbin of history?

While private colleges and community groups within such colleges do have the right to invite such speakers, they do need to be mindful of how the college’s academic/intellectual reputation could be affected if they have a pattern of inviting speakers who advocate long discredited theories, have a history of sketchy scholarship/practices as defined by standards within their own respective academic fields, etc.

What next? Invite folks who have had a history of advocating discredited ideas or being discredited by their sketchy scholarship such as Ward Churchill or David Irving*?

Part of a college/university’s reputation for higher intellectual discourse is not only in providing a forum for discussing/debating ideas, but also to serve as a gatekeeper to minimize the chances poorly thought out/researched ideas or worse, long debunked/discredited ideas are given credence by them as an institution.

This is one reason why academia has and requires peer-review of research/publications if they are to be counted as legitimate research/publications to be counted towards getting tenure/further promotion/recognition within the academy.

Would you feel the same if colleges known for powerhouse Biological Science departments such as Cornell, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Brandeis, Tufts, etc invited proponents of Lysenkoism or Creationism/Intelligent Design as legitimate science to be speakers or even to participate in a debate with actual bona-fide scientists and thus, effectively confer some legitimacy to a pseudoscience which has effectively been completely discredited for the last several decades?

• Really sad considering as before his instigated lawsuit in UK courts against Prof. Deborah Lipstadt for libel/defamation for calling him a Holocaust denier, he had reputation as a maverick historian who was respected by some historians for his demonstrated knowledge/command of German archives.
  

All that was completely obliterated when the judge not only found his instigated lawsuit had no merit, but that the defendant WAS CORRECT IN CALLING HIM A HOLOCAUST DENIER and ordered him to pay her for all her legal costs which effectively bankrupted him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_v_Penguin_Books_Ltd#Ruling

[skieurope]

MODERATOR’S NOTE:
You know, it is possible to have a spirited discussion without attacking other users. Unless one knows the other user personally and is a licensed psychotherapist, I fail to see how one can make an judgement on a user’s mental health.

14 posts deleted. Some of them may have had kernels in them that were related to the original post and not the user in question, but part also was responding to the user who derailed the thread and, sorry, I cannot continue to go through posts to separate the wheat from the chaff.

[Ohiodad51]

The problem, @cobrat, is that the powers that be at Middlebury clearly and obviously disagree with your perspective. The issue isn’t whether Murray was worthy of an invitation. The issue is that once the decision to invite him was made, others decided that it was within their right and power to stop him from appearing, and at least some of them used violence to do so.

[OHMomof2]

Seems to me students (and professors and other members of the college community) could say all the things in a Q&A that you said, @cobrat. Ask why no peer review, address the methodological flaws, etc. Take him down, in other words.

Should an intelligent design advocate be allowed to speak at a U? Sure why not? Same thing. Ask for evidence. Ask why the speaker thinks it should be taught in science class, if that is what the speaker proposes. Let the speaker speak if they just want to say that is their belief (it’s probably something like mine, for the record, though I put my belief in that regard squarely within my spirituality and not science and do not believe it has a place in a classroom).

IMO in this case academic debate would have been a better way to go. This isn’t he-who-shall-not-be-named who spews insults and outrageous nonsense just to score book deals and incite violence he can get press coverage out of. (Well, could in the past…I feel he may not be invited to many college campuses anymore).

This is someone who is using the language of academia to make decidedly racist assertions, and he should be called out on it by academia.

[cobrat]

The problem, @cobrat, is that the powers that be at Middlebury clearly and obviously disagree with your perspective.

And while they have the right to invite such a speaker, I and many others also reserve the same right to hold Middlebury and its Poli-sci department in much lower regard for doing so.

This is someone who is using the language of academia to make decidedly racist assertions, and he should be called out on it by academia.

There are ways of calling out someone in academia without the risk of conferring a mantle of legitimacy…such as by not inviting them in the first place.

And it goes back to my previous question:

Should we be inviting completely discredited Ward Churchill or David Irving to speak on campus in the name of calling them out?

How about the proponents of completely discredited pseudosciences of Lysenkoism, Physiognomy, or Creationism/Intelligent design as legitimate science to speak at universities with powerhouse Biological Sciences like Cornell?

[tennis83]

“And while they have the right to invite such a speaker, I and many others also reserve the same right to hold Middlebury and its Poli-sci department in much lower regard for doing so.”

My thoughts exactly @cobrat

[roethlisburger]

@cobrat

I don’t think the issue is really about Murray, but you seem to think it is, so what do you think about his two most controversial positions.

1. Do you believe intelligence is measureable or quantifiable?
2. Do you believe there are zero differences in group means between different racial or ethnic groups, by whatever your preferred metric of intelligence is?

[Snowball_City]

Do you?

[doschicos]

How do you define intelligence?

[prezbucky]

Maybe someone can enlighten me:

Has science discovered the origins of matter or space? (that is, how the first molecules came to be and how space itself began)

If not, then no theory about the origins of space and matter can really be considered “debunked”. Right? (aside from completely implausible claims, such as you or I creating them…)

Regarding Murray’s theories, nature/nurture still isn’t entirely settled, and it may never be. That affects the plausibility of all conclusions from studies on IQ and other test performance, as well as so many other areas of life that can be measured and which we attempt to explain. So, again, if we don’t know incontrovertibly what is, how can we say someone’s ideas are entirely debunked?

Imperfect knowledge leaves room for debate. Right?

[HarvestMoon1]

But his ideas are precisely what you stated @prezbucky-- “nature/nurture still isn’t entirely settled.” Here is the conclusion they reach in The Bell Curve relative to the whole IQ controversy:

If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not yet justify an estimate. (p. 311)

[Snowball_City]

No. If someone came and said that the origins of matter are chocolate chip cookies and frankincense, I feel pretty confident that that could be debunked.

[Zinhead]

The Bell Curve was written in the early 1990’s. In 2016, Murray was criticized before a speaking engagement at Virginia Tech, and his response was as follows.

http://www.aei.org/publication/an-open-letter-to-the-virginia-tech-community/

He concludes:

For two decades, I have had to put up with misrepresentations of The Bell Curve. It is annoying. After so long, when so many of the book’s main arguments have been so dramatically vindicated by events, and when our presentations of the meaning and role of IQ have been so steadily reinforced by subsequent research in the social sciences, not to mention developments in neuroscience and genetics, President Sands’s casual accusation that our work has been “largely discredited” was especially exasperating. The president of a distinguished university should take more care.

He also provides his reflections of the recent events at Middlebury here:

http://www.aei.org/publication/reflections-on-the-revolution-in-middlebury/

We finished around 6:45 and prepared to leave the building to attend a campus dinner with a dozen students and some faculty members. Allison, Bill, and I (by this point I saw both of them as dear friends and still do) were accompanied by two large and capable security guards. (As I write, I still don’t have their names. My gratitude to them is profound.) We walked out the door and into the middle of a mob. I have read that they numbered about twenty. It seemed like a lot more than that to me, maybe fifty or so, but I was not in a position to get a good count. I registered that several of them were wearing ski masks. That was disquieting.

[Ohiodad51]

And while they have the right to invite such a speaker, I and many others also reserve the same right to hold Middlebury and its Poli-sci department in much lower regard for doing so.

Which is a complete straw man. Of course you “and many others”
Have the right to feel however you wish about any facet of the Middlebury community. What, pray tell, does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

@“Snowball City”, it is pretty obvious that Murray is a fair piece from frankincense and chocolate chip cookies though. Likely at least some of the protesting students and faculty would understand that had they bothered to obtain a passing familiarity with his work.

[HarvestMoon1]

And if it makes anyone feel any better, Murray has written some very controversial pieces about women as well. Does that make me stamp my foot and refuse to read his work? No, not at all. I want to know what he is putting out there relative to the accomplishments of women. Better to know what you are up against.

I will admit that I do find him a little irritating in that at least with regard to his work relating to women, he keeps a tight grip on his definition of “high achievement.” The preconceptions upon which he bases his arguments relative to women are all his, so you have to start deconstructing those to effectively counter his conclusions. And that can be tedious.

[Zinhead]

And if it makes anyone feel any better, Murray has written some very controversial pieces about women as well.

Murray responds as follows:

https://www.aei.org/publication/charles-murray-no-i-dont-think-women-are-genetically-inferior/

I will admit that I do find him a little irritating in that at least with regard to his work relating to women, he keeps a tight grip on his definition of “high achievement.”

The guy did go to Harvard. #-o

[Snowball_City]

@Ohiodad51 I read a piece by a student who had read the Bell Curve for class.

@ HarvestMoon1 I agree that the it can be useful to know what the other side’s arguments are in order to contemplate how to counter them. To my knowledge, this is not how the event was billed.

[HarvestMoon1]

How was the event billed? I can’t think of any format where a student would not go away with more knowledge of the speaker’s point of view.

[wisteria100]

^^ I don’t think he was invited to speak about The Bell Curve. It was another topic

[HarvestMoon1]

I think he was supposed to speak about Coming Apart. But that just provides more support for the argument that the students should have let him speak. What is it that they do not want to hear?

Or was the protest supposed to be “punishment” for his previous book?