We Should Live - Ben Bateman

Larry Summers is not alone in losing his job for tell the unpopular truth. From Leeds University in Britain, via BBC news:

Dr Frank Ellis, a Russian tutor, says data stretching back 100 years points to a “persistent deviation” in the average IQ of black and white people.

More than 500 students have signed a petition calling for him to be sacked.

. . .

“I have read an enormous amount of literature on this subject and I find it extremely convincing,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

He praised the work of scholars such as Hans Eysenck and Arthur Jensen who have come to similar conclusions.

The older generation still mouths the old pieties about intellectual freedom:

Dr Munira Mirza, a tutor in multiculturalism and community relations at the University of Kent, told 5 Live she believed IQ differences could be explained by social and historical factors and did not exist for biological reasons.

But she said: “I don’t agree with his views but do defend his right to express them. That is the lifeblood of the campus - people can express views and be held to account for them.

But the kids know how this game really works. After the petition, they naturally held a demonstration, and in doing so demonstrated just what those old pieties are worth in the PC age of academia. From the follow-up story:

Dr Frank Ellis was suspended from his post as a lecturer at Leeds University pending disciplinary procedures.

The university emphasised that the suspension was not itself a penalty but said it had been deemed appropriate given “the seriousness of the issues”.

The university is now scrambling to find a path between its morals and its desires. They’ve worked up a draft list of ways to fire the poor man for expressing an unpopular opinion without it looking like they’re firing him for expressing an unpopular opinion:

1. In publicising his personal views on race and other matters, Dr Ellis had acted in breach of the university’s equality and diversity policy, “and in a way that is wholly at odds with our values”.
2. He had “recklessly jeopardised” the fulfilment of the university’s obligations under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000.
3. He had failed to comply with “reasonable requests” - for example, to apologise for the distress which his remarks on race and other matters have caused to many people, or to give an undertaking he would make no further public comments suggesting one racial group is inherently inferior (or superior) to another “unless there is no possibility whatsoever that anyone hearing or reading his comments might reasonably associate him with the University of Leeds”.