76 lines
5.3 KiB
Plaintext
76 lines
5.3 KiB
Plaintext
Prof Pilloried for race theory
|
||
|
||
By Jeffrey Ulbright in Toronto
|
||
|
||
Professor Philippe Rushton has been confined to lecturing into a video
|
||
camera at Western Ontario University, where his theories on race and
|
||
intelligence have made him a discomforting presence. Since the academic year
|
||
began, students taking Dr Rushton's undergraduate course - Theories of
|
||
Personality - have been obliged to pick up his 90-minute taped lectures, view
|
||
each one alone and in seclusion, and telephone the psychology professor with
|
||
any questions. Dr Rushton gained notoriety throughout North America by
|
||
announcing that his research showed whites were more intelligent than blacks,
|
||
Orientals were more intelligent than whites and the reasons were genetic and
|
||
evolutionary. University officials say the special treatment of Dr Rushton's
|
||
lectures is necessary to avoid disturbances, even violence, by some elements
|
||
on the campus at London, Ontario. Dr Rushton responded in an interview: "In
|
||
my view, it's an infringement of my academic freedom because I cannot discuss
|
||
my views with the students and the students are not allowed to challenge me.
|
||
The whole normal student-teacher relationship is gone." His performance
|
||
evaluation also has been dropped from a consistent "very good" or "excellent"
|
||
to "unsatisfactory." That could have been the first step in an administration
|
||
attempt to sack him, but the university senate grievance committee has
|
||
overturned the psychology department evaluation. "That means I get a pay
|
||
increase," Dr Rushton said, "and most importantly, it removes any possibility
|
||
of the university initiating dismissal proceedings against me on those
|
||
grounds." Administration officials deny the university is trying to muzzle or
|
||
harass Dr Rushton or interfere with his academic freedom. "No one involved
|
||
thinks videotaping lectures is the best solution to the problem, but it's the
|
||
only one we could come up with that we think is viable," said Dr Tom Collins,
|
||
vice-president for academics. "A lot of people are critical of that
|
||
situation." Dr Rushton, aged 46, has been at Western Ontario for 13 years
|
||
and, until January 1989, laboured in relative obscurity. He was known in
|
||
academia as co-author of the best-selling textbook Introduction to Psychology
|
||
and won a Guggenheim research fellowship in 1988, but burst into public view
|
||
only with a 20-minute speech to the American Association for the Advancement
|
||
of Science. Many scientists stormed out of the hall in San Fransisco when Dr
|
||
Rushton set out his thoughts on genetic and evolutionary differences between
|
||
the races. "My conclusions are totally unpopular," he admitted. "I conclude
|
||
that, on 50 or 60 different measures, Orientals and blacks are at opposite
|
||
ends of a continuum with whites, or caucasoids, falling consistently
|
||
somewhere in the middle. These measures include intelligence, sexual
|
||
behaviour, brain size, law abidingness, social organization skills,
|
||
personality and speed of physical maturation." Dr Rushton also teaches a
|
||
graduate course called Human Life History, covering the evolutionary basis of
|
||
personality. Only two students are enrolled and he teaches it "more or less
|
||
normally", he said. "We meet once a week in a location that is kept secret
|
||
from everybody but me and the two students." For the twelve undergraduates in
|
||
his theories of Personality course, he goes to a different classroom each
|
||
week to tape a lecture. "Normally there would be up to 60 students in this
|
||
class," he said. The students are allowed to telephone him during one hour a
|
||
week to ask him questions or make appointments. An appeal of the ruling that
|
||
he must teach by videotape is still before the university senate. "This is
|
||
consuming an enormous amount of my time," Dr Rushton complained. Dr Collins,
|
||
the university vice-president, said when asked whether the university was
|
||
embarrassed by the professor: "In the university in general, some people are
|
||
embarrassed by his work. The official stance is he has academic freedom and
|
||
will be judged by his peers." Dr Rushton says racial difference is a
|
||
fascinating question on which he has worked since 1981 and published since
|
||
1984, "even getting ratings of excellent from the university for my race
|
||
work. It was when it began to be public that the axe began to come down on my
|
||
head." Race was a taboo, he said, but that "only goes back to the Second
|
||
World War as a result of Hitler's so-called racial policy." In the aftermath
|
||
of the war, there had been a virtual self-imposed taboo on the scientific
|
||
study of race differences from a genetic perspective. No known environmental
|
||
cause explained the differences between races, said Dr Rushton. "Things like
|
||
white racism and poverty just don't do it." "If I had said either that the
|
||
differences do not exist and it's all due to white racism, then I would not
|
||
have run into trouble. But once you suggest genetics or evolution in the
|
||
context of race, you're in for trouble, and I knew I would be." Dr Rushton
|
||
says he does not like being unpopular and that he wants to make a
|
||
contribution to science and be rewarded with approval for doing so. "I do
|
||
not like to have my views totally unpopular as they are," he said, "but I do
|
||
believe I'm right. I feel that this is something that is going to be
|
||
recognized."
|
||
|
||
Typed in by Mark Norman, for The Pinnacle Club BBS Library. |