The more things change...

In the 1970s, when I was the Director of University Communication at my alma matter, Case Western Reserve University, the students shouted down William Shockley, when he tried to speak on campus.

Credited as the father of the transistor, Shockley, like so many geniuses from Einstein to Gates, became convinced he knew a lot more than just his particular scientific expertise.  "Late in his life, Shockley became intensely interested in questions of race, human intelligence, and eugenics. He thought this work was important to the genetic future of the human species and came to describe it as the most important work of his career, even though expressing his views damaged his reputation. Shockley argued that a higher rate of reproduction among the less intelligent was having a dysgenic effect, and that a drop in average intelligence would ultimately lead to a decline in civilization. On a debate with Afro-centrist Frances Welsing he responded to a question as to whether black people are intellectually inferior because of their racial heredity with the following statement:

My research leads me inescapably to the opinion that the major cause of the American Negro's intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and, thus, not remediable to a major degree by practical improvements in the environment.

Shockley's published writings and lectures to scientific organizations on this topic were partly based on the writings of psychologist Cyril Burt and were funded by the Pioneer Fund. Shockley also proposed that individuals with IQs below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization."

Well, the civil rights movement survived Shockley, who no doubt would have been shocked, had he lived to see Barack Obama serve two terms as our (highly competent) president.  Meanwhile, his being booed off the stage at CWRU is long forgotten.  But it should not be forgotten, because we seem to continue to make the same mistake.

I'm referring to a story in today's Inside Higher Ed about students at Middlebury College shouting Charles Murray off the stage.  "Murray had been invited by Middlebury's student group affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank at which Murray is a scholar. Many of his writings are controversial, but perhaps none more than The Bell Curve, a book that linked intelligence and race and that has been widely condemned by many social scientists (even as Murray has been supported by others)."

Murray was able to be heard via closed circuit TV after his exit stage left.  But his censorship is another small stain on higher education's record as a bastion of free speech, just like the Shockley incident way back in the seventies.

As I have repeatedly asserted in this space, we live in an age of fake news, flat out lies and infotainment.  Witness Bill Maher's comment last week about the media's abandonment of real news in favor of fluff stories:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXWFYiBX9HM


Maher eloquently takes the press to task for reporting "bullshit."  And he hits that nail squarely on the head.

So who is left:  we are.  Higher Education... a vast, sprawling, diverse, and powerful force... we are thousands of islands of truth-seekers in the sea of "bullshit," to borrow Maher's word.

But to play that role effectively, we have to respect academic freedom and free speech for all, not just those with whom we agree.

And so, this morning I am sorry to see the Middlebury story in the news.  I am sorry to see that with respect to certain taboo topics, the more things change the more they remain the same on our campuses.