(see Brand's reference to an email sent by me to his university in 1996, as president of SAFS)
SEPTEMBER 18 The problem with 'whodunits' is that some of the acting has to be more than usually unrealistic so as to put the audience off the scent of 'who done it.' Well, that's my way of saying I was entirely taken in by Alfred Hitchcock's marvellous suspense-melodrama 'Rebecca' (1940, his first Hollywood movie, starring Olivier and Joan Fontaine and with a splendid gallery of English eccentrics). When the much-cuckolded husband and owner of baroque pile Manderley declared his wife had simply hit her head on a marline-spike as she tripped and fell during an argument provoked by herself announcing to him that she was pregnant by another man, well, I simply couldn't believe him. So much good work had been done to assert the husband's unreliability and beastliness that it was all too easy to forget that he was only *neurotic* while his dead wife had been wide-angledly *psychotic.* Also, I blame the feminasties in the audience. Every time the husband made some standard 1930's remark, like "She had breeding, brains and beauty, so I married her", the feminazies would shriek their indignation at his 'chauvinism' and thus subtly reinforce the suspicions of the rest of the audience that he was indeed a complete nutter who would soon bump off his second wife as well. One has to face it, today's feminism has daft and vocal subscribers who have embarked on aggressive campaigning for the 1970's feminist nonsense that itself petered out into intellectual incoherence. (The wymmyn could never work out whether they were best characterized as equal or superior to the child-abusing, drink-sodden patriarch of the species.) Feminism, like egalitarianism, is now on its last legs: reduced to upping unintentionally an audience's enjoyment of 56-year-old Hitchcock films - just as audience egalitarianism invariably enhances the feeblest road movies. With their extra help, Hitchcock mystified the feminasties as much as myself: for the last half hour the big Filmhouse audience was very quiet - spellbound by The Master.
SEPTEMBER 19 Having tried to be a 'good European' for the last five years, I am pleased to announce the complete volte-face by the European Union on whether they will read what is written in 'Nature.' To astonishment in Whitehall, the E.U., having first dismissed the latest scientific evidence re 'mad cows' out of hand (NL, Sep. 18), has now set its own scientific experts to take a look. If only such flexibility and interest in reading had been shown by Dame Stewart Sutherland and Wiley DePublisher!
I am also glad to report a supportive and amusing letter that has been sent to 'The Scotsman' from TgF supporter Dr Ronald Birse of Edinburgh. Here is an extract. "....I think the {Brand affair} furore has demonstrated the bias and narrow-mindedness of his detractors much more than any unfounded racism on Chris Brand's part. {My own book, 'Science in the University of Edinburgh', E.U. Faculty of Science, 1994} contains....a prosopographical analysis of the world's most eminent men of science and technology, in which it is shown that the Scottish nation/race was for at least two centuries inherently superior to all others in its production of such men of genius. Is this another example of the unacceptable face of racism? If so, why was it published by the university which now disapproves so strongly of the scientific racism in 'THE 'g' FACTOR'?"
SEPTEMBER 20 Edinburgh University is apparently beginning to plan how it will deal with the AntiNazi League over the next year. Anyhow, they have taken me off teaching the 350-strong first-year Psychology Class. - Four of my eight lectures for the first-years usually concern intelligence and reflect, in fact, Chapters 1-4 of 'THE 'g' FACTOR'. I have also been taken off teaching Philosophical Problems to third-year students - though I should say that I had actually asked to be relieved of this duty because my teaching load in the last ten years has been spread across too wide a range of topics. In addition, Management is making friendly noises about granting me the four sabbatical terms to which I am entitled. Apparently, the Department will continue the same programme of teaching; so I am afraid I am going to be well and truly in my colleagues' bad books.
A friendly young colleague - he has not yet heard the above news! - expresses great surprise at seeing a copy of 'THE 'g' FACTOR' in my hand. 'So they have published it after all!' he exclaims. Many psychologists like to believe that TgF was never published: this excuses them from making any attempt to try to obtain it or to read about my battles with the Abominable Wiley and Principal Dame Stewart. While Wiley engage in *sup*pression, my colleagues engage in *re*pression. They are too embarrassed to think or talk about race, IQ and Labour's plans to wind up unstreamed comprehensive education (the joy-to-the-heart of a generation of loopy communitarians and fellow-travellers). So they find it safer not to think about 'THE 'g' FACTOR' either. This week's 'Nature' carries more news of possible protests by geneticists (especially the International Genetics Federation) against eugenic legislation in Red China which forbids marriages of people having transmissible ailments (unless the affected partner is sterilized). Apparently the big question is whether to abandon a planned international junket in China; or to go there and insist that eugenic topics are discussed 'critically' as part of symposia. However, while IGF members agonize as to how to complete their ballot forms, there is actually a much bigger question. As I mention in 'THE 'g' FACTOR' (pp. 203-4), programmes encouraging sterilization of people with psychological abnormalities have been operational in and far around Peking since 1990. Even if Western opponents of eugenics could reverse new Chinese legislation (of 1995), state-orchestrated eugenics would continue - using the threat of depriving non-conformists of better-quality housing. In short, anti-eugenicists will really need to come out against communism itself. Will they be up to this? Or will they just saddle the West with state-funded *dys*genics and let the Chinese get on with state-encouraged *eu*genics? {In 1995 I urged the Galton Institute to try to monitor the humanitarian and educational effects of Chinese policies with an eye to offering China factual advice rather than Western prejudices which China will simply reject. However, the Galton decided to continue to sit quietly on its stlg1M bequest. - Nor would they attempt to replicate 'Bell Curve' research on a UK sample to see whether low IQ is as considerable as problem here as it plainly is in the USA.}
From US columnist Samuel Francis and the Wall Street Journal, l learn that there are some Americans - as well as Black Americans - who are organizing themselves politically along expressly racial lines. Hispanics now call themselves "La Raza" (The Race) and their leaders urge ethnic bloc voting to strengthen their electoral punch. The 'Christian Science Monitor' reports that "Koreans are working with Japanese, and Indians are working with Pakistanis, and that is the impressive thing about American politics today." As SF observes, these groups historically get along about as well as Siamese fighting fish. But, having seen what Black leaders have squeezed for themselves out of Whitey, other groups' leaders also see advantages from adopting a racial, rather than a locality-based identity. Even the 'New York Times' has headlined a "New Sense of Race" among Asian-Americans. How long will Indo-Europeans, the inventors of all the world's great religions, continue their current absurd orgy of nature-denying egalitarianism, White guilt and Political Correctness?
Chinese people may be content for their sex lives to be run by the government; and African men may like a short life and a merry one. What is the Indo-European claim to fame? Well, Indo-Europeans proudly take both law and freedom to new high points, and usually claim to find they can make these apparent opposites actually reinforce each other. It is thus bizarre that they will not trust each other to make sensible marital contracts. What hope can their be for a race or culture when at its heart is a collapsed sexual code and a turning of its more intelligent women away from men and even from family life? Again, what proud Westerner can look his own children in the eye when they are dragooned into dumbed-down education by the ignoracist anti-meritocrats who are in charge of state 'education'?
The RC Bishop of Argyll and the Isles (see NL, Sep. 15 &17) now turns out to have been involved in rather more sex realism than was initially appreciated by his seniors. Apparently (Classic FM Radio), a lady has now revealed she has a 15 year-old son, Kevin, by Bishop Roderick. Everything had been going along smoothly, with the Bishop making regular weekly payments, until the Other (new) Woman came along. Thus Kevin's mother has decided to bare her all to the Press. Verily, in today's Yukay, neither devotion to the official religions nor Royal sums of inherited dosh are able to secure lifetime monogamy, let alone celibacy, from sex realism at the door.
SEPTEMBER 21 Occasionally TgF supporters seem to wish I would make some interesting pronouncement as to what I think of Israeli Prime Minister Ravin Yahoo, American church-burners, and the National Rifle Association. As if I had not enough on my plate with the 'g' factor, track choice and optional polygamy! Still, valuing open discussion of all opinions as I do, I offer the following contributions to debate.
###### 1. I would be glad to receive 2,000-word essays that explicate, contextualize and pronounce upon the following three quotations - all included in my Quotations on the Psychology of Racial and National Differences ( http://www.ed.ac.uk/~crb/quotes/ ). "The Jews....surrounded by tribes speaking dialects of a language related to their own....nevertheless surpassed all these groups. One sees them as warriors, agriculturalists, businessmen. ....In this miserable corner of the world, what were the Jews? I repeat, it was a people capable in all that it undertook, a free people, a strong people, an intelligent people. When, with their arms still in their hands, they lost bravely the position of an independent nation, they furnished to the world almost as many learned men as merchants." A. de Gobineau, 1853-55, Essai sur L'Inegalite' des Races Humaines. Paris : Didot. (See M.D.Biddiss (ed.), 1970, Gobineau: Selected Political Writings. London : Cape.) "[The Jews] appear to be rich in families of high intellectual breeds." GALTON, 1869, Hereditary Genius. "The spiritual and intellectual resources of the Jews of the present day are extraordinary....Their bravery under the cloak of pitiable submission, their heroism in spernere se sperni, surpass the virtues of all saints....The way in which they honour their fathers and their children, the reasonableness of their marriages and marriage customs, mark them out among all Europeans....They will be called the inventors and pointers of the way for all Europeans." NIETZSCHE, 1881, Morgenroethe. Chemnitz : Schmeitzner.
###### 2. Is it not true that the last two people arrested for burning Black-American churches were themselves Black?
###### 3. Are Switzerland and Northern Ireland not distinguished by having (a) about the highest rates of domestic gun-ownership in the West; (b) singularly low rates of homicide (apart from deaths attributable to IRA terrorism)? (And is gun ownership not higher among middle-aged rural Whites than among young urban Blacks [themselves at greatest risk of death from each other's hands]?)
Since this Newsletter's 'scoop' on the story of sex-realist Bishop Roderick (NL Sep. 15, 17, 18), I owe it to readers to bring them the latest. Apparently the Scottish RC Church ran a witch-hunt oops disciplinary inquiry into BR just two years ago with regard to his counselling sessions with a *third* lady - other than the two who have lately come to light. Now, today, Classic FM Radio is hinting at a *fourth* lover - so BR may well have been going up to the Muslim legal limit! Myself, I have only slept with two girls who had had affairs with Catholic priests. In neither case was the result very good. The girl in Washington had a son by the priest and, at 8 years old, the boy was a keen arsonist and one night tried to burn the house down. In the Holy Republic of Eire, the girl had turned into a lesbian - though sufficiently faithless and mixed up to take time out for some angling with me. For both the two priests and their two girls, Rome's lack of sex realism had proved a disaster. (I will look forward to discussing this with Il Papa: today, during his visit to his many devotees in France's Fifth Republic, he has been persuaded to go on the Net for the first time.)
SEPTEMBER 28 Perhaps I can now fight the Abominable DePublisher in the courts of London? A group of Chancery Lane lawyers has just offered Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) a 'no-win-no-fee' service to help cancer victims seeking compensation from tobacco companies (Classic FM Radio). This is the first-ever provision of contingency- fee lawyering in England. I will be hoping the idea catches on fast.
OCTOBER 1 People are asking when I am to resume lecturing, what will `happen', and whether I can help them prepare the lectures of mine to which they have now been assigned by the Department. Well, my first E.U. lecture this term will be on November 6 (on factor analysis, to the Psychology III Class). Then, from November 13th, I am scheduled to run my usual fourth-year course, `Intelligence: Current Controversies.' However, prior to that, my Department Seminar slot is on October 31st. There my title will be ` Doing something about `g' ` - the same as the title of my editorial due for publication (any day now) in `Intelligence.' What will `happen' is anyone's guess. Plainly, the University is hoping that things will be quieter by the end of October. Yet, having closed down my lectures on metaphysical, epistemological and moral problems in psychology, and the Cyberia debate between Marek Kohn, Kenan Malik and myself, the AntiNazi League will presumably not wish me to talk about intelligence, genes, race and what to do about them. As for the Abominable Wiley, their incompetent staff have only just heard of a book called `The Bell Curve' which sold half-a-million copies despite hostile reviews. When they read it and see it is pretty similar to `The `g' Factor' they will re-calculate the lost royalties that they owe me. Then we will settle and I will get busy with re-publication. Unfortunately this process will take some time: Wiley have just told a journalist that, at their New York HQ, they neither read nor publish anything that is politically incorrect! So for a while I will have plenty of time for helping my colleagues, and have begun unloading my teaching files to help them prepare their replacement lectures.
!!! READERS' QUIZZ !!! Busy preparing my lectures on `Psychology and Politics' for next term, I am naturally collecting information on the sexual perversions of great dictators, tyrants, butchers etc. But there is one story about which I am unsure. In the late 1980's, the magazine for Cold Warriors, `Encounter', published (with reasonable-looking documentation) the evidence that Hitler was an undinist. {*Genuinely sensitive readers, and also feminasties, should look the other way at this point.* An undinist is one who likes to urinate on ladies---usually, I imagine, in the bath. In Hitler's case, he was supposedly anxious that the ladies might tell on him, so he had most of his partners shot dead straight afterwards. Some half-a-dozen girls are supposed to be agreed by scholars to have met their ends in this way.} At the time, I felt sure the story would catch on with the likes of the AntiNazi League and be widely relayed. However, I have yet to come across anyone who knew the story prior to my telling it to them. So perhaps I have missed something? Perhaps someone poured cold water on `Hitler-the-undinist'?.... I would be glad to receive readers' advice. A PRIZE? -- O.K., to the reader submitting the most helpful answer I will send a floppy disk containing the latest version of `The `g' Factor.'
SEPTEMBER 29 The film has arrived for which all Cold Warriors were waiting. 'The Promise' (Germany, 1994, Margarethe von Trotta) is a powerful visual aid as to the nature of Democratic Socialism---East German style. There is impressive footage of tanks rolling, of the Wall and watchtowers, of the checkpoints and of officials (biological realists to a man) using their targets' family ties so as to bully them. At the personal level, too, 'The Promise' is grimly realistic. In 1961, lovers Sophie and Konrad are separated as Sophie makes it through the Berlin sewers to freedom while Konrad gets left behind (whether accidentally or on purpose is never entirely clear) to face the wrath of his father for involving himself in an escape attempt. --- The "promise" of the title is that Konrad will join Sophie soon. Pursuing his scientific career---after probationary service as a border guard---Konrad is able to arrange to join his love in Prague, during the 'Prague Spring' when Czech communism relaxed for a while. However, the couple's reunion is cut short as the Russian tanks rumble in and Sophie protests and is deported. Next time round, the 'mistake' is Konrad's. The pregnant Sophie decides to go for love (and a now-rather-successful father), so she applies to return to the East; but Konrad advises he'll be able to jump ship at a scientific conference that he's being allowed to attend in Stockholm. Alas, the Stasi has put two and two together and blocks our hero's escape. Soon our heroine decides to marry someone else. Although the couple still love (and dream about) each other, sex realism triumphs: she feels she has to put her child first, and he feels he has to put his career first. Ironically, it is the adolescent son who, in November 1989, races east through the tide of the crowds milling into West Berlin to bring out his father---by then broken from imprisonment for knocking out his minder. -- The minder had stopped Konrad from seeing the boy, because Konrad would not persuade his sister (by then an irritant to the authorities) to go to the West. The sister's had indeed proved the only workable successful strategy: she had become a Lutheran minister and, with her devoted and equally anti-communist husband, fought the regime from that position -- dealing knowingly with Stasi infiltration of her congregation to try to make her go 'over the top.' {Of course, it *was*, in reality, via the growing crowds in the churches that the pressures mounted against the regime -- culminating in the million-strong demonstration in properly-called 'Heldenstadt Leipzig' that defied the democratic socialists to shoot and thus brought the end of the Wall and the regime.} Sadly, the sister's husband's enthusiasm finally gets him arrested, dumped in West Berlin, and shot dead by the heroic East German border guards when trying to re-enter across the wire to rejoin his wife. Truly, the only way to handle the tyranny of Political Correctness is to stay around and expose its gruesome operatives to condemnation by both ridicule and higher authority -- keeping one's beloved but not too many dependent children by one's side in the process. I will remember 'The Promise' in the struggles that lie ahead with the Abominable Wiley.
SEPTEMBER 30 A very important development has occurred regarding the conduct of Edinburgh University in the Brand affair. With permission, I copy below a letter sent recently to E.U.'s Provost MacCormick by the President of Canada's Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship. As befits a SAFS President, John Furedy provides a restrained and careful yet ultimately damning analysis of E.U.'s harassment of me.
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Dear Colleague, Further to our interchange in late May regarding your Inquiry into the Teaching Conduct of Mr. Chris Brand, and your request (to which I acceded) that we do not discuss the case further while you are conducting your inquiry, I would now, the inquiry having been completed, like to continue the discussion with you. My comments are based on the April 24 and May 31 press releases by your University which your Information and PR Services Office kindly supplied to me, and on the written "directives" that you issued to Mr. Brand as a result of completing your inquiry.
You will recall that in my original faxed enquiry I was most concerned that, as reported by the May 9 issue of 'Nature', you and your university were using the "culture of comfort" criterion for assessing a faculty member's reputation as a teacher, rather than determining whether his academic performance was competent and fair. Your late-May assurance that the comfort criterion would not be used was reassuring, and the press releases do confirm that no *crude* use of the comfort criterion was involved. In this respect, both you and your University are to be complemented.
This is not idle praise, at least by current Canadian standards. As you probably know, the administrations of both the University of British Columbia (in the summer of 1995, when it suspended a whole department's graduate admissions program, and thereby smeared the academic reputation of all the faculty and students in that department, simply because some individuals reported having felt "uncomfortable") and the University of New Brunswick (in the late fall of 1993, when it suspended a mathematics professor for writing a piece in a student journal that made some people feel "uncomfortable") have used the comfort criterion in a crude and flagrant way, and have totally ignored considerations of academic freedom.
Nevertheless, in my view, there are aspects of your University's actions that suggest that, perhaps unwittingly, weaker and more muted forms of the comfort criterion have indeed been employed both in the timing of the inquiry and in the report. Evidence for this implicit useage of the comfort criterion, which conflicts with the principles of academic freedom, is as follows. I have numbered my points for the convenience of discussing what is, admittedly, a complicated issue.
___ 1. The formulation of the 1st and 2nd requirements in the May 31 press release is questionable. In my view only the 3rd requirement ("that there should be fairness and impartiality in assessing students' work"---Mr. Brand, in the view of your inquiry, clearly met this requirement) is clearly valid.
The first requirement ("a relationship between teacher and taught of mutual respect") is vague, especially when used in what is a potentially punitive situation, where the punishment need not be the ultimate one of being fired, but even the relatively mild one of having one's academic reputation diminished. When the "mutual respect" requirement is used in this context, it contravenes the principle that faculty members should be evaluated in terms only of their academic performance. Of course there are minimal standards of "mutual respect" (e.g., no personal abuse of students), but when this term includes a comfort-criterion related position (e.g. faculty have to "respect" students' views), then, quite clearly, the comfort criterion is involved.
The second requirement ("that the presentation, exposition and critical evaluation of what is taught, should be balanced and competent") is also vague in its formulation. The term "balanced" is especially dangerous, because it can be taken to suggest that the instructor should give equal weight to all opinions. Again, of course, there are minimal standards. If the instructor mentions only his own views (no "balance"), or does not properly cite relevant evidence (lack of competence), then s/he is open to reprimand. But what of the academically competent instructor who argues strongly (including the adducing of relevant evidence) for a position that is offensive to *some* students, as is the case, for example, of an evolutionist biology instructor presenting the Darwinian position to a class that has some creationist students in it? Should such an instructor's academic reputation be smeared by an "inquiry" that is based on unspecified complaints by some anonymous students, and should that reputation be further smeared by "directives" that do not clearly speak to the only academically relevant aspect of his teaching as specified by the inquiry's stated third requirement?
I think I should note that, with respect to failures to maintain minimal standards with respect to #1 and #2, the violations have to be flagrant enough that they can be proved in an open way, rather than the evidence having to be gathered "where those concerned were invited to give information and express views in confidence". In addition, for violations of #2 (e.g., coverage of literature), it is necessary to use outside experts who are familiar with the discipline, and who are presented systematic evidence to evaluate. This, indeed, is the external examining system which is one of the glories of the British educational system. It appears that Mr. Brand had passed in terms of this external, expert evaluation based on systematically examined evidence. In contrast, your committee was not composed of experts in the field that Mr. Brand was teaching, and did not systematically examine the evidence.
I suggest, indeed, that it is only when comfort criteria are used (albeit perhaps unwittingly) that it becomes necessary to have anonymous, informal sources of information, with unspecified charges made by unqualified complainants to a committee which is also unqualified, in the sense of making judgments in terms of the 1st and 2nd stated requirements.
___ 2. The timing of the inquiry into Mr. Brand's teaching performance was awkward, given that there was apparently no earlier evidence in terms of the judgment of internal and external experts that there was anything remiss in his teaching. The timing itself at least suggested that the inquiry was conducted because of Mr. Brand's expressed opinions being uncomfortable to some, rather than on the basis of independent evidence that there was anything wrong with his teaching.
Even though I accepted your claim in May that your inquiry was to be directed at "complaints by students about the quality of his teaching and of his treatment of them in the teaching relationship", I wondered then about just why it was that these complaints had to be inquired into right at the time that the controversy arose over his opinions. However, I hoped that the inquiry would be narrowly focussed, as well as being systematically and fairly conducted, and that the results of the enquiry would be formulated in terms of the 3rd requirement "that there should be fairness and impartiality in assessing students' work". As it turned out, the inquiry unequivocally cleared Mr. Brand with respect to this criterion, which should have been the end of the matter, except for an explanation for why the inquiry had been launched in the first place. Instead, the 1st and 2nd requirements were also formulated, and "directives" issued to Mr. Brand in terms of these requirements, directives which could not but cause damage to his academic reputation as a teacher.
___ 3. The distinction between disciplinary actions (which were not undertaken) and "directives" (which were issued to Mr. Brand to "modify his teaching" in connection with the 1st and 2nd requirements) is spurious, and makes sense only if an implicit comfort criterion is assumed. If directives are not followed, disciplinary actions are threatened. So a smear on the academic reputation of Mr. Brand is already established.
The directives you issued, moreover, are only justifiable on the basis of an implicit comfort criterion, because it is only evidence of (student) discomfort, and none of improper biassed evaluation or incompetent presentation, that has been adduced in your inquiry.
The general significance of this muted use of the comfort criterion is that it will inhibit faculty from raising controversial issues. The professional cost of even a vaguely worded "directive" is considerable, so any faculty member who is concerned about his or her professional reputation, or is concerned to avoid such "inquiries", will focus on the comfort of *all* students, and will thereby deprive students of a genuine education. In addition, by such subtle means, the university will be transformed into an adult daycare centre where comfort is the criterion, and all this without any spectacular cases of firings or even formal "reprimands".
It is true, of course, that Mr. Brand has not behaved in such a retiring way, but has, instead, defended his academic reputation quite aggressively. I don't think, however, that he represents the typical academic, but is rather someone who is so interested in promoting his views, that he is prepared to sacrifice his professional reputation and peace of mind. But if other faculty see what has happened to him in terms of the inquiry and the directives, it is likely that most will take the easy way out, and bow to the pressure of the culture of comfort.
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As I indicated at the outset, I recognize that these are complex issues, and applaud your University's actions in defending academic freedom, and resisting the crude adoption of any culture of comfort criterion. I would also like to stress that neither I nor SAFS take any position concerning the validity of Mr. Brand's opinions, or even any approval of the particular style that he has chosen to defend those opinions. What does concern me is the apparent implicit use of the culture of comfort criterion in terms of the timing, conduct, and outcome of the inquiry into his teaching. In my view your University should withdraw the "directives" it has issued to him, and reiterate simply and without qualification that, as indicated by previous external and internal reviews, your inquiry has confirmed that Mr. Brand's teaching is unimpeachable in terms of "fairness and impartiality in assessing students' work".
John J. Furedy, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, University of Toronto and President, Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (email: safs@psych.utoronto.ca) Department of Psychology 100 St. George Street, 4th Floor Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1A1
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OCTOBER 4 At the University of New Orleans, Professor Ed Miller is still being harassed by his Chancellor for writing to a newspaper to correct a claim that brain size was not linked to IQ. Now, I am glad to say, he is finding strong and articulate support from the US National Writers' Union. Robert B. Chatelle, the Co-Chairman of the Political Issues Committee of NWU has complained in some detail to the President of Louisiana's State University System. The NWU letter specially indicts UNO's flagrant assertions of its right to censor its staff and provide--as what UNO calls its "most important" provision--a culture of comfort for its students. I will gladly forward NWU's letter to any TgF supporters who would like to try to help Ed Miller. (TgF is also a casualty in the affair: the copy supplied by Ed Miller has been kicked out by UNO's Main Library. -- So now it a 'university' library signs up for censorship along with the Abominable Wiley!) The address to write to is as follows. Allen A. Copping Esqr. (President, Louisiana State University System) 107, System Building, LSU System Building 3810 W. Lakeshore Drive Baton Rouge LA 70803 [Readers wishing to see the kind of thing that Ed Miller writes can consult <http://www.csra.net/Lrand/Miller.htm >.]
I have just finished reading Doris Lessing's genes-realist novel, 'The Fifth Child' (HarperCollins, 1993). Though some critics place this novel in the 'horror' genre, I found it all too true-to-life. In particular, as the desperate mother--who has already retrieved her murderous fifth child from drugged anaesthesia on a psychiatric ward--pleads with experts to admit her son has profound and lasting problems, she meets a wall of politically correct discourse that will not admit reality. Here she is with a top psychiatric expert.
////// The door opened. Ben appeared: he had been pushed into the room by the nurse. The door shut behind him, and he backed against it, glaring at the doctor. He stood with his shoulders hunched forward and his knees bent, as if about to spring off somewhere. He was a squat, burly little figure, with a big head, the yellow stubble of his coarse hair growing from the double crown of his forehead. He had a flattish flaring nose that turned up. His mouth was fleshy and curly. His eyes were like lumps of dull stone. For the first time Harriet [his mother] thought, But he doesn't look like a six-year-old, but much older. You could almost take him for a little man, not a child at all. The doctor looked at Ben. Harriet watched them both. The doctor then said, `All right, Ben, go out again. Your mother will be with you in a minute.' Ben stood petrified. Again Dr Gilly spoke into her machine, the door opened, and Ben was hauled backwards out of sight, snarling. `Tell me, Dr Gilly, what did you see?' Dr Gilly's pose was wary, offended; she was calculating the time left to the end of the interview. She did not answer. Harriet said, knowing it was no use, but because she wanted it said, heard: `He's not human, is he?.....I want it said. I want it recognized. I just can't stand it never being said?' `Can't you see that it is simply outside my competence? If it is true, that is?' \\\\\\
I am not a natural Fergie sympathiser; but I do think it is a crying shame that the Princess has been prevented by the bizarre state of English law from airing her case against her American ex-boyfriend . Told she would need to cough up stlg500,000 as a deposit towards likely legal costs, she has withdrawn her suit. How amazing that there is no contingency-fee service in England! Quite apart from any injury Fergie has genuinely suffered, the whole country is entitled to an entertaining trial that would give even a little idea of what really happened. -- As for 'The 'g' Factor', of course! Truly, English law is presently an ass.
OCTOBER 5 Pursuing how the great psychologist, William McDougall--the forerunner of evolutionary psychology--fell out with his fellow academics, I discover a fascinating article, 'Psychology, history and the press: the case of William McDougall and 'The New York Times' ' (Russell A. Jones [Univ. Kentucky], 1987, 'American Psychologist 42, 10, 931-940). Whereas goody-goody E.L.Thorndike attracted NYT headlines like Columbia Rewards High Achievement Educators Honor Prof. E.L.Thorndike The New Psychology Sheds Light on Man Elected by Scientists and Harvard Grants Nine Honorary Degrees, the NYT treatment for McDougall was very different, as follows. Coming Era of Vegetable Supremacy Would Reform Society By Marriage Control White Supremacy Menaced Lays Crime Wave To Race Mixing Ghosts Do Exist, McDougall Admits. As well as being negatively slanted, reporting of McD was sometimes downright misleading--as with the claim that he had 'admitted' the existence of ghosts. [He had of course said he was *not* convinced by ghostly phenomena, but that these should be researched rather than pooh-poohed.] Yet can McDougall's problems be blamed on the media? McDougall himself certainly thought that it was his own advocacy of eugenics that was the beginning of his troubles--so great that by 1934 he resigned from the American Psychological Association. Moreover, he had a style well suited to polemic and a willingness to pronounce frankly on big questions. Here is how McD took on John Watson in their crucial debate of 1924. "Dr Watson's views are attractive to many persons....by reason of the fact that these views simplify so greatly the problems that lie before the student of psychology: they abolish at one stroke many tough problems with which the greatest intellects have struggled with only very partial success for more than two thousand years; and they do this by the bold and simple expedient of inviting the student to shut his eyes to them, to turn resolutely away from them, and to forget that they exist... ....I am at liberty to trample on [Dr Watson's] feelings....for [he] has assured us (and it is the very essence of his peculiar doctrine) that he does not care a cent about feelings, whether his how or those of any other person." Many philosophers would say exactly the same to many psychologists today, of course. Unfortunately for McD, Watson and others were able to show what pie-eyed behaviourists could do for a living--getting their own environmentalism funded by others' idealism; and the resulting jobs for the boys in trivial experimentation and minimally therapeutic tinkering (since 1975 mendaciously called 'cognitive-behavioural' treatment) are still a large part of psychological practice today. [Let it not be said 'of psychology': for that subject itself has essentially ceased to exist--as I spell out a little in the Epilogue to 'The 'g' Factor.']
OCTOBER 6 The great mystery of depression, suicidal ideation and the death wish has lately been drawn to public attention by embryologist and biology realist Sir Lewis Wolpert (on 'Desert Island Disks' this week). Sir Lewis recently suffered his first serious depression --losing all capacity for enjoyment, all inclination to act and all interests apart from a constant preoccupation with committing suicide. Thankfully for the causes of science and reason in British national life, Sir Lewis was cured by Seroxat and resolved to bring relief to other depressives and their relatives by talking publicly about his illness. (No, he could not have jumped off a bridge, he says: his fear of heights was too strong!) I am reminded of my many colleagues who decline to acknowledge the role of the death wish in psychology. Although myself spared suicidal thoughts and most other seriously depressive symptomatology, I have for several years thought psychology must get real about thanatos. Is there perchance any better account of self-destructive motivations other than that of Freud and Christopher Badcock [who links it to apoptosis]? Surely it is high time for an end to femin-'antinazi' social constructivism and a move towards realism about eros, thanatos, IQ and race? (Black people, incidentally, have a singularly low rate of suicide despite what 'antiracists' hypothesize to be the innumerable social disadvantages and privations of being Black in 'racist' White society.)
British public life is in yet more trouble because of the lack of contingency fee lawyers. Not only cannot Princess Fergie (hounded mercilessly by the press) pursue her charges against her American ex-boyfriend. Now, Neil Hamilton, the MP accused of accepting cash to ask questions in Parliament has withdrawn his High Court action against the 'Guardian' newspaper (the semi-literate social workers' comic in Britain). The MP had already spent stlg15,000 and the 'Guardian' was planning to call a string of witnesses that would necessarily make the costs of the action astronomical. Like myself, the MP was not prepared to risk bankruptcy; and he hopes to clear his name by other means. I wish him well and hope to see him and other MPs joining me in calling for no-win-no-fee lawyering to be allowed in English courts.
OCTOBER 7 With the return of the undergraduates to Edinburgh, I am able to gauge the mood around campus about race realism. It is true that some students frown, wrinkle their noses or sniff as they pass me; and, regrettably, the prettier girls are perhaps over-represented among such hyper-sensitives. However, far more often I am greeted with a conspiratorial smile and even a wink. On balance, the tide is probably turning in the hearts-and-minds campaign--it's just that some pretty girls are spoilt rotten and have no need for realism.
Politics realism could not be better instantiated than in Britain's {New} Blairbour Party. Not only did their Leader just announce "with pride" to the Annual Conference that Blairbour had replaced the Conservatives as the party of Laura Norder; but he received thunderous applause for Laura Norder's accession. With his new Party being pro-nuclear, pro-single-currency, pro-fast-tracking, pro-stocks and pro-flogging, Mr Blair is achieving that 'spanning' of the authoritarian-humanitarian divide which I have long recommended to state-welfarist, Blairbourish sympathizers who wish to achieve high office (see the Introduction to Quotes XXV at <http://www.ed.ac.uk/~crb/quotes/>). [Contrariwise, I maintain that parties supporting free-market capitalism are well advised to 'span' the common divide between hedonism and moralism--trying, as it were, to have the best of both *these* worlds. -- For better or worse, there is not much moralism around at present for politicians to relate to--except, of course, the dreaded PC. That's why I have proposed polygamy and other sensible marital contracts that people could make to reduce the tidal wave of single-parent-families whose children will mainly need locking up.]
OCTOBER 8 Going out any day now to psychologists in Edinburgh is the following Abstract of the seminar which I am to give on October 31st (in Dept. Psychology, 7, George Square, Edinburgh at 12 noon).
////// `Doing something about 'g'.' -- Abstract Since the publication of 'The Bell Curve' (R. Herrnstein & C. Murray, 1994, Free Press) and 'The 'g' Factor' (Brand, 1996, Wiley), the main facts and hypotheses about IQ and its importance in the West today have been set before the general public. However, no agreed response to these works has emerged. (This is in part no doubt because of Wiley's withdrawal of 'The 'g' Factor.' -- Though copies may be borrowed from Edinburgh University Library and from the author; and a Summary can be seen on the Internet at < http://www.webcom.com/zurcher/thegfactor/index.html >.) This seminar will consider possible practical responses, depending on the adoption of environmentalist or hereditarian hypotheses about 'g'. In the schools, a large-scale (re-)introduction of 'streaming', 'setting', 'banding' or 'fast tracking' seems indicated; so relevant research is considered. However, to compel children to sit psychometric tests or school exams, or to join the classes suggested by experts, seems undesirable; so it is considered whether children and their parents could not themselves be entrusted with 'track choice'. [The main argument to be presented is that of the last 15 pages of Chapter IV of 'The 'g' Factor'. The argument appears also as an Editorial in this Autumn's issue of the journal 'Intelligence'.] \\\\\\
It is not only Britain's New Blairbour Party that is going in for politics realism. In blood-drenched Nicaragua too, the once-Marxist Sandinistas have announced their conversion to free-market capitalism. As a token of their good faith, they have appointed as their Vice-President no rugged 'freedom' fighter but a wealthy landowner. Ditto in high-thanatic Afghanistan, sex differences are now being recognized as part of the take-over by the youthful Calibans--if not quite the particular differences that mainstream psychometricians would recommend. Times they are a-changing -- except at the stuck-in-the-past HQ of jackbooted Wiley DePublisher!
In the interests of 'freedom of the press', photos appear in British 'newspapers' today of Lady Di in her undies and Fergie doing it with a goat. FatCat Charles Ellis at Abominable Wiley in New York should watch out: eventually the fearless newsies will make it to his penthouse hideout and reveal the colour of his boxers as he sits on the john still straining his tiny mind to understand 'The 'g' Factor.'
OCTOBER 9 !!!! READERS' QUIZZ : PROVISIONAL RESULT !!!! Preparing for my 'Political Psychology' lectures, I had asked for evidence and references that Hitler really was an 'undinist.' I have received the following extract from D.LEWIS, 1977, 'The Secret Life Of Adolf Hitler', London, Heinrich Hanau (p 136).
###### "By the end of 1929, [Hitler's niece, Geli Raubal] was reluctantly consenting to whatever Hitler demanded of her. These included being abused, kicked and scolded, and beatings with fists, feet and dog whip as he lay naked on the carpet before her. Sometimes Hitler reversed the roles and thrashed Geli, although never with the violence which he demanded from her. Her uncle's behaviour frightened and revolted Geli, who was only prepared to tolerate it because of the easy life she enjoyed most of the time. In public she never betrayed the truth of their relationship although on one occasion Putzi Hanfstaengl [Hitler's Harvard-educated friend](1957, 'Hitler--The Missing Years', London) saw a look of terror mingled with disgust on her face when Hitler emphasised a point by cracking his dog whip against his jackboots: "Whips as well, I thought, and really felt sorry for the girl." But really Putzi and his wife, who now realised they had been over-hasty in dismissing Hitler as a 'neuter', never even guessed at the extent of Hitler's sado-masochism. After a while, the pain of being beaten by Geli was no longer sufficient sexual stimulation. Now he demanded that she squat over him as he lay naked on the floor, and urinate or defecate on him." David Lewis's tale has an even more sorry ending. Geli was a girl who "needed sex and needed it frequently" -- e.g. with SA men while Hitler was away. Eventually she fell pregnant by her Jewish boyfriend and, on learning this, Himmler refused her an abortion and arranged for her to appear to have committed suicide -- shot through her heart with Hitler's Walther pistol. While this testimony to Hitler's undinism is not perhaps as recent as I had hoped, it is the front-runner for the prize (a disked copy of TgF) at present. But will I be able to persuade the winner to step forward and take a bow? Or find the visual aids that Rev. MacCormick will require to go along with my lecture presentation? STOP PRESS: Another promising entry is on its way!
OCTOBER 10 STOP PRESS I have received evidence of the degree to which 'anti-racist' hysteria has infected American universities. At the University of New Orleans, Professor Ed Miller has publicly corrected a claim that there is no link between brain size and IQ. Here is the response of some of his colleagues. >Subject: Re: Proposed UNO Faculty Statement >References: <961009164535_122720336@emout07.mail.aol.com> >(Received October 9, 1996.)
>To: UNO Faculty > > If you can, please sign the attached statement. It is our goal >to gather as many signatures as possible and then secure space in local >publications to publish both the statement and the names of those who >signed. > > (Two signatures here - Dennis R. McSeveney (apparently in >Sociology and head of the policy committee) and Frederick >Barton - (English Dept and an associate dean) > > We the undersigned University of New Orleans faculty are >appalled by the sentiments expressed by Economics Professor Edward M. >Miller (in a letter to Gambit and elsewhere) that intelligence is race >based. We do not endorse Mr. Miller's research agenda, and we repudiate >his conclusions. Mr. Miller's attitudes on the connection between race >and intelligence are his alone and in no way represent those of the UNO >faculty. We are ashamed to have been in any way associated with such >abhorrent attitudes. As UNO faculty, we hereby apologize to all in our >community who find Mr. Miller's attitudes repugnant. > > >[The above--authored by a professor of Sociology and a member (the >Chair) of the University Policy Committee, and a college Dean!--is being >circulated to faculty. It is not only a personal attack against >Professor Miller, but a blatant attack on Miller's academic freedom.]
Moreover, as far as I am aware, Miller has made *no* claim that intelligence is "race-based." --Though I believe he would generally be prepared to defend the propositions linking race and IQ that can be found in 'The 'g' Factor'. At UNO, much ado is being made that Professor Miller writes outside the conventional disciplinary boundaries related to his formal training (mechanical engineering, economics, econometrics ). Professor James Flynn, however, has done the same apparently without criticism from his university (Otago)--where he heads the Department of Politics. In fact, about half of the well-known critics of IQ and the London School today are not themselves psychologists: Stephen J. Gould, Richard C. Lewontin, 'Steve' Rose, 'Steve' Jones and Maurice Schiff. (See the index entry 'critics of IQ on p.243 of 'The 'g' Factor.') Even Leon Kamin was a rat man by scholarship until he turned on Sir Cyril Burt!
I have a long chat with one of E.U.'s Asian students. Delightfully delicate and vivacious, she sympathizes, while thinking I may have over-estimated Mongoloid IQ. I accept that possibility and we go on to discuss the hyperconformity and tyrannical tendencies of Asians. She has read all about Tiananmen Square and knows the score; on the other hand she finds people here very "naughty" and seeks a personal half-way house. She kindly explains that she cannot possibly say anything publicly in my defence: her father would be furious with her if she got into trouble. In a week where one of my fellow Fellows from the past (then at Nuffield College, Oxford) has just won a Nobel Prize (for Economics), I recall that, despite Japanese affluence, practicality and stress on education, it is still White Westerners and Brahmin Indians who go for Gold and get it.
Here is another very helpful READERS' QUIZZ entry from a keen TgF supporter. [Though, N.B., I am really looking for evidence as to whether historians of the 1990's accept the 'undinism' story.] In 1943, Otto Strasser, a former intimate of Hitler's, told American officials what he had supposedly winkled out of Geli Raubel {Hitler's niece}. "Hitler made her undress.....He would lie down on the floor. Then she would have to squat over his face where he could examine her at close range and this made him very excited. When the excitement reached its peak, he demanded that she urinate on him and that gave him his sexual pleasure. Geli said the whole performance was extremely disgusting to her and....it gave her no gratification." The above is extracted from "The Psychopathic God--Adolf Hitler" by Robert G. L. WAITE (Professor of History at Williams College) (1977, New York, Basic Books). If only I could get 'The 'g' Factor' into as many homes as possess volumes covering Hitler's sex life! Alas, there is still no sign of Wiley DePublisher admitting that my book deserves the same treatment as the Free Press provided for 'The Bell Curve'. How dare the Abominable Wiley continue to claim they are an "academic" publishing house when their respect for academics is plainly zero--a matter on which I will reveal still more for Wiley authors and any remaining Wiley readers in due course!
OCTOBER 12 See LATEST PRESS COVERAGE at end of Newsletter. So: I am still helping to sell newspapers while Dame Stewart Sutherland and the Reverend MacCormick try to decide what to do. Plainly, the only quick way to clear my name and that of Edinburgh University is for Wiley to produce its 1,500 copies from its Chichester warehouse--or for the lazy British journalists to bribe night-watchmen and steal the copies in the public interest. Even then the journalists would really have to read the book--a task for which most of them have so far shown neither inclination nor ability. So here is where to find two helpful VISUAL AIDS. Re the Black-White IQ difference at all levels of socio-economic status of the home, see 'The 'g' Factor' p. 39. Re white girls in poverty being four times more likely to have an out-of-wedlock first birth if they are themselves of low IQ (with parental SES partialled out), see 'The Bell Curve' [available in paperback in all university booksellers] p.188.
OCTOBER 13 What is it like at the eye of the storm? Well, thanks to some key supporters (not *all* blue-eyed blondes!) it is very bearable indeed; people on the Edinburgh streets are friendly; and it's nice to wake up to telephone opportunities to get one's treasured opinions straight on to the air waves. The downside is that when you read the papers you find they have printed only the tiniest fragment of what you said. (This morning I got into lecture mode with the Evening News and explained how there were three main types of racism--scientific, affective and political; but I was almost certainly wasting my breath.) One particular snag is photos: it seems unreasonable to refuse a photographer who asks you please to put a foot there, then a hand somewhere else, then to look this way, or that way. However, one learns that it is quite often the more ridiculous shots that will eventually be selected by sub-editors. It gives one a certain sympathy with the Egyptian superstition that forbids being photographed except for large sums of money paid in advance. I would welcome readers' advice on how and where to 'draw the line.'
I am not the only Brit in the papers for touching gently on home truths. Pretty blonde Anne Atkins, the wife of an evangelical vicar, elicited a record number of complaints about her recent 'GodSlot' performance on BBC IV UK. Her offence? To complain that the Church today does not give a strong enough lead about homosexuality. Given the Church of England's position that it is fine and godly to have homosexual inclinations just so long as one doesn't do much about them, AA's comment seems fair enough. But the Church of England itself phoned the Beeb to complain.
OCTOBER 14 At this critical juncture--while it is being decided whether Edinburgh University is run by Stewart Sutherland (52) or student Nicola Owen (22)--Sir Stewart has been devoting himself to academic good works in Melbourne (Workers' Paradise) (see 'Times Higher', 11 x, p. 4).Happily, the Principal shows every sign of being a regular reader of TgF Newsletters: thus he is aware that Britain's 'Open University' awards First Class degrees with twice the frequency of the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh. In his public lecture in Melbourne, Principal Sutherland dwelt on a somewhat more hypothetical contrast: he said it had to be admitted that a First in Maths or Molecular Biology from the [non-existent, I believe] 'University of Lower Gidding' would not be equivalent to a First from Imperial College (London) or the University of Edinburgh. But Sir Stewart's heart is clearly in the right place--in defence of standards and realism. In a specially clever joke against Britain's countless new 'universities' of today, Sir Stewart warned people in other countries that, astonishingly, all these 'Lower Gidding'-type institutions have the right to award their own Ph.D.'s --a power that is available to only ten per cent of the USA's institutions of higher education! I must say it makes one very proud to be on the staff of a university where the Principal is a quick learner and fast-developing university realist.
Slower learners are the Anti-Nazi League. I have seen no sign of ANL members reading my book over the past six months. Yet the ANL still wishes to condemn me, and the first protest meeting of the new academic year will take place at the Psychology Department tomorrow at 1.00p.m. Doubtless the ANL Stalinists will once more declare me to be a racist--a charge against which no legal redress is available in the current asinine state of British law. Lacking willingness to read and learn, the ANL fails to appreciate that I am only what their own Gruppenfuehrers like 'Steve' Rose have called *scientific* racists, i.e. race realists who acknowledge racial differences but can easily found married to or drinking the night away with members of other racial groups. Thanks to a keen TgF supporter, I will have chapter and verse at hand to explain that I am certainly less of a racist--in any normal sense of that word--than the ANL's own beloved Marx and Engels!
OCTOBER 15 So how am I reacting to my demotion from the Ethics Convenership--announced by Professor Grieve yesterday afternoon as a managerial readjustment to ensure the smooth running of the Department?... Answer: with as much enthusiasm as the Anti-Nazi League! Not only have I been spared a Departmental chore, but a senior university figure has given me his word that he will look at ways in which he and the University can help to achieve re-publication of 'The 'g' Factor'--thus not only clearing my own name but also helping explain how the University had employed me for 26 years without noticing that I was a racist.
OCTOBER 16 Yesterday some 50 'antiracists' joined AntiNazi League gruppenfuehrerines in a lunch-time protest outside the Psychology Department. As far as I could see, the meeting was good-humoured enough --contenting itself with calling for me to sacked and the Psychology Department to be closed down rather than for us all to be hung, drawn and quartered. And maybe the impact was low, for all my fifteen first-year tutees got through to our tutorial just two hours later. So TgF's wonderful supporters round the world should feel reassured. Also, it looks as if some friendlier journalism may be on the way: at least two young newsies have taken the trouble to read what is on the Net and put lots of sensible and thoughtful questions. When asked how I think it will end, I still say I think TgF will win and the 'antiracists' will be a laughing stock. Quite seriously, I just cannot see what a sustainable alternative would look like. Of course, I am much less certain about how *long* it will take to win. Do any TgF supporters have any advice, please? How have other de-publications ended? [William McDougall, of course, did *not* win his battle with 'mechanistic behaviorism' in his lifetime. But the tide turned by 1951with the publication of Niko Tinbergen's 'The Study of Instinct' (Oxford University Press). And surely everything goes faster in the modern world? I give 'antiracism' five years at best: it has already become a joke to any informed person.]
Currently, Britain's two main political parties are vying with each other to produce tough gun control measures. Not even waiting for its own Inquiry into the Dunblane school massacre, H.M. 'Government' is proposing a total ban on keeping handguns at home: enthusiasts would have to leave their guns in clubs [providing wonderful arsenals that the IRA and UVF could raid at their leisure]. One has to remark that making policy on the hoof as an immediate response to the latest horror is always unwise; and it is to be hoped that the House of Lords and the Queen will do their own constitutional bit to delay the proposed legislation till proper thought is given to the matter. As thought replaces hysteria, I offer the following fact for consideration (taken from a letter from C.P. Cottis in this week's 'Times Higher') In the three years 1992-1994, there were 196 homicides in England and Wales that involved guns. In Home Office research, it was possible to ascertain whether a licensed weapon was involved in altogether 152 of the homicides. In 22 of the deaths, the gun was licensed; and in 130 it was not. It seems to me that the authorities should concentrate on reducing *un*licensed gun holding, asinine legal practices and the de-publication of people's books before spending taxpayers' money on the non-problem of licensed gun-holding.
OK, I am a race-realist and a sex-realist. But am I also a gay- and paedophilia-realist? (Now that gay 'rights' have been widely acknowledged in the West, paedophilia has manifestly become the next 'frontier.') Whether to accept some forms of paedophilia is now a particularly acute question because of the opening (on October 8) of the trial in Maryland of a 73-year-old Nobel Prizewinner, Daniel Gajdusek. In the course of DG's many researches in New Guinea--cracking 'kuru', a strange 'slow virus' form of central nervous system infection--DG's diaries show he plainly loved for a time at least twelve Melanesian and Micronesian boys and brought them to the USA as his adoptive sons. (I do not know whether an adoptive mother was also provided.) Whatever complaints may be arising today, the boys seem to have had a great time in general. For example eight of them turned up and posed cheerily with their sleeping bags for photographers at the Nobel award ceremony in Stockholm (in 1976, when DJ was 53). I offer the following reflections on whether DJ should be prosecuted. ###1. It seems incredible that a court should be concerning itself with events of some twenty or thirty years ago that apparently yielded no complaint at the time.
###2. From cases of paedophilia I have known, I would incline to guess that the trial has come about primarily because of the jealousy of one of the young partners. What often happens is that the paedophile wants (among other things) to 'liberate' a partner after a few years so the youngster can go off and have girlfriends and develop normally; but then this rejected partner shops the paedophile when he takes up with a younger partner.
###3. Academic studies and my own experience suggest that non-violent paedophilia with a consenting partner over age 12 does no harm so long as the paedophiles and their partners are of above-average IQ and educational level. As lead choirboy (Decani) and soloist, I met lots of paedophiles who would press florins and half-crowns (now worth c. stlg4) into my horrid little palm at age 13. For better or worse, I never 'fancied' any of them nor did anything but allow a little fondling: on my part it was not a sexual experience. But I was never feminazistically inclined to condemn them: these men were well above average in intelligence, well educated (two were writers), amused me far more than the average geography teacher, gave me useful tips (where to find the G spot etc...) and never frightened me in the least. Indeed the only problem with them was that they were so awfully old and sweaty and heavy-breathing and desperate-for-whatever-it-was-they-did [I tried not to look] that I much preferred their jokes to their 'visual aids.'
###4. I find it totally disgraceful that a 73-year-old-man of such distinction should be hounded by the courts and the press. I could certainly never do such work myself. (Though no special admirer of Britain's current Royals, I similarly deplored Princess Anne being arrested and summonsed for speeding in the 1970's.) It is true that I am not an unequivocal democrat. -- Democracy needs circumscribing with respect for intelligence, otherwise it will not last long. On that 'democratic elitist' basis, I offer Daniel Gajdusek my support in his struggles. (I hope US supporters might kindly keep me in touch with this case.)
Consultations are now going on in Edinburgh University to see what can be done to rescue 'The 'g' Factor' from the "very disappointing" treatment meted out by Wiley DePublisher. -- See end of this Newsletter, LATEST PRESS.
OCTOBER 17 Here is the petition against Ed Miller that is collecting signatures of staff on the campus of the University of New Orleans.
###### "We the undersigned University of New Orleans faculty are appalled by the sentiments expressed by Economics Professor Edward M. Miller (in a letter to Gambit and elsewhere) that intelligence is race based. We do not endorse Mr. Miller's research agenda, and we repudiate his conclusions. Mr. Miller's attitudes on the connection between race and intelligence are his alone and in no way represent those of the UNO faculty. We are ashamed to have been in any way associated with such abhorred attitudes. As UNO faculty, we hereby apologize to all in the community who find Mr. Miller's attitudes repugnant." ###### This is an amazing misrepresentation of what Ed Miller has actually said. To say that intelligence is "race based" rather than, as Ed was claiming, "race linked" shows conceptual confusion and incompetence that should altogether disqualify signatories of the above letter from any place in public debate. The unwillingness of critics to read with proper understanding what Ed and I have said is undoubtedly a key component of the hysterical 'antiracism' to which we are being subjected.
Press interest in 'The 'g' Factor' is definitely increasing. It seems there will be feature-type coverage of the book in Edinburgh University's 'Student' newspaper, in 'The Big Issue' (the weekly magazine that is widely sold on the streets in Britain and Europe in support of the homeless) and the 'Sunday Express' (London). In all three cases, the journalists have seemed positively keen to read the book or at least see the summary on the Internet. -- This was quite unheard of back in the Spring! Predictably, as the tide turns in my favour, bastions of 'liberal'-leftism like 'The Grauniad' and the BBC want nothing to do with me *however* big and amusing the story becomes!
OCTOBER 18 Things are not what they might be at America's most visited museum, The Smithsonian [founded with the 100,000 gold sovereigns left by British scientist James Smithson "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men"]. When Robert Park visited recently on behalf of the American Physical Society to see how they were getting on, he was treated to diatribes against IQ in particular and science in general. According to his guide, IQ tests were "used to rationalize racism"; and, as for scientists, "now we know that they're the source of our biggest problems." There are certainly going to be plenty of empty jobs when hysterical 'anti-racism' and 'anti-scientism' are brought to an end as the re-publication of 'The 'g' Factor' shows everyone the absurdity of these pathetic modern substitutes for religion. (For the full story of treachery to science at the Smithsonian, see 'Heterodoxy 4', 4 ix 1996, PO Box 67398, Los Angeles.)
How are my plans going for introducing marital contracts that would permit polygyny, with a special eye to keeping Black families together instead of breaking up whenever the man needs a new sex partner? Well, a TgF supporter advises me that plans are advancing to set up an entirely new country which would be devoted to freedom. Probably to be constructed in the Caribbean, Oceania has already formulated, among many other aspects of its constitution, how marriage would be handled. Here is the proposal. "Marriage is a private Contract among consenting Adults, and the Government will take no part in defining its terms or methods or standards. The Courts will enforce the terms of any Contract entered." That should do the job! -- More on Oceania can be found at the Website <http://oceania.org/laws.html>.
OCTOBER 19-20 E.U.'s student newspaper, 'Student' has a nice big picture of me on its front page. ' 'Racist' lecturer row runs on' is the caption. Supposedly, "The position of self-confessed "scientific racist" and psychology lecturer Chris Brand continues to be a thorn in the side of the University administration." On Page 2, I get more column inches than the handsome Dame Stewart (photoed also). Apparently the ANL protest was meant to have been focused on my teaching. "Second-year Caroline Burrill told 'Student': "It's racist, it's sexist, it's not on. To keep this man teaching here is disgusting. We're going to protest till he's sacked." A sudden downpour broke up the meeting after 20 minutes." {Thank you, Godde!} Particular criticism is made of my sex realism in these Newsletters, but at least some of my advice to Britain's teenage girls is given more publicity: "If they won't use contraception and content themselves with cunnilingus, they should not take more than three peach brandies at a sex orgy." Finally, on Page 10, the first editorial is devoted to me, 'No man's Brand', as follows.
###### For Edinburgh University to back Chris Brand, despite his badly researched "conclusions" that black people are less intelligent than white people and single mothers are stupid, is almost justifiable on the grounds of free speech. For Edinburgh University to continue to employ a man who kindly provides more than twenty colloquialisms for the female genitalia on his web page, as well as film and video reviews that seem to be almost entirely concerned with sexual content is questionable. For Edinburgh University to appoint a self-confessed "scientific racist", already deeply unpopular with most of the student body, to Convener of the Psychology Ethics Committee is just plain silly....."
###### I offer four particular replies to this editorial. 1. I presume the allegation that my "conclusions" are "badly researched" is libellous. Certainly it is an interesting sign of 'Student' 's approach that not a shred of evidence is offered for this false and personally obnoxious charge. 2. For the tendency of low-IQ girls to have more first births out of wedlock, even when parental SES is controlled, see 'The Bell Curve', p.179 ff. 3. I do not use an E.U. website for the Newsletter. The website is very kindly and efficiently provided privately by a blonde TgF supporter in the States. [I should mention that it is another, different blonde who generously and sympathetically advises and assists with my approaches to lawyers and millionaires in a--so far largely vain--effort to assert my legal right to reversion of copyright, all copies of the book, and lost royalties.] 4. If 'Student' deplores even plainly light-hearted coverage of sexual topics in academia, what is it doing with an article on p.5 titled 'FUCKING UNREAL' with two pictures of half-naked blondes entertaining an Edinburgh University student in a new strip joint? Instead of making his excuses and leaving, student reporter, James Kirkup, paid over stlg15 from his student grant to have a blonde strut her stuff for him while he sat with his hands tied behind his back--the club policy is strictly 'no swearing, shouting, propositioning or touching.' Moral Re-armer Kirkup endured it for the full three minutes while the blonde provided a 100% visual aid for anatomy and gynaecology classes, ground her breasts into his face and practised her Arse-to-Groin Rub on him. Now, this new 'Fantasy Bar' may well be in interest to non-sex-realists who cannot get adequate satisfaction from TgF Newsletters. But it is totally hypocritical to feature such material alongside editorials condemning my own more open and healthy approach to sex and sex differences. At the same times as 'Student' accuses Edinburgh University of "staggeringly inept management" it has plainly shot itself in the foot (still legal in Britain, but not for long). P.S. I discover that Moral Rearmament at 'Student' has some way to go. Here's how they discuss the Edinburgh Club, called Shag [Britoid for coitus] that they most commend to student readers. "Last year, the last night of Shag was appropriately like a huge orgasmic shudder; years of sweaty dancing, drunken sharking and free chocolate all crammed into one gasping, juddering, four-hour climax." And here is how the 'arts' page begins. "Episodes of sodomy, cunnilingus and fellatio are not strangers to the art gallery.... ....yet more often than not the shock factor merely spluttered and died. Helen Chadwick's piss flowers were easily forgotten, the turds of Gilbert and George a fading memory, the glistening sperm in the throat, anus and vagina of Mona Hatoum, a passing curiosity." There then follows a stout defence of Robert Mapplethorpe's 'Rosie', the photo of a little girl sitting in a pew wearing a dress but no underwear that was withdrawn by police as pornographic from RM's exhibition at London's Hayward Gallery. Frankly, it seems that, in Feminazi hypersensitivity to academic references to sex and sex differences, the rule can only be ' No Sex Please -- You're Oldies! '
Some supporters apparently think I have achieved a personal pipe-dream of polygamy because of all the blondes to-ing and fro-ing from my flat. However, some of these are blondes come to retrieve their effects from long-ceased relationships; and others are in the team of women rugby players that has encamped to provide me with a bodyguard service. Much as these girls' fetlocks may excite my admiration, they have no sexual interest in me or other weenie Brits -- instead spending much of the night on the phone with their hunky American footballer boyfriends.
OCTOBER 21 Morale is a funny thing. Through what is now a full six months of struggle with the Abominable Wiley, I have been the lucky beneficiary of a steady stream of supportive letters, even if also of some injunctions to prayer and fasting. Today, for example, I receive support from Clevedon, in Somerset: "I thought I must write to you to say how disgusted I was at the treatment meted out to you for having written a book which does not conform to the wishes of the 'politically correct.'...It is unfortunate for Britain that we do not have MPs with the same level of intelligence as yourself. Perhaps you would consider being one? Everyone with whom I have spoken agrees with you and I send you best wishes." And yet such wonderful support does not get through quite as well as the smile of an unknown girl this morning just after I had seen the advertising for the 'AntiNazi' League's latest demo to demand that I be sacked.
Here is the ABSTRACT for my forthcoming talk, 'Doing something about 'g': 'track choice' in schools?' ###### With the publication of 'The Bell Curve' (R. Herrnstein & C. Murray, 1994, Free Press) and 'The 'g' Factor' (Brand, 1996, Wiley), the main facts and hypotheses about IQ and its importance in the West today have been set before the general public. However, no agreed response to these works has emerged. (This is in part no doubt because of Wiley's withdrawal of The g Factor. --Though copies may be borrowed from Edinburgh University Library and from the author; and a Summary can be seen on the Internet at <http://www.webcom.com/zurcher/thegfactor/index.html>.) This seminar will consider possible practical responses, depending on the adoption of environmentalist or hereditarian hypotheses about 'g'. In the schools, a large-scale (re-)introduction of streaming, setting, banding or fast tracking seems indicated; so relevant research is considered. However, compelling children to sit psychometric tests or school exams, or to join the classes suggested by experts, seems undesirable; so it is considered whether children and their parents could not themselves be entrusted with track choice. [The main argument to be presented is that of the last 15 pages of Chapter IV of 'The 'g' Factor.' The argument appears also as an Editorial in this Autumn's issue of the journal 'Intelligence.']
######
OCTOBER 22 Today I appear in 'The JocksPerson' alongside the idiotic 'Wallace and Gromit' who are currently being revealed to shocked New Yorkers as being part of the fabric of modern Britoid way of life. Along with joint-IQ-15 W&G is news that 500 equally idiotic E.U. 'students' have signed a petition to 'demand' that Dame Stewart Sutherland sack me. Fortunately, the same news report announces that I will be lecturing on the 'g' factor in the Psychology Department next week and that I call myself a race realist--the first time I have seen this helpful term in use by the newsies.
A thoughtful TgF supporter has drawn my attention to the lively new novel by J.G. Ballard, 'Cocaine Nights' (HarperCollins). Set amongst British ex-pats in sunny and sleazy southern Spain, it centres on a night-club owner who has surprisingly declared himself guilty of murdering five people by arson, and is in prison on remand although most people (including the police) know he is innocent. His position is intriguingly like that of declaring oneself a 'scientific racist'': no one quite knows what to do and many get their knickers in a twist. As one character muses: "...there's nothing more satisfying than confessing to a crime you haven't committed."
Another parallel for my situation comes from the life of that greatest of psychologists, William McDougall, FRS "He was so exasperated with those ['behaviorists'] who denied the conscious, purposive nature of behaviour that he once commented that he felt like an anatomist having to defend the idea that people had two legs or a physiologist having to prove that people breathe air. .....[In 1971,] Harold McCurdy captured the essence of what McDougall faced: "In America [from 1920] he encountered as never before a psychology bent on discarding the psyche and denying purpose, and indifferent to or actively hostile toward the transmission of the past into the present, either in the form of the long intellectual history of mankind or in the form of genetics and biological evolution; a psychology moving rapidly from its theological base into an extreme positivism with a strongly practical and technological slant, impatient with any views that questioned the unlimited passive pliability of genetically undifferentiated human material suitable for shaping up by conditioning procedures for smooth insertion into an advanced industrial-commercial complex."" (From R.A. Jones, 1980, 'The decline and rise of William McDougall', 'Contemporary Psychology 25. I owe this reference and much else about McDougall to a keen, able and generous TgF supporter in Maryland.)
OCTOBER 23 The term 'racist', tout court, is now being used about me with impunity around E.U. campus. For example, the latest handbill screams STOP THIS RACIST LECTURE! --referring to my forthcoming Departmental Seminar where I will announce my general support for the views on education of Mr Tony Blair (7, George Square, October 31, 12 noon). Likewise, an acute TgF supporter on the US Eastern seaboard has noticed 'The Bell Curve' being described in print as "racist drivel." Journalists ask me: 'Why don't you sue?' I explain, and point out the one serious mistake in my book. Nobel Prizewinner William Shockley, when called 'Hitlerite', *did* sue for libel and did actually *win*; but I have recently learned that the victory was as *hollow* as only the law can be--he was awarded 'damages' of just one US dollar. Plainly, the time has come for me and my friends and indeed the majority of academic psychologists to accept that, yes, we are all at very least, to a significant degree, 'scientific racists'; and, in view of fast-extending modern usage, we will probably be 'racists' tout court by the Millenium. -- By that time, of course, 'antiracists' and ignoracists will be a worldwide laughing stock whose days will have ended as ignominiously as those of fascists, communists and socialists.
OCTOBER 24 It is not just Edinburgh University that goes in for witch-hunts. Race realists will be interested in the following report from ANC-run South Africa. (The report can be found at the ANC website < gopher://gopher.anc.org.za:70/00/anc/newsbrief/1996/news1022 >. It came originally from the South African Press Association--South Africa's equivalent of Reuters--on October 21.)
###### CRIME-WITCH
JOHANNESBURG 21 Oct.
SEVERAL PEOPLE TO APPEAR IN COURT FOLLOWING WITCH-HUNTS AT GIYANI
About 70 people are expected to appear in the Giyani Magistrate's Court in Northern Province on Tuesday on charges of attempted murder and arson following a witch-hunt in the area. The suspects were arrested after seven huts belonging to elderly people were torched near Giyani in the former Gazankulu homeland over the weekend. The occupants were accused of practising witchcraft. Those arrested included pupils who may be prosecuted at a later date because they were preparing for matric examinations, a police spokesman said on Monday. Women who were still breast-feeding were also among those arrested. About 150 people allegedly took part in the attack after the elderly people in the village were identified as witches. A Sapa correspondent reported that residents of Dzumberi each paid a witch-doctor R5 to "sniff out" the witches responsible for the death of a man who was found hanged in his hut. Northern Province safety and security spokesman Serobi Maja recently warned that his department would not hesitate to deploy security forces at the slightest hint of witchcraft-related violence and ritual killings. Witch-hunts claimed 250 lives in the province in 1995. Witchcraft-related violence usually increases during the rainy months. It is widely believed, especially by rural people, that witches are responsible when people get struck by lightning. Earlier this month 54 people allegedly involved in more than 50 incidents of witchcraft-related violence and killings appeared in the Pietersburg Magistrate's Court. They were charged with murder, attempted murder, arson and assault with the intention to do grievous bodily harm. The cases were postponed and the accused were released on bail ranging from R500 to R2000. The African National Congress Youth League in Northern Province expressed shock at the latest incidents and called on youths to refrain from taking part in the "brutalisation of so-called witches". The police should arrest the perpetrators and the government had to protect vulnerable members of society, said provincial ANCYL spokesman, Joe Maswanganyi.
###### Further to emerging as the world's rape capital [see previous NewsLetters: one new woman is raped with each passing minute in South Africa], can the ANC's South Africa be the world's witch-hunt capital too? And might racial or tribal factors be implicated? I wonder what my colleagues in psychology would think the most likely explanations for such phenomena. -- Though doubtless they would rather not be invited to give their best guesses, even with the countless qualifications with which they would try to evade the request!
The attitude of many Edinburgh colleagues to 'the Brand affair' is well exemplified by the University Chaplain. Approaching me to complain that some students have been upset by the affair, he freely admits he has not read my book or these NewsLetters and has no intention of doing so. The problem for my colleagues is that they know full well that social-environmental factors cannot explain the substantial Black-White difference in intelligence which even the liberal-left American Psychological Association acknowledges. So they know that, once a journalist elicited that admission from *them* and asked 'Isn't your position much like Chris Brand's?', they would be up there with me as 'scientific racists' and lose their lovely research grants, postgraduette students and promotion prospects. Thus repression of the Brand affair is necessary to maintain psychic ease. Ignorance is bliss?! Who ever thought this attitude would arrive within the ivory tower itself?!
One psychologist who did *not* shirk the question of possible race differences was William McDougall (1871-1938). Shortly before leaving Oxford for his Chair at Harvard, McDougall gave the Boyle Lecture on the topic 'Anthropology and History.' First he deplored the 'disastrous attempts' at race theorizing of Count Gobineau and H.S.Chamberlain. Even if there were "a small grain of truth" in hypotheses of Nordic superiority, these "rash and ill-balanced attempts to apply anthropology to history have done great harm. For, apart from their disastrous use in perverting the culture of Germany, they have discredited anthropology in the eyes of sober historians...." However, nothing can justify academics running off to the other extreme of being "race slumpers." Rather like Phil Rushton today, McDougall points to the likelihood of reciprocal causation between genes and culture; and he has fun at the expense of historians who try to explain differences between e.g. the British and the French without acknowledging some deep-seated differences in personality between these peoples ('spirit of independence' vs 'spirit of protection' {cf. individualism vs statism}). Without biological backing, cultures don't last long, McDougall maintains, e.g. as follows.
###### "There are rare instances in which an alien culture has been imposed upon a people by external power and authority. And in some of these we have the opportunity to observe and clearly to distinguish the influences of racial qualities and of culture respectively. Such an instance is Hayti, where the French in their early enthusiasm for the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, imposed on a population of negro race much of the culture of Western Europe, including Christianity, the French language and schooling, and then after a period withdrew their controlling hand and left the people thus generously endowed with an alien culture to work out their own destiny. The results are known to all the world, namely, a rapid relapse into barbarism, with frequent outbreaks of voodooism, cannibalism, and savagery of all sorts, and a political life such as is only to be paralleled by the fanciful efforts of comic opera."
###### How McDougall would have been amused at the long-running failure of US efforts to civilize Haiti in the twentieth century!
(1) " 'g' is to psychology what carbon is to chemistry." (C.R.BRAND, 1987, in 'Arthur Jensen: Consensus and Controversy', Falmer.) (2) " 'g' may be to cognitive psychology what carbon is to organic chemistry." (Consensus View of Dahlem workshop on behavior genetics, reported 1994 in 'Twins as Tool of Behavior Genetics', Abominable Wiley.) Alas, the Dahlem effort lacks a certain zip, not least because organic chemistry is about carbon-related compounds *by definition* -- distinguishing itself thus from 'physical' or 'inorganic' chemistry.
OCTOBER 25 Rape is a big problem in Black-run South Africa, but so is the even more widespread, subculturally approved "coercive sexuality" with which many teenage "love" affairs begin and by which they are frequently sustained. The following extracts are from an (SA) MRC-sponsored report by Katharine Wood et al., 1996, entitled 'Sex, violence and constructions of love among Xhosa adolescents: putting violence on the sexuality education agenda.'
###### "[24 Xhosa-speaking female] informants were recruited and interviewed in [Khayelitsha, Cape Town's] Midwife Obstetric Unit to which they had presented for ante-natal care {average age 16.4 years--one third of births in SA are to girls under 19}.... First sexual encounters were mostly reported to have occurred at a young age, often 12 years, with a male partner who was older by five years. The consistently reported pattern was that women accepted male requests to establish a liaison, as revealed in the words 'he asked me if we could love each other and then I agreed.' ....The equation [of sex and love] derived from their male partners, who told the woman that sex was the 'purpose' of being 'in love', that people 'in love' must have sex 'as often as possible', and that sexual intercourse was 'what grown-ups do.' ....Many informants explicitly indicated that sex was a strategy to avoid peer ostracism. ....An absence of sexual knowledge (which could potentially have been provided by female peers but was not) was reinforced by male partners who reportedly refused to explain what was about to take place. One informant, for example, explained that when she first had intercourse at the age of 11 years, she had asked her partner what he would 'do' and received no answer but 'you will see.' ....A standard pattern described by several informants was that the woman was asked to accompany the man home under the pretence of engaging in conversation, drinking alcohol together or going to do his ironing. ....Women reported that once at the home, the standard formula was a series of demands by the man: 'undress', 'lie on the bed', 'open your legs.' ....Many....felt intimidated....: 'He beat me up and forced my underwear down.' Threats aside, violent practices included forcing legs apart, tearing off clothes, punching with fists and locking the door. ....Some women reported that they had wept and pleaded.... The legitimacy of the experience was reinforced by peers who indicated that silence was the appropriate response. ....'I thought that was the way things were supposed to be between a boy and a girl.' ....One woman said that the only talking her partner did about sexual matters was when he told her to remove her clothes. Some of those women who had been to a family planning clinic for contraception said that their partners had torn up the clinic card in anger, ordering them not to use it. ....Most complained that intercourse continued to be painful because men did not 'prepare' the woman for sex.... [Even two teenagers who liked sex] emphasised that women were not 'allowed' to demonstrate desire and initiate sex, saying that 'we have been brought up to think that it is a man's place', and that they would be regarded as 'loose' ['ndlavini']. ....The majority asserted that intercourse continued to be coercive, with violent practices a consistent feature of their sexual lives. ....22 of 24 informants reported having been beaten by their partners on multiple occasions (the remaining two had been threatened with assault). ....Refusal to submit to sexual demands was said to signify in men's eyes that the woman had other sexual partners and had been 'worn out.' ....one informant explained that 'it happens all the time' that women suspected or known to have other partners were gang-raped by her partner's acquaintances to 'punish' her (this practice has been widely reported anecdotally). ....Assault was so common, illustrated by one woman saying 'I think that if someone says they have never been beaten up they are lying', that some female peers were reported to perceive it as an expression of love. ....Attempting to end a relationship was often cited as problematic.... Ultimately the teenagers indicated that they did not terminate relationships for a variety of reasons: beyond peer pressure ('I don't want to be the only one without a boyfriend') and the probability of violence, women perceived that their partners loved them, a perception partly derived from men's demonstrations of material generosity in the form of presents of clothes, food and money. ....One informant said, 'it is all right as long as he doesn't beat me *every* day.' [In another study of adolescent African women in peri-urban Cape Town] 60% said they had been beaten by their partner (a median of ten times), but less than a quarter of these had terminated a relationship because of beatings. When asked what they thought the consequences of refusing to have sex would be, 75% said they would be beaten, 38% feared being laughed at, and 6% felt they would lose their friends."
###### This is what social anthropologists call a 'culture, or 'sub-culture' {nearer the mark!}. But race realists would suspect that the rough wooing reported from Cape Town might appear in Detroit and Washington, DC, quite *without* detectable social transmission.
OCTOBER 26 Today brings the best 'press' I have yet enjoyed. As illustrated under LATEST PRESS, the Scottish edition of the best-selling weekly magazine, 'The Big Issue', lets me have my say along with--for once--a pleasant photograph (by Keith Brame). Though there are some misunderstandings (as I point out under LATEST PRESS), the article represents the whole affair very well--including shrieks from 'antiracists' and feminazies. ('The Big Issue' is sold widely on the streets in Europe in aid of the homeless. Homeless vendors sell at 80P per copy and return 35P to HQ.)
In view of renewed public discussion of my 'racism' or otherwise, I should summarize once more how I describe my position. I hope and believe that I am not a racist in the usual sense of that term. However, but I am what I call a 'race realist', and thus what 'anti-racists' and the 'liberal'-left and the media have in recent years called a 'scientific racist.' Discussion of 'racism' is provided in back copies of this Newsletter--retrievable from the Internet. To summarize, I distinguish three main types of racism, as follows. (1) Prejudiced [affective] {cf. 'race prejudice'} -- feeling averse to people of other races for no obvious good reason. (2) Scientific [cognitive] {cf. 'race realism'} -- believing there are important racial differences that are empirically attested and quite deep-seated. (3) Political [conative] {cf. 'racial discrimination'} -- proposing to discriminate according to race as a matter of public policy. As with any general attitude, racism 'tout court' will involve all three components; but the components are in principle distinguishable and can exist independently. E.g. A Japanese person may dislike and be averse to the body odours of Whites while not believing in general Asian superiority or proposing to keep Whites out of Japan. Or: a pragmatic US politician might propose special privileges for Blacks to prevent the ghettos erupting in violence while believing that Whites and Blacks are generally equal and having no animosity against Whites. Likewise, a scientist may accept that there are races and important race differences yet feel no aversion and propose no discrimination.
OCTOBER 27 What kinds of eugenic moves might prove remotely acceptable today? In 'The 'g' Factor' I make no express proposals, for it seemed largely pointless to do so until intelligence has been properly acknowledged in society as a source of value, and until intelligence levels have at least resumed their former position as guides to parents and educators. Yet how might the more responsible forms of parenthood eventually be encouraged, and the irresponsible discouraged? ###### 1. William McDougall (1906, 'Sociological Papers') was surely among the first to suggest granting family allowances in proportion to family income in view of the urgent need for intelligent leadership in every walk of public life; and in the 1930's he lived in hope that versions of his scheme were being implemented (e.g. by Sir William Beveridge who introduced family allowances for his distinguished staff of academics at the London School of Economics--if not with the proportionality to their own salary differences that McDougall wished). However, the idea did not catch on; and child allowances for university teachers were ended in Britain (by the Labour Party) in (I seem to recall) 1969. [Recently, a similar proposal --for generous *proportional* tax reductions for each dependent child --has been made by Stanley Burnham, 1993, 'America's BiModal Crisis: Black Intelligence in White Society', 3rd edition, Foundation for Human Understanding, Athens, Georgia. However, the history of the 'poll tax' in Britain is not encouraging: this flat-rate tax led to the end of Mrs Thatcher's government because it was insufficiently re-distributive for demotic tastes.]
2. Lately, a proposal that parents should require a licence to have children has been mooted by the leading psychogeneticist, David Lykken (1996, 'Minneapolis Weekly', August 28). As DL points out, the occasion of licensing would provide an opportunity to insist that budding parents attend classes on breast feeding, baby battering and other suitable topics. However, apart from the intrusion of the state into family matters, the eugenic effect of DL's proposal is not entirely obvious. DL's idea is to compulsorily foster children from unlicensed parents. I suspect this may underestimate the power of maternal instinct, once it comes on stream during pregnancy. And why should the proposal even reduce the numbers of babies born to lower-IQ parents? --There might actually be *more* such children if such parents realized there was no need for them to even *attempt* birth control since the State would take their babies off their hands and pay for the children's upbringing?!
3. However, it seems to me there may be a way forward on which Western society is actually already embarked. Already, American and British citizens can sue for damages caused to them years ago by e.g. tobacco companies, and indeed by their own mother during pregnancy (e.g. if she was a smoker). Personally, I am not wildly keen about this arrangement: personally, I would *not* like to sue someone for something they did ages ago. But here is where we *are*: on the brink of children being able to sue their parents for all kinds of improper provision--including, logically, failure to use corrective genetic engineering and failure to supply the right genes, via mate choice, in the first place. Without anyone doing anything, it looks likely that such possibilities will come to pass. And there *is* something to be said for thus inducing people to make proper arrangements for their children--as eugenicists have always urged. Such possibilities need public discussion. If continued movement towards suing one's own parents looks, on balance, to be a good idea, there is one state move that would seem necessary and at the same time eugenic. Plainly a line must be drawn *somewhere*. --Surely a child will not be allowed to sue its father for having once, prior to the child's birth, been an alcoholic and lowered his own IQ and thus rendered himself a poorer parent even though he had been successfully treated for his alcoholism by the time of the birth? Fairly obviously, children should not be allowed to sue regarding events that occurred prior to their own conception. Likewise, some limit will need to be place on the absolute sums that could ever be claimed by children: otherwise the West's already low achieved fertility will decline still further as parents live in terror of the claims that might be made on them by children assisted by the (then super-abundant) contingency-fee lawyers. Well, an absolute upper limit for such damages would surely have a eugenic effect, especially if damages could be laid at the door not only of the mother and father but also of their first-degree relatives. Whole families would then become properly cautious about the partying, 'substance use' and contraceptive practices of their less well-organized, lower-IQ adolescent youngsters!
######
OCTOBER 28 Whenever tempted to 'look upon myself and curse my fate', I try to remember the female students who smile at me conspiratorially in the street. More tangibly, Edinburgh University has at least been much nicer to me than it was to George Combe some 165 years ago. -- Combe was the Edinburgh lawyer who had accepted the phrenological hypotheses that people differed psychologically, and in the workings of their brains, and thus needed to take different educational and occupational paths; furthermore, Combe accepted the craniological hypothesis that, conveniently enough, brain bumps could be read via skull bumps. Popular with women because he urged them to understand their own children as individuals, Combe soon found himself up against the Scottish Kirk for believing that, with phrenology's help, people could be the arbiters of their own fates, and that the human brain was 'God's other book' of revelation; and there was also scientific trouble as Sir William Hamilton showed there was not in fact much correspondence between brain bumps and skull bumps because of the ventricles in between. At this point, Edinburgh University made its own contribution by banning Combe from answering Hamilton on university premises; so Combe had to lecture to the general populace in the Assembly Rooms in George Street [today best known as the leading venue of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe]. Though E.U. has hardly gone out of its way to *embrace* its latest heretic, and indeed has withdrawn me from teaching the large first-year Psychology class, at least it has consistently condemned the Abominable Wiley and said it would not threaten my basic academic position. [Paradoxically, cutting Combe off from academic life in Edinburgh did Combe nothing but good: he devoted himself instead to popular lecturing outside Edinburgh--he could always insist in Newcastle, Frankfurt and Dublin that he would not lecture to an audience of less than 200--and to making phrenology as widely accepted among the chattering classes of the 19th century as psychoanalysis has been in the 20th. However, I will not seek to go down that road: Combe's lectures promoted his book, 'The Constitution of Man'; whereas, thanks to Wiley DePublisher I have since April 17 had no book to offer the ordinary reader.]
The border of ex-Rwanda/Burundi and Zaire is now providing a spectacular visual aid re some of my theories. Last year a Hutu pastor admitted to me that it was the churches that had been a hotbed of sedition among the majority peasant Hutu--against their Tutsi, military-caste masters. Not only had Christian excesses deprived the area of polygamy and its eugenic effects, but they had also made the Hutu reluctant to accept the traditional authority of the taller and brighter Tutsi. Now, having failed to provide a realistic territorial reorganization of the area, the entire weight of the United Nations and its endless hand-outs is insufficient to keep the peace.
Crime is much in the news in Britain as Conservative Leader John Major takes the pragmatic advice I always offered Mrs Thatcher and tries once more to occupy the moral high ground. (Last time, Bank-Major's effort collapsed as Government ministers were found whooping it up with mistresses dressed only in Union Jacks or Chelsea F.C. tee-shirts, or asphyxiating themselves while swinging from their chandeliers in efforts to achieve Big O. However, this time Mr Major has Mr Blair in hot pursuit as the two of them race to be the first to ban .22 pistols, 'combat knives', bread knives and knitting needles from peace-loving Britain. -- Only government-controlled nuclear weapons are to be retained, though they would supposedly never be used till Britain had already been wiped off the map by enemy action!) Anyhow, at this critical juncture, I am glad to announce that my own expertise re crime and its prevention is now gifted to the world's psychology students at <http://www.ed.ac.uk/~crb/quotes/ >.
Earlier this year, President Clinton described the US military as "one of the most successful affirmative action programs....in our country." According to Kevin Lamb (1996, 'Conservative Review', US), the President noted that the "intense effort to develop the capacities of everybody who joins the military....has resulted in the most integrated institution in our society." There are two interesting features about this pointer to a happier future. (1) Good race relations are apparently easier when people are under military discipline, living largely apart from their families, and able to be locked up at any time by military police. This is no doubt precisely the future that the keener PeeCees envisage. (2) The success of the American military is also based on the USA's biggest programme of psychometric testing. In the armed forces, people are appointed and promoted strictly according to merit, and tests of intelligence enjoy wide acceptance as indicators of trainability and promotability--regardless of race. The reliance upon merit criteria alone is the precise reason why personnel find it easy to accept the forces' special strictures against 'ethnocentrism.' In their educational response to entrants, the armed forces *already* largely subscribe to the practices that I advocate in TgF's Chapter IV for Western state school systems and which I will be discussing in my seminar this week (Dept Psychology; 7, George Square; Thursday, Oct. 31st, 12 noon). I agree with Kevin Lamb: "Since he has hailed the armed forces as a model for overhauling affirmative action policies, Clinton should follow the military's lead--encourage employers to adopt standardized tests for hiring and promoting in the [civilian] workplace."
The front-page headline in this week's 'Times Higher' is 'DOUBTS OVER DEGREES'. Apparently, new research being presented to the UK's Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals has revealed "considerable confusion over the nature and significance of UK first degrees." They can say *that* again! I wonder how much the 'Higher Education Quality Council' was paid for this mind-bogglingly obvious conclusion. stlg50K? My dog could have told them that for nowt! --Oops, stlg20K. As readers of these NewsLetters will know, Principal Dame Stewart Sutherland and I have been announcing this result for several months--especially highlighting the 33% of students who achieved 'First Class Honours' degrees in 1995 from Chester College of Education (cf. 15% from the University of Oxford). I will put in a bill from Dame Stewart and myself to the CVCP straight away.
An intriguing feature of the TgF affair is what precisely it has been *about.* Following the problems of the chattering classes with Art Jensen's 1969 Harvard Educational Review article, critical attention switched to proving that IQ tests were somehow 'unfair.' By 1985, this possibility had been *dis*proved to the satisfaction of all competent authorities; and soon Tom Bouchard's twin results (showing high IQ heritability) were becoming known, 'inspection time' (IT) provided a welcome insight into what IQ 'really was', and even Sir Cyril Burt had found defenders. So one might have thought that any IQ row in 1996 would have focussed on the genetic question, or perhaps on the questions of IQ's 'psychotelic' importance raised in 'The Bell Curve' and in Chapter IV of my book. But no! By far the most common press 'accusation' against TgF is that it says blacks and whites differ in intelligence! Whatever progress has been made in academia in 27 years, the interest of 'newsies' is still riveted on the question that was settled at least by 1926 (Florence Goodenough, 'Racial differences in the intelligence of schoolchildren', 'J.Exptl.Psychol.9', 388-397) if not earlier (G.O. Ferguson, 1916, 'The psychology of the Negro: an experimental study', 'Archives of Psychology 5 (36)', 1-138).
Leading British evolutionary populists, Richard Dawkins and Matt Ridley are quite useless when questions of inherited individual differences arise. Today, on BBC IV UK Radio's 'Start the Week', Ridley went out of his way to distance himself from Tom Bouchard's work on twins--published in 'Science' unlike the ceaseless speculations as to the 'selfishness' and now, Ridley wants to add, 'altruism' of our genes! As I point out in Chapter III of 'The 'g' Factor', many of Darwin's modern followers are absolutely chicken when it comes to genetic transmission of human differences. Not so Darwin himself (1871): "In regard to mental qualities, their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses and other domestic animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence, courage, bad and good tempers, etc., are certainly transmitted."
OCTOBER 29 'Too Much Racism But No Racists' is the title of a recent article in the 'Washington Post' (Courtland Molloy, Oct. 23, B1). Apparently the inadequacies of research methods in the social sciences are such that it is somehow *never* possible for researchers to state how the race differences that they invariably find have actually come about. "One study finds that black federal employees are nearly two-and-a-half times more likely to be fired than are white federal workers. But when asked why, a co-author of the study said, "I wish I could answer that." Courtland Molloy's suggestion is of course that the frequency of such stories shows racism to be "alive and well"; but my own idea as to the dread variable that none dare mention in the USA today is rather different....
An interesting letter appeared in 'The Scotsman' yesterday. From Mr John Pate, of Edinburgh, it pointed out that it was hard to establish convincing links--let alone *causal* links--between gun ownership and violent crime. By contrast, the letter remarked, to show that crime is linked to race was trivially easy. I wonder which races Mr Pate has in mind, and whether he will find support for his race realism among Jocksperson readers. {For US readers, from Olde Yukay JokeBook: 'The Englishman fights because he has to; the Irishman because he doesn't know any better; but the Scotsman fights because he actually enjoys it'}
It is not just Dame Stewart Sutherland and I--and now the UK CVCP--that worry about dubious degree standards in universities today. According to Rita Zu'rcher, Research Director for NAS, talking at a NAS conference ('Sunday News', Manchester, New Hampshire, 29 ix 1996), "in ten years students will not know who Plato is, they will not know who Aristotle is, they will not know who Dante is, much less know that Dante was led through the dark woods by Virgil." Lovely Rita's seductive turn of phrase was complemented by the spunky invective of Professor Mary Lefkowitz (author of '*Not* Out of Africa' --a reply to "Afrocentric" notions, e.g. that Aristotle stole his ideas from the Library of Alexandria [only set up after A's death]): "You don't need evidence any more. People [in higher education] today are willing to accept unsubstantiated allegations such as that Cleopatra was black, just because they want to make members of ethnic groups feel better about themselves."
OCTOBER 30 Not content with the efforts of the Reverend MacCormick, Edinburgh University's Chaplain has evidently wanted his own slice of TgF action, as follows. Evening News (Edinburgh), 25 x 1996 (Nick Morrison) 'Race Row Lecturer in Snub to Chaplain' 'Brand won't talk on 'witch hunt' claims' "....E.U. chaplain the Rev Iain Whyte has written to Mr Brand offering to listen to his claims that he has been the innocent victim of a witch hunt. But Mr Brand replied saying he did not want to discuss details of the row which has divided the university. And he says he will only speak to the chaplain if the talk is restricted to his views on race and intellect. The psychology lecturer has also demanded that the chaplain read up on his claims that black people are less intelligent than whites and single mothers have low IQs--before any meeting takes place. He said, "I won't waste my time on people who won't do their homework. He has got to read what I have written." ....Mr Brand will hold a seminar for staff and postgraduates to discuss some of his ideas next Thursday {Oct. 31, 12 noon, 7, George Square, Edinburgh}. Student members of the Anti-Nazi League have sent a 500-name petition to university chancellor Sir Stewart Sutherland calling for Mr Brand to be sacked."
Today (1300hrs), in preparation for my seminar, the 'AntiNazi' League has started up a semi-continuous environmental pollution from a cross-roads near the Psychology Department by hand-held loud-hailer. As I write, it has gone on for 40 minutes It will be interesting to see what rights the University has to protect the working environment of its staff from this nuisance from the public streets. In view of the location chosen for the loud-hailer, the Department of Pharmacology, the Department of French, Lothian Region Equality Programme, Schools Liaison and the office of the Faculty of Social Science are the worst affected.
Polygyny is actually available as a legal option in one semi-Western country, South Africa! And its legal status will soon be if anything enhanced. I quote from a report on marital arrangements by SA's National Children's Rights Committee (June, 1993). "Many African women are married according to African customary law. Once bridewealth ('lobola') is paid, the woman becomes part of her husband's family.... Because these marriages are potentially polygamous, they have a lesser status than civil marriage and enjoy only limited recognition in civil law for the purposes of pensions, workmen's compensation payments and maintenance." Recently, the SA Law Commission ('Business Day', 26 ix 1996; 'Sunday Tribune', 29 ix 1996) has declared that polygyny should continue to be on offer, and that it was not necessarily disadvantageous to African women, although some arrangement might have to be made to allow occasional objections by the first wife to subsequent wives. Further regularization of traditional African customs is also envisaged. "The commission also proposed the African tradition of paying a woman's father for marrying her be retained because of its cultural importance and the difficulty of enforcing prohibition." With greater political correctness, the commission also proposed "the patriarchal status of African man be re-examined whereby African men often claimed ill-defined rights to chastise wives, demand sexual favours at will and make decisions about birth control measures and education of children." This is fine, for polygyny should certainly be organized in such a way as to have the full support of the women as well as of the men who choose it. However, one wonders what the Zulus will say to the SA Law Commission; and how the apparent restriction of polygyny to 'Africans' [=Black people] will be justified by the constitutional experts--especially when they are planning to interfere with such traditional African folkways as patriarchal chastisement and coercive sexuality (see NewsLetter, October 25).
Britain is currently in a frenzy over one ten-year-old boy, Matthew Wilson, whose repeatedly violent behaviour led to his being indefinitely suspended from his Worksop school--to the general satisfaction of his teachers and classmates. However, barmy local educationists have now decided Matthew may return to the school that loathes him; so all the teachers have gone on strike and the school has been closed by the headmaster. Now Matthew's mother is taking legal action to oblige the school to re-open. This case is of great eugenic interest. The question is: Do British children have the right to free state education regardless of misbehaviour? If the professional opinion of Matthew's teachers is respected, this will be the first step to making British parents responsible--and obliged to help pay the true costs of--the children that they bring into the world.
OCTOBER 31 A TgF supporter tells me that I have starred not only in the Scottish edition of 'The Big Issue' but also in the English edition. At last a decent photograph of me has gone out to a 350,000 readership! Perhaps the favourable article in this week's 'The Big Issue' has done the trick?. I was astonished to learn from a journalist that only about 80 people had turned up to protest outside the Department. As soon as I started my talk, the 15 of them who had--as E.U. students--been allowed into the building chanted me down in the time-honoured fashion and thus demonstrated to my 50-strong audience the ideological stuff of which the 'AntiNazi' League is made. Fortunately, thanks to Provost MacCormick's encouragements, I had my visual aids to enable me to get across some of my points; but, after ten minutes my Head of Department and the University Head of Security and I agreed to close the meeting and invite people who had taken the trouble to come from outwith the Department to join me in my own office--from which I *was* apparently entitled to exclude practitioners of tribal warfare. So I gave a (somewhat condensed) version of my seminar to some 12-15 people, four of whom turned out do be ANL deviants who listened politely and asked sensible (if rather wide-ranging) questions at the end. Altogether, the day could be claimed a modest victory for the academic approach as practised at Edinburgh University; though I suspect that crucial ground- clearing work had occurred as students saw me in 'The Big Issue'.
I receive an interesting unpublished paper, 'The human situation and its reparation.' Apparently, "[s]ince the beginning of agriculture there have been twenty-six identified civilizations (A.J. Toynbee, 1972, 'A Study of History', OUP, p. 72). They include the Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman. Every one of them broke down or died out excepting so far only the youngest, our own. Why were they not self-sustaining? A common factor, which appeared in the late stages of many of these failed civilizations, was the gradual dying out of their abler peoples, the types who had initiated the civilizations and might have sustained them. They failed to reproduce sufficiently. Consequently their civilization died out at the top and their society became unable to cope with problems it once could have surmounted, including invasions. 'The tendency of civilized life to sterilize its ablest citizens....is the experience of nearly all countries which enjoy even a passable degree of prosperity.' (Charles G. Darwin, 1952, 'The Next Million Years', Garden City, Doubleday, p. 91)" Understandably, the author recommends healthy people of substantially above-average IQ to beget at least five children. This makes me feel a little guilty since only three have ever been claimed of me. Still, a man never quite knows how many children he has fathered; and in any case I am not myself much good at IQ tests--especially the horrid ones like the jigsaw puzzles which always bored me silly as a child....
From Denver, Colorado, comes news of the latest 'anti-racist', 'multicultural' initiatives. One Jamal X, a 'Nation of Islam' supporter apparently appeared at Denver's Montebello High School and told an audience of 200 boys that at the same time that Black Africans were building the Pyramids, White people "ate their dead" and "slept with animals." So why were only boys present to hear the Afrocentric gospel? The principal of the school, Mrs Jones, explained she was honouring the male-only theme of the 'Million Man March' and the request of Jamal X. (This story appears as part of an Editorial, 'Reductio ad Absurdum' in 'Heterodoxy 4' (1996), PO Box 67398, Los Angeles.)
The same volume of Heterodoxy also contains a gripping account (by George Csicsery) of modern witch-hunting in Wenatchee, Washington. Here is how it begins. "In July, 1994, when Robert Devereaux told Annie Weishoff, his foster daughter, that she couldn't have sex with her boyfriend at home, the 15-year-old tried to poison him by lacing his soda with iodine. Devereaux had her arrested. Neither Devereaux nor Weishoff could have imagined that the incident would spark one of the craziest episodes of false accusation of child molestation ever in a decade which has witnessed bizarre examples of this mass psychosis. But....[s]ince mid-1994, some 41 people have been accused of participating in as many as four separate child sex rings in Wenatchee." Naturally, the witch hunt was fomented by child abuse experts, one of them a policeman. But how were the usual false accusations obtained? And subsequently the false confessions to minor crimes so as to be let off major charges? "Investigators and reporters discovered that many of the people who confessed or were convicted had IQs under 80, or suffered from mental or physical disabilities." Eventually, accusations were made against a woman who was able to afford to defend herself with a real lawyer: the tide turned and 'witnesses' began to recant. So far only 19 of the 41 accused have been convicted of anything.
NOVEMBER 1 Today's 'Times' (London) carries an unusual display of crime realism from the UK's top criminologist, David Farrington [who figures substantially in my 'QUOTES ON CRIME' at < http://www.ed.ac.uk/~crb/quotes/ >].
###### Call to help children 'born into trouble'
BY DOMINIC KENNEDY
TEENAGE mothers are giving birth to a generation of children who are destined from birth to be delinquents, a professor of criminology said yesterday. The girls led such unhealthy and undisciplined lives that many of their babies would become problem pupils and criminal adults, David Farrington of Cambridge University told a conference of senior police officers and local authority leaders. Calling for a major programme of education in parenting for teenage mothers, he said the causes of delinquency needed to be tackled, just as health educators promoted sensible diets to reduce heart disease. "Teenage mothers are much more likely to have delinquent children because of their lack of experience and often poor living situations," he said. "We need intensive home visiting for these girls. Someone to point out the risks they are taking by smoking, abusing drugs and drinking during pregnancy and for the first year of the babies' lives. "They often have poor parenting skills, a lack of discipline or control over the children and erratic discipline as well," he told the Annual Scottish Crime Prevention Conference in Dunblane.
###### PS (1) Apparently a study on 8-40yr males in London showed those born to single mothers were twice as likely to commit crime as those from a two-parent background. (2) The same 'Daily Mail' which reports the ANL demo against me [see LATEST, at end of NewsLetter] carries Scottish National Party's reaction to Prof. Farrington's talk. A spokesman said: "The professor has a point. People aren't born with parenting skills, and no doubt young parents would benefit from being taught these things. Equally it is important to enhance the opportunities for young people, and this can best be achieved by teaching people not to fall into the trap of becoming young single mothers in the first place." Such sex realism from the SNP is to be welcomed--showing considerable improvement as it does on the Thoughts of SNP ChairPerson Fish who in April called for me to be sacked for expressing the same sentiment.
NOVEMBER 2 I can now give a more up-to-date reference supporting the 'views on single parent families' for which I am often taken to task and thought remarkable. Published today is the Special Issue of the `Journal of Biosocial Science' which contains the paper that I read one year ago to the Galton Institute Symposium on intelligence (organized by Nick Mascie-Taylor and myself). In my Table 4, I give the probability of a young American woman's first birth being out-of-wedlock if she herself has a below-the-'poverty-line' income. This probability is 24% if she is of normal intelligence but the social class of her parental home had been 2 standard deviations low (i.e. bottom two-and-a-half per cent of the population). However, the probability is a dramatic 71% if she is of normal parental SES but had an IQ at age 17 that was 2 standard deviations low. The full reference is as follows. BRAND, C.R. (1996). 'The importance of intelligence in Western societies.' J. biosoc. Sci. 28, 387-404. {But cognoscenti will realize that I have simply lifted the above figures from p. 188 of 'The Bell Curve'--available in every good bookshop thanks to Free Press.} So what is my own conclusion?
###### "The last Western country to treat the 'g' factor with as much contempt as do Britain and the USA today was Nazi Germany. With an awe-inspiring indifference as to how sustain Germany's national culture or win a world war, the Nazis ensure the last great migration of intelligence in the West--giving the USA 'the Bomb' in the process. (The Nazis thus reversed that original massive influx of entrepreneurial talent from which Prussia had so benefited after the Massacre of St Bartholomew's Day in Paris.) Today, [an important] question confronts the West: Can the triumph of Western liberal democracy be long sustained without taking intelligence seriously?"
######
NOVEMBER 4 From a TgF supporter at University College London comes news that the coverage of the Brand affair in the English edition of 'The Big Issue' is very favourable (see LATEST, at end of NewsLetter). [TBI is the magazine sold on the streets on behalf of the homeless. The English edition sells some 300,000 copies.] Some excerpts? Of course! ###### "[Brand] dismisses accusations of racism levelled against him as "political correctness gone mad".... He slams the university's treatment of him, claiming it has "instigated a witch-hunt." .....Brand expresses horror that critics have bracketed him with extreme right-wingers like the BNP: "These silly anti-racists who are trying to stop the truth from being known are going to be shown for what they are--a bunch of laughables. The anti-racists have got this wrong and their views will be exposed as nonsense in time." .....Publisher Wiley failed to comment."
######
>From the latest NAS Science NewsLetter:
###### "REPREHENSIBLE" MEANS WORTHY OF CENSURE. THUS IT IS A MOST UNFORTUNATE TERM to be used by the Chancellor of a university that claims to believe in academic freedom and free dissemination of scientific facts. Having the Chancellor say that believing in certain scientific facts is "reprehensible" (i.e. worthy of censure) is bound to have a chilling effect on teaching and research.
--From a letter to "faculty and fellow friends of UNO" by Prof. Edward M. Miller <emmef@uno.edu>, in which he defends his statements on race to the local press and comments on remarks by Chancellor O'Brien of the University of New Orleans. The complete letter, as well as articles describing Miller's problems with his university, may be found at http://www.csra.net/Lrand/Miller.htm
######
NOVEMBER 5 Principal Dame Stewart Sutherland has taken the trouble to clarify(?!) his attitude to me, my book, my views and my academic tenure (see LATEST, at end of NL). 1."Mr Brand....happens to be just one of several thousand staff here..." {Like some old armchair yet to be tossed out!} 2."I personally have not read Chris Brand's book the 'G Factor'.... That [Wiley] should withdraw [any such book] remains a matter for regret. ....On the principle that it is not a good idea to condemn something you have not read, I have not done so on this occasion." {So why be seen as doing so in the British press for the last six months? --Most recently in 'The JocksPerson', 1 xi 1996 (Alison Gray)(see LATEST).} 3."What I have been correctly quoted elsewhere as saying is that if some of the views attributed to him in the media were correct, I personally would regard these as false and obnoxious." {If my views were correct, he would condemn them?! Dame Stewart's thinking is so deeply confused that he lets this cat out of the bag!} 4."The university is a place for ideas to be explored and debated, even the uncomfortable ones, and we shall continue to do all we can to protect that principle...." {Like disciplining students who shout down their lecturers?}
###### What a lot of beating about the bush! What *are* my views? *Which* ones does Dame Stewart condemn? And *when* is the public going to get to read them or hear them from me in a university lecture hall? From the beginning, I solemnly warned the university that it would eventually look foolish if it did not back me [though by all means with reservations on particular, specified points]. Now it appears they are going to pay the price: a letter like Dame Stewarts--with all its "personal" stuff, solecisms and hypothetical questions from an Edinburgh University address--makes the University appear pathetic to any thinking person. Much more to my taste is the letter to 'The Scotsman' which follows Dame Stewart's.
###### "Dr David Purves is right (Letters, 30 October): there should be no place for a witch-hunt in a university in any civilised country. The Anti-Nazi League should recognise in itself the bigotry which persecuted Darwin for his unpopular beliefs. Mr Brand's findings have not even been allowed to be made known. Are today's minds more closed? The scientific mind seeks the truth, not what it would like to be the truth."
######
On Presidential Election morning [Guy Fawkes Day in Li'l Ole Yukay], I awake hearing the slight stammer of my hero, John Updike, on BBC Radio IV UK. America is not all bad, he correctly explains. Thanks to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers it has done a lot for freedom; and in Bosnia the USA has just picked Europe's chestnuts out of the fire for the third time this century. The only problem is the USA's "progressive brainlessness." Spot on, John! What 'The Bell Curve' calls the "dumbing down" of American education has been continued enthusiastically by President Clinton, who refuses to allow parental choice of state school or educational track while sending his own daughter, Chelsea, for private education. One can only hope that victory at the polls will give Bill Clinton the licence to read my book, ditch the 'liberal'-left egalitarian loons, and follow Mr Tony Blair and myself in offering some kind of return to educational streaming.
From Canada, I learn that Phil Rushton has issued a full response to recent media claims that there are no human races--the latest nonsense of "social" anthropologists. As Phil says, " To deny the predictive validity of race.... is nonscientific and unrealistic. ....[For example, one] neurohormonal contributor to crime and reproductive behavior is testosterone. Studies show that black college students and military veterans have 3% to 19% more testosterone than their white counterparts. The Japanese have even lower amounts than whites."
TgF supporters may like to have the address of my Edinburgh Home Page <http://www.ed.ac.uk/~crb/index.html>. However, when telling other people by word of mouth how to find me on the Net, just say to use NET SEARCH and select the ALTA VISTA 'search engine' and then just ask for +sex +psychology +Edinburgh That will do the trick and is easier for students to remember....
NOVEMBER 6 Here is a constructive and sympathetic account of how my book ran into trouble. Written by Martin Turner (Head of Psychological Services at the British Dyslexia Institute), it appears in the latest 'Dyslexia Review', p. 22
###### "I received my copy by mail order straight from the publisher, Wiley, upon publication. Alas, when the book was officially launched, the author, unused to the media and their ways, found himself engaged at a press conference in mutual provocations. The result was an ambush and grotesque coverage for what is a serious and far from partisan book. This would have been overcome in time had not Wiley then withdrawn the book completely and apparently irreversibly. (Wiley has since declined to publish Arthur Jensen's 'magnum opus', written in retirement, in spite of not only previously agreeing to do so, but of having commissioned an extra chapter.) ....Seldom can all the fine grain of argument in this difficult area have been conveyed, numbered and listed in such careful detail. If the conservative conclusion, that "[IQ] tests tap the most important, general way in which people differ psychologically" is unwelcome, the path to it will nevertheless have been hard to resist."
###### Though not accurate in every particular (there was no press conference, only phone interviews), this captures very well what essentially happened. Also, Martin shares what was my own attitude at the time: that, despite journalists seizing out-of-context sound-bites, everything would soon be OK as soon as people read the book.... Of course the interesting question for sleuths remains: *Was* there an "ambush"--possibly organized by Wiley themselves so as to get out of publication?
NOVEMBER 8 I must brace TgF supporters for the latest job-creation programme that I have apparently provided for semi-literate and lazy Scottish 'journalists.' These newsies cannot be bothered to read 'The 'g' Factor'; nor to ask FatCat Charles Ellis (at Abominable Wiley, in New York) to identify a single passage in the book which he can seriously claim to be "repellent" without immediately losing any above-average-IQ mistress that he has; nor will paparazzi even ask local man Principal Sutherland to explain, as only a very senior academic could, just which of my views is plainly "false." However, the Old-Labour, neo-Stalinist, 'anti-racist' newsies are determined to prove that I am indeed "obnoxious"; and, after six months of the Brand affair, they have at last brought themselves to read some of these NewsLetters. Tireless in their search for sensation, the hacks have in the last twenty-four hours broken through to my modest defence of a "paedophile" Nobel Prize winner (see NL, c. Oct. 16). So far I have been interviewed by the 'Daily Record', the 'Daily Express', the 'Evening News' (Edinburgh) and Radio Forth; and Jocksperson journalists appeared at the door of my flat this morning. Obviously this is a great development in so far as it shows that journalists are at last beginning to read what I have to say. However, TgF supporters will appreciate that it will be another bumpy ride before we end outside FatCat's penthouse suite to ask the questions that really need to be answered. -- Obviously today's 'Daily Record' headline is 'Sex With Kids Is Harmless Claims Race Shame Lecturer'.... For a little while, I can only hope to do as much to help paedophiles as I have already done to help Black people. (Sadly--in line with general journalistic policy of hardly ever supplying proper referencing for stories--the 'Daily Record' does not tell its readers the Princeton Website address so they can for themselves check up on shameful sound-bite journalism.) [Intriguingly, the 'Daily Record' cannot even record my age correctly: it says I am 52--while I normally count myself as 59. It amazes me that people actually pay money to buy such newspapers. Perhaps they are just a gigantic crossword puzzle from which readers derive satisfaction at their own detective powers if they can ever work out what is *really* going on?]
STOP PRESS! Alas, just when I need my views to be fully available for all to see, there has been a technical hitch. My reflections on the "paedophile" Nobellist Daniel Gajdusek went into the NewsLetter for October 16; but, on the Net, the archival material for Oct. 8-16 has several days missing. While I try to rectify that, here is my original piece.
//////////// OK, I am a race-realist and a sex-realist. But am I also a gay- and paedophilia-realist? (Now that gay 'rights' have been widely acknowledged in the West, paedophilia has manifestly become the next 'frontier.') Whether to accept some forms of paedophilia is now a particularly acute question because of the opening (on October 8) of the trial in Maryland of a 73-year-old Nobel Prizewinner, Daniel Gajdusek. In the course of DG's many researches in New Guinea--cracking 'kuru', a strange 'slow virus' form of central nervous system infection--DG's diaries show he plainly loved for a time at least twelve Melanesian and Micronesian boys and brought them to the USA as his adoptive sons. (I do not know whether an adoptive mother was also provided.) Whatever complaints may be arising today, the boys seem to have had a great time in general. For example eight of them turned up and posed cheerily with their sleeping bags for photographers at the Nobel award ceremony in Stockholm (in 1976, when DJ was 53). I offer the following reflections on whether DJ should be prosecuted.
###1. It seems incredible that a court should be concerning itself with events of some twenty or thirty years ago that apparently yielded no complaint at the time.
###2. From cases of paedophilia I have known, I would incline to guess that the trial has come about primarily because of the jealousy of one of the young partners. What often happens is that the paedophile wants (among other things) to 'liberate' a partner after a few years so the youngster can go off and have girlfriends and develop normally; but then this rejected partner shops the paedophile when he takes up with a younger partner.
###3. Academic studies and my own experience suggest that non-violent paedophilia with a consenting partner over age 12 does no harm so long as the paedophiles and their partners are of above-average IQ and educational level. As lead choirboy (Decani) and soloist, I met lots of paedophiles who would press florins and half-crowns (now worth c. stlg4) into my horrid little palm at age 13. For better or worse, I never 'fancied' any of them nor did anything but allow a little fondling: on my part it was not a sexual experience. But I was never feminazistically inclined to condemn them: these men were well above average in intelligence, well educated (two were writers), amused me far more than the average geography teacher, gave me useful tips (where to find the G spot etc...) and never frightened me in the least. Indeed the only problem with them was that they were so awfully old and sweaty and heavy-breathing and desperate-for-whatever-it-was-they-did [I tried not to look] that I much preferred their jokes to their 'visual aids.'
###4. I find it totally disgraceful that a 73-year-old-man of such distinction should be hounded by the courts and the press. I could certainly never do such work myself. (Though no special admirer of Britain's current Royals, I similarly deplored Princess Anne being arrested and summonsed for speeding in the 1970's.) It is true that I am not an unequivocal democrat. -- Democracy needs circumscribing with respect for intelligence, otherwise it will not last long. On that 'democratic elitist' basis, I offer Daniel Gajdusek my support in his struggles. (I hope US supporters might kindly keep me in touch with this case.) \\\\\\\\\\\\
For better or worse, the piece is now appearing out of its original context. However, I stand by it 100%. (Of course, there may have been disclosures in the Maryland case of which I am unaware and which would properly alter my judgment--notably if violence had been involved.)
Hans Eysenck's full review of TgF has just appeared (EYSENCK, H.J. (1996). Special Review. 'Personality and Individual Differences 21', 5, 229-230). No, I am *not* going to resist the temptation to quote some favourite extracts!
//////////// "....an important job, extremely well done." "Apart from being accurate, Brand is also courageous; [yet] he deals with "sensitive" problems in a straightforward, accurate fashion, without treading unnecessarily on vulnerable toes." "Brand is unusual among psychologists in being able to write decent, understandable, often witty English--an art almost lost among psychologists." \\\\\\\\\\\\\
OK, there are supposedly some "minor blemishes." E.g. Hans thinks geniuses are pretty hard-working as well as being brainy. (I'll hope to have my Quotes on genius, QUOTES XVII, up on the Net soon so he can see I agree with him. My doubt, however, is whether hard work does much good *unless* it springs from and is guided by good intelligence.) But I certainly shouldn't grumble. Hans thinks the book is: "a necessary corrective to widespread blindness and misrepresentation, and should form the basis of any course on intelligence in our universities." And he throws in a nice POSTSCRIPT condemning the newsies and the Abominable DePublisher and concluding "Clearly social scientists are an endangered species in the modern world." Readers who continue to the next page of the journal (`PAID 21', p. 231) will learn of a book about IQ that is entirely likely to survive journalistic scrutiny and sink without a trace in the usual academic fashion. Called 'Assessment of Intellectual Functioning', this book is described by the reviewer as "stolidly professional." Apparently, with regard to all controversies about IQ, "[Lewis] Aiken's heart is in the right place; but he evidently believes that the way to deal with hysterical political correctness about IQ is 'softly, softly.' " As the title for this Special Review announces, Aiken's book usefully provides 'IQ-testing for the faint-hearted'. And who is it who casts the first stone at this time-honoured arrangement? -- Can any TgF supporter be in any doubt? {No, the journal is *not* 'unbalanced.' Elsewhere R. Hecker and B. Mapperton try to put the boot into my idea that Inspection Time reflects 'speed of processing.' However, their own idea that IT reflects "the power an individual can bring to bear within a specific cognitive domain" will not sound radically different to the average academic reader; and Hecker and Mapperton seem just to *ignore* the issue of why IT and IQ correlate so highly--which is what is of most theoretical interest.}
I have always said I will try to put 'hard copy' TgF into people's hands by Christmas. At present there are unavoidable delays as I negotiate re-publication. But I will try to do as follows for people who send in stlg5 (or the equivalent in dollars or international stamp coupons). IF UK-BASED, I will send you either two unjacketed copies or a photocopy of the book (depending on what I have available) by 2nd class mail. IF ABROAD, I will send you either an unjacketed copy or a photocopy of the book (depending on what I have available) by sea mail. In either case, just send cash or stamps or a cheque together with a label bearing your full postal address. In the event of any publisher (whether Abominable Wiley or a new publisher) requiring me to withdraw this offer, I will return your money to the address you have supplied. This special offer will stay open until NOVEMBER 30. [Yes my offer to supply the book's documents on HD diskette stays open--to people who bring in addresses and diskettes from six other people who *also* wish to receive the documents for scholarly purposes. --I fill up and return their diskettes when they in turn have supplied six further addresses and disks.]
NOVEMBER 9 Another victory is being chalked up by the forces of hysterical PeeCee and neo-Stalinist 'antiracism' in Scotland. I have been suspended by Edinburgh University from teaching and administration; and E.U. is to mount a disciplinary charge against me to explore Provost MacCormick's complaint that my "conduct has brought and is bringing the University into disrepute and that the work of the Department of Psychology may be seriously disrupted." Now we will see whether more responsible elements of the British press will prove able to untangle the mess into which the Scottish tabloids have gratuitously plunged the University and myself. Needless to say, I believe I will be vindicated in the end, and the PC forces exposed as risible; but the time scale is admittedly unnervingly hard to foresee.... The eternal optimist, I live in hope that the general public will see the misrepresentation of my views on paedophilia as just a natural follow-up by the same team that brought them the misrepresentation of my views as `racist.' Yet should I have agreed to be called a `scientific racist' in the first place? Well, yes, according to Elazar Barkan, 1992, `The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars', Cambridge University Press. Hostile to `scientific racism', Barkan indicts Reginald Ruggles Gates (1882-1962) as an exemplar. Yet here is what Gates' obituarist recorded--in the very obituary which Barkan takes to prove Gates' 'racism.' "Gates was not a `racist' in the sense of believing in superiority and inferiority. He once said, a propos of race: "To say that all men are equal has not got us very far. It is more accurate to say that all men are different, and then to respect each other's differences."" Once more, I must say that if Gates is a `scientific racist' according to Cambridge University Press, then I and most differential psychologists are `scientific racists' too. [Barkan's book and others on "racism" and "racial research" are reviewed by K. Lamb, 1994, `Mankind Quarterly 35', 139-149.]
Po-faced lefties accuse me of naughtiness in providing twenty euphemisms for female genitalia at my Website (Editorial in `Student' this week). Actually, my naive attempt to drag search engines to the NewsLetters was actually made at the website of a friend and TgF supporter in the USA. But here is the headline for the editorial by the morally re-armed `Student' Editor: "You can all fuck right off." (The editorial criticizes Living Marxists and Christians as well as myself.) Elsewhere, this week's high-toned `Student' goes on to send up "old and smelly" `Mature' students for "sitting at the very front of lectures" and "toadying in tutorials." Apparently, "Matures" all eat their fucking lunches in the David Hume Tower cafe. And they're welcome to it. Cunts." Now "the Immature population can begin to weed out these insidious vermin. Let the lynching commence." Fortunately I have a residual sense of humour and will not complain of this filth to Dame Stewart.
NOVEMBER 10 See LATEST Press, at end of this NewsLetter. The Scottish press has now 'crucified' me. But a blonde angel has rolled away the stone from my tomb; and My Computer Whizzkid has made sure my messages continue to go out worldwide. Still better, thanks to genetic factors [chiefly my children] I am myself alive and kicking and ready for more action. However, it is not now for me to court more publicity. I have done what I can for more than six months and will now enjoy the kindlier role of helping supporters. What to watch for next? -- My re-appearances as responsible journalists and serious academics at super-league universities in London, Oxford and Cambridge wake up and appreciate that PeeCee simply *has* to be fought and beaten. They will never find a better 'test case' than me, so they had better get on with the job fast before PeeCee returns the West to the Dark Ages. Many who theoretically venerate free speech and the idea of a university have been very lazy for the past six months; but now they will have to act before they find their own universities run by the 'AntiNazi' League and Esther Rantzen.
NOVEMBER 13 Having suspended me on Friday, on Monday the University cut me off from the Internet and e-mail. Wiley won't let my views be known; nor will the Scottish press; nor, now, will my own University! (In fairness, E.U. had an excuse. Once the Press started putting me forward as the paedophile's friend and 'sex shame lecturer', I needed to show them what I had *actually* said in my modest "reflections" on the case of the indicted Nobel Prizewinner Daniel Carleton Gajdusek. Alas, my e-mail of October 16th was one of a number of messages that had never found its way through to the Net. So, although I had assured the University I would not use their sites for the NewsLetter, I put the 'Gajdusek' message up straight away on my Home Page with E.U. Of course, I asked permission to put out my Gajdusek message on Friday afternoon (when a fax of the message was prevented from leaving the Department); but senior figures were not available to deal with my request over the weekend. Obviously I took the view that the University would be far better off to have my full message going out than to have only decontextualized soundbites and media distortions in circulation.) Now, thanks to helpers, I am 'back in business'--though who knows for how long? Never fear. If I do somehow 'disappear', arrangements have been made for 'The 'g' Factor' in its entirety to go up on the Internet. Supporters should note my home telephone number: (+ 44 131) (0131) 667 5394 so they can check with me; but things will be arranged so that Internet Search Engine procedures will usually suffice to deliver the book for inspection--in its updated, 1997, 2nd edition. Supporters will be welcome to download the documents of the book--but not of course to offer them for sale. At present I am expecting press coverage in 'Times Higher', the 'Daily Mail', the 'Daily Express', 'Student'(E.U.) and the 'Sunday Times'(London). So what else am I doing? -- Getting back into the fray (in effect E.U. has all my e-mail, including my address book, under lock and key); reading on Sir William McDougall, FRS; and writing an article on personality dimensions for a key volume in differential psychology that will appear in 1997. A light-hearted piece appears by a nice big picture of me, book-in-hand, seated on the steps of the Psychology Department, wearing my best suede shoes and VENI, VIDI, VICI tie. In today's 'Evening News'(Edinburgh), 'Steve' Gilhooley ('Bigotry in the mirror', p.7) says he doesn't want to judge me without knowing the facts, but advises me against wintering in Belgium. Still, he tells an amusing story about how he discovered that he himself was a racist: having taken a lot of drink to control his fear of flying, he can remember he was shocked to find that a pit stop in Rome had brought aboard a new pilot, a Black African. "My hypocrisy had been exposed," writes 'Steve'--though patting himself on the back that at least (unlike myself) he is *trying* to be less prejudiced. [I would be glad to hear more of this effort. One can try to get rid of an unfortunate emotional reaction, e.g. by having 'behaviour therapy' for it; but there is no sense in which can sensibly be said to be trying to rid oneself of a belief. I wonder which it is that 'Steve' thinks he has.]
NOVEMBER 16 To my delight, this week's 'Times Higher' carries full-page, sympathetic coverage of Nobel Prizewinner Daniel Carleton Gajdusek--together with an attractive visual aid featuring three semi-naked, war-painted young boys in Papua New Guinea (Tim Cornwell, 'A laureate accused', TH No 1253, 15 xi, p. 17). So what has been going on, and how has a humane and lively 73-year-old workaholic been charged with sexual abuse of children a decade ago? (1) In PNG, in the 1960's, CG discovered, like Western anthropologists, extensive practice of what he called "pederastic fellation" among growing boys and between boys and adults. PF was usually initiated by the younger partner as a sign of friendship, though it was also widely believed that drinking human semen was as helpful to growing boys as was drinking a mother's milk to babies. CG's diaries from the 1960's go into considerable detail, sometimes based on nights when he had slept in one room with several boys: he would be awoken by the sound of an adolescent boy straining for his third orgasm of the night; or he would, on entering a hut, find men and boys laid out in positions suitable for fellatio. (Sodomy was rarely mentioned by Papuans and did not seem to happen.) Yes, there was *some* sense of shame and need for secrecy: couples found together would sometimes rearrange themselves hastily when CG appeared on the scene. (2) Whether CG himself indulged is not stated in his diaries; but he plainly approved of PF as practised and was generally content and sometimes "sensually satisfied" by his experiences in PNG. What he *did* do was to look after and pay for the education of 54 boys, some of whom are now academics in US universities. It is just one of these boys, now 23, who accuses him of some (unstated) form of 'abuse' at age 14. With FBI help, this young man entrapped CG over the phone. He asked CG, "Do you know what a paedophile is?"; to which CG quietly replied, "I am one." Since CG's arrest (and overnight imprisonment in a Maryland county jail) in April, virtually all of his 'family' of boys have come forward to defend him; and his own brother [also an academic] has denounced the prosecution as "a witchhunt" and "obscene." At present, CG is on "administrative leave" from the US National Institute of Health which funded his tracing of 'kuru' ("laughing death") to a slow-acting virus, thus preparing the way for similar discoveries about Jakob-Kreuzfeld Disease and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. 'Times Higher' coverage of my own case of administrative leave (Olga Wojtas, 'Brand Claims He Was Censored', p. 4) is equally sympathetic--allowing me to describe Edinburgh University management as "absolutely pathetic and idiotic". "[Brand] stressed that he was not urging a change in the law, and said his critics did not understand moral philosophy if they claimed he thought paedophilia was not wrong." {An action *can* be harmless but still wrong--e.g. breaking a promise that has been out-dated by events, or telling a white lie.} \\\\\\
AT ABOUT THIS POINT I WAS FORBIDDEN TO USE E.U. INTERNET FACILITIES. SUBSEQUENT NEWSLETTERS (December '96 - February, '97) ARE COLLECTED TOGETHER SEPARATELY.
BELOW FOLLOWS BACKGROUND INFORMATION.
Background
On February 29th my book THE g FACTOR, on intelligence, was published in the UK by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. On April 14th newspaper reports of interviews with me began to appear saying I thought Black people had a lower IQ than did Whites; and that, since I thought psychology and race had deep links, probably substantially genetic, I had agreed I could be called a 'scientific' - though not a common-or-garden - 'racist'. On April 17th, Wiley Inc., of New York, denounced (unspecified) views of mine, both relayed by the press and appearing in the book, as "repellent." Thus they were withdrawing the book from publication. UK Wiley promptly followed suit. On May 31st, Edinburgh University, having set up an Inquiry into me, announced publicly that I was a fair examiner and that they would not be bringing disciplinary charges against me. However, they would expect {largely unspecified} improvements in my 'teaching style.' Apparently I would need to cultivate better relations with students; and my Department would have to provide alternative coverage of the 'controversial' subjects on which I lecture. Privately, the University wrote to me to say I should go easy on sexual topics and provide the students with more spoonfeeding [handouts, visual aids]. I denounced the Inquiry as a failed witch-hunt that had produced only a farce - while odiously reserving to itself the right to resume its unconstitutional inquisition at any stage. On June 10th, I begin going public (in these Newsletters and on the Internet) with my offers to Wiley as to how to settle the dispute and re-publish the book.
*********************************************************************************** End of this Collection of NewsLetters For previous and more recent NL's, see below ***********************************************************************************
THE AFFAIR OF 'THE 'g' FACTOR' (Author CHRIS BRAND, Edinburgh)
After Being On Sale In The UK For Six Weeks In The Spring Of 1996, My Book About Intelligence, 'THE 'g' FACTOR', Was Withdrawn From Publication, Supposedly For "Repellent" Racism, By 'Publisher' JOHN WILEY & SONS. In Addition, For My Supposedly "False And Obnoxious" Views And 'Insensitive' Teaching Style And My NewsLetter Support For a 74-year-old Nobel Prizewinner Accused of Non-violent Paedophile Offences Of 10 Years Ago With One Of His Twelve Legally Adopted Sons, I Am The Subject Of A Continuing Witch-hunt By EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY (Which Has Employed Me For 26 Years). Currently, I Am Suspended From Teaching and Administrative Work By Edinburgh University And Am Facing Charges Of Bringing The University's Name Into Disrepute And Of Not Getting On With My Colleagues (Whose Gratuitous Condemnation Of Me Can Be Seen Via My Internet Home Page -- see below). My Reply Is That E.U. Has Achieved Notoriety By Its Own Action. It Refused To Stand By My Book And Demand A Decent Re-publication. Inevitably, While My Name Has Thus Been Under A Cloud, 'Anti-racists', 'Anti- Nazis' and 'Feminists' In The Scottish Press And The E.U. Student Body Have Been Determined to Smear Me and Make E.U. Embarrassed To Employ Me. Scottish Journalists Were Even Despatched To London and Dublin To Quizz My Mother, Ex-wives And Children About My Sex Life! Academics Have Been Slow To Defend My Views Publicly As 'Within The Pale', But The Process Has Started (see NewsLetter, Nov. 14, Nov. 28 and Dec. 11 re paedophilia; US National Review, January 1997, 'IQ and PC', 39-42) And With The Protection Of The Police I Was Able To Debate Race & IQ With Students At Cambridge University In January. The Summary Of My Book On The INTERNET Shows What Actually *Are* My Views, And How Absurd And Hysterical Are The Modern Forces Of 'Political Correctness' In Trying To Censor Me. Even The E.U. Principal Who Faults Me Has Himself Condemned WILEY's Behaviour As "Abominable." I Am Certainly A Race-Realist, And Thus What Ignoracists Standardly Call a 'Scientific Racist', But My Sympathies For The Proper Aspirations Of Black People--Especially As Against Those Of Mainly-White 'PeeCee' People--Can Be Seen In 'downlow' Magazine ("music for the hip-hop nation", Autumn 1996, p. 33). There, I Explain In Layman's Terms The Need For More Choice In How Children Are Educated And In How Marriages Are Arranged - Freedoms From Failed And Increasingly Despotic Egalitarianism That Are Needed By Both Blacks *And* Whites. Chris Brand, Edinburgh; March, 1997.
INTERNET WEBSITES 1. For a Summary of the book, previous NewsLetters, more recent NewsLetters and others' comments and reviews, see the Internet URL sites: http://www.webcom.com/zurcher/thegfactor/index.html http://cycad.com/cgi-bin/Brand/ To follow the NewsLetter is very easy at a computer cafe'. Just ask the staff to take you to either of the above Internet URL sites. In Edinburgh, the charge of £2 for a half-hour's viewing would include such a minimal service by staff. 2. For my 'downlow' article for young Blacks, 'Get Real About Race!' see: http://www.bhs.mq.edu.au/~tbates/intelligence/Brand_downlow.html 3. QUOTATIONS about INTELLIGENCE (Measurement, Psychological bases, Nature/Nurture questions, Importance and practical relevance) including THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP DIFFERENCES ( in Age, Sex, Class, and Race) My anthology of Quotes, with a little introduction to each section, is meant to be on the Net: http://www.ed.ac.uk/~crb/quotes/ but it has been withdrawn by E.U. Principal Stewart Sutherland. This makes complete the censorship of my writing by Abominable Wiley, the Scottish meedja and Edinburgh University. However, 'Personality, Biology and Society' -- as the anthology is titled -- has now been put back on the Net at <http://cycad.com/cgi-bin/Brand/quotes/>. 4. For coverage of 'heterodox' intellectuals writing on IQ, sex differences, race, crime and other topics that are sensitive for the 'liberal'-left, see: <http://www.cycad.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/People/index.html>. 5. For PINC, the bi-monthly Internet magazine championing Political Incorrectness, see: <http://cycad.com/cgi-bin/pinc>. [Reaching these Websites will take staff just twenty seconds at the average computer cafe. In my experience, staff readily supply such a service. The subsequent charge for half-an-hour's viewing and surfing on the Net -- including any occasional assistance that may be necessary -- is then usually around £2-25.]
NEWSLETTER TERMINOLOGY [See also the list at the NL Internet sites.] Abominable Wiley is so called because Edinburgh University Principal Sir Stewart Sutherland publicly denounced Wiley's de-publication of 'The 'g' Factor' as "abominable." B. LOW BeLow = Mr M. B. Lowe, Secretary to the University of Edinburgh E'bro' = Edinburgh Edinburgh LUniversity is so styled because of its incompetence in maintaining its teaching programme, its favoured administrative arrangements or its own reputation as a bastion of academic freedom. Effectively, since April, it has let its Psychology Department be run by the 'Anti-Nazi League.' G. R. Slicker = Dr G. R. Field, Vice-Principal to the University of Edinburgh My li'l Emily Emily Josephine Brand, b. 21 iii 1980, currently attending theatre in Dublin NL = The TgF NewsLetter 'Personality, Biology and Society' (PB&S) is my coverage (via organized and introduced quotations) of all the thirty main topics in modern differential psychology -- including six sections on intelligence and four on 'group differences' Principal Dame Stewart Sutherland is so titled after Dame Joan Sutherland who once played the leading witch who persecutes two young lovers in Handel's opera 'Amadigi'. Reverend Neil MacCormick is so titled after the Reverend Hale in Arthur Miller's play, 'The Crucible.' Hale was responsible for running the witch-hunt at Salem, but gradually lost faith in what he was doing. TgF is the abbreviation for my book 'The 'g' Factor: General Intelligence and Its Implications' (1996, Chichester, UK, John Wiley & Sons). TgFN is the abbreviation for 'The 'g' Factor NewsLetter', issued every few days on the Internet and sometimes sent in draft via e-mail. Wiley DePublisher is so called because Wiley withdrew 'The 'g' Factor' from sale and denounced some of its assertions (unspecified) as "repellent."
Press coverage etc.
All Scottish newspapers from April 15 for c. 10 days Guardian (London), 25 iv 1996 (E. Clouston, p.4) New Scientist (London) leading article 26 iv 1996 Times Higher (London), 26 iv 1996, pp. 19, 48 Sunday Times (London), 28 iv 1996, c.p5 also letter from Professor Hans Eysenck US National Association of Scholars Science News List (NASSNL), 29 iv 1996 BBC TV 2, 'Newsnight', Tues. 30 iv 1996, c. 2305hrs Guardian (London), 1 v 1996 (Gary Younge, 'The gene genies') Nature (London) 2 v 1996, p.33 Science (Washington), 3 v 1996, p.644, news report & photo New Scientist (London) leading article 3 v 1996 The Observer (London), 5 v 1996, 'Arsenic and old race' California Valley Times 8 v 1996 (by Linda Seebach) Nature, 9 v 1996, news report & photo National Association of Scholars, Science News List (NASSNL), 9 v 1996 The Spectator, 11 v 1996 (K.Malik, 'Race towards censorship' pp. 19- 21) Chronicle of Higher Education (Washington), 16 v 1996 (Liz McMillen) http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/racegallery/ (Website run by Marek Kohn, author of 'The Race Gallery') Independent on Sunday [Supplement], 19 v 1996 (M. Kohn) NASSNL, 22 v 1996 http://www.nas.org/press