Thank you for the invitation to comment on the dispute between Philippe Rushton and Garland Allen. Since you have read my op-ed piece "Academic Freedom and Racial Theories" in the New York Times (May 3, 1990, page A27), I'm quite certain it comes as no surprise to you that I believe that Professor Allen has by far the better of the debate.
As a writer and teacher of literature, I have tried to bring a skeptical humanism to all questions of human relationships and human strivings. What I find so disturbing about Rushton's arguments is the historical context of the debate. If we were able to divorce ourselves from the history of our century - and the uses to which theorizing about race have been put - questions about race and intelligence would simply be examples of the kind of intellectual silliness that periodically seizes intellectuals, on a par, I...
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