Article on latter day heresy

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Article on latter day heresy

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/27/opinion/meyer/main669677.shtml

 

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(CBS) This Against the Grain commentary was written by CBSNews.com's Dick

Meyer.

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There is such a thing as heresy in modern America. Just ask the president of

Harvard, Lawrence Summers.

 

Webster's defines heresy as "a religious belief opposed to the orthodox

doctrines of a church; esp., a belief specifically denounced by the church"

or "any opinion opposed to official or established views or doctrines." As

in the Middle Ages, heresy is still punished unless recantation on bent knee

is proffered.

 

Summers violated the orthodoxy of acceptable public speech when he suggested

to an academic conference, quite hypothetically, that biologically-based

differences between men and women could be one of several factors

contributing to an under representation of women in the higher echelons of

academic math and science.

 

Summers was promptly and efficiently flagellated by charges of sexism and

general boorishness. And so he recanted publicly. A small counter charge

defended him against what they felt were the thought police, the posses of

political correctness.

 

Many articles have documented how Summers' speculation that the role of

actual physical matter in the brain could have something to do with all this

is not so outlandish and indeed is pretty mainstream. No one says that

Summers spoke insultingly, with overt prejudice, minimized the role

discrimination plays or even implied men were smarter than women.

 

For the record, I believe that Summers was wronged. I find it mystifying and

deeply troubling that our universities have become the very places where

truly open speech and open minds are most threatened. The only institution

that I regularly deal with that has an implicit code of acceptable speech

that is explicitly enforced is my kids' school.

 

By now, every angle of this cataclysmic concept clash has been sliced and

diced except, in my estimation, the most fundamental issue: the dirty little

secret.

 

It has become unchallenged and unexamined doctrine that any suggestion that

physical, genetic or biological differences between genders or races

contributed to performance or ability is de facto prejudice - either racism

or sexism. This pertains mostly, not entirely, to possible differences in

brain function, but also to athletic performance.

 

When Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder suggested, albeit with a distinct lack of

subtlety and Harvard cultivated panache, that evolution may have given some

blacks athletes advantages over some whites, his career was sacked.

 

Summers' suggestion - more qualified, more sophisticated - hasn't cost him

his job yet because of a quick, articulate recantation. But I wouldn't give

him great odds.

 

Fundamentally, this is a moral argument, though I have never seen the

argument clearly made by a moral philosopher or ethicist. The argument goes

something like this: The assertion of differences in achievement,

intellectual performance or other abilities in either gender or race is

intrinsically immoral, unethical and an irrational expression of prejudice

against the "less able" group - even if empirical evidence shows the

relevant claims may have merit. Acceptable moral doctrine holds that all

groups have identical potential of brain and, to a lesser degree, body;

believing this is a necessary condition of according all groups due respect.

 

Is believing this a precondition of believing "that all men [and women] are

created equal?" Of course not. The Declaration made the case that all people

have equal rights and equal liberties and are due equal respect and justice.

Believing that individuals and groups may have different, biologically-based

assets and weaknesses is, in a word, irrelevant.

 

Everyone knows that the true third rail of current events isn't Social

Security: it is crossing the "all differences between groups are caused by

discrimination and social conditioning" orthodoxy. The orthodoxy is, in

turn, based on the moral assertion above. But that moral claim is weak if

not crippled.

 

There is a watered-down dogma, too: even if suggestions of biological

differences themselves are not immoral in every instance, if they can

potentially lead to undesirable outcomes, they may not be uttered - even if

true.

 

Doctrine trumps truth. Thus even if there were ample empirical evidence to

toss around Summers' speculations and even if he uttered them respectfully

and without malice, it was immoral for him to speak publicly because it

conceivably could have an undesired outcome - discouraging some women from

careers in science.

 

There clearly are historical and cultural reasons for wariness about

believing in innate differences between peoples. From the Nazis to the Ku

Klux Klan and on to the Aryan nation, diseased pseudo-science has been a

cudgel of hatred; racial superiority has been a clarion call of social

sadism.

 

On a smaller but still serious scale, women and minorities have been

discriminated against in the scientific academy by some who thought it was

the domain of white boys. American culture is rightly vigilant against that,

and fairly successful, not perfect.

 

But these deeper sociopathologies have nothing to do with Lawrence Summers

or even Jimmy the Greek.

 

Here's a little thought experiment: Eighty percent of the users of

medications for attention-deficit disorders are boys; 5.2 percent of all

girls between 5 and 12 are held back, but 8.3 percent of boys are; women in

2001 earned a third more bachelor's degrees than men did; autism is now seen

to be much more likely to afflict boys than girls.

 

One could reasonably conclude from this that it would very worthwhile to

study hard whether physical differences in the brain could contribute to

these variables.

 

Now did I just write a sexist, anti-boy, prejudiced sentence?

 

I'm guessing 80 percent of you said "no."

 

If I had substituted "girls" or "blacks" into that quick litany of factoids,

my guess is I would have committed heresy and have to offer recantation to

my corporate masters and my 17 devoted readers.

 

That is because I would have been attributing physical differences to the

lagging performance of a "non-dominant" demographic group when orthodoxy

demands that we believe only discrimination and social conditioning are

acceptable explanations.

 

That is politically correct dogma masquerading as a theory of justice.

Adherence often demands the suspension of common sense and the evidence of

your own eyes. And that provokes a fierce, resentful but wholly

understandable backlash in the non-PC world.

 

Prejudice, racism and sexism have no place in 21st century America. Neither

does heresy.

 

 

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Dick Meyer, a veteran political and investigative producer for CBS News, is

the Editorial Director of CBSNews.com, based in Washington.

 

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The Krishna conscious prespective on this of course is that Krishna is the

one supreme intelligent enjoyer and all others are His servants.... If they

learn to act purely in this their constitutional position, they can be most

intelligent and qualified in so many ways. And if they don't they simply go

on suffering, and fighting in this world.

 

(Rd)

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