The University has a right to set its own priorities for support of scholarly activity. The University’s commitment to racial and cultural diversity is an essential part of, not a rival principle in conflict with, the University’s commitment to [academic freedom].
Those sentences occur in a committee report recommending that the University not accept grants from the Pioneer Fund, a small foundation that, in the words of its charter, supports “research into problems of heredity and eugenics.” The report was accepted without reservation by LTD’s president and endorsed by its board of trustees. In consequence, the highly regarded work of Linda Gottfredson, the only UD professor to receive Pioneer Fund grants, is in jeopardy. And quite rightly too: for her studies examine the social consequences of individual and group differences in ability.
Of course UD has not told Professor Gottfredson what she may think or what line of inquiry she may pursue. That would be censorship. But most faculty research is supported by external grants; LTD has simply denied Professor Gottfredson hers. The reason given is that Pioneer Fund money is tainted:
[a] preponderant portion of the activities supported by the Fund either seek to demonstrate or start from the assumption that there are fundamental hereditary differences among people of different racial and cultural backgrounds That, by the way, is not true of Gottfredson’s own research.
The language is chosen to imply bias. But all research seeks to prove something, and all is based on assumptions that, as the inquiry proceeds, are either borne out or not. If there is a bias, let it be shown by additional evidence or closer reasoning. The attempt to dispose of a factual claim on non-factual grounds confesses fear that the claim may be true. Besides, the implicit appeal to morality is spurious.
Is Big Brother watching you at UDel?
As it happens, UD’s description of the Pioneer Fund is false. Only about 20 per cent of the work it supports pertains to racial differences, and not all of that concerns their heritability. Nor do all those whose work the Fund supports agree that race is a useful category. In a letter, the chairman of UD’s board of trustees all but admits the falsity of the charge.
No matter whether that is in fact the orientation of Pioneer Fund or not, that is perceived as the orientation of the Fund by at least a material number of our faculty, staff, and students. Without judging the merits of this perception, the board’s objective of increasing minority presence at the University could … be hampered if the University chose to seek funds from the Pioneer Fund at this time.
At least LTD is consistent. It does not care what is true about racial differences and it does not care what is true about the Pioneer Fund. What matters is that some people say that research in this area is racist.
There is a long history of attempts by the academic Left to police the thought of their colleagues. Charging them with racism is the easiest and most successful whip to use. The eminent Harvard entomologist, and father of sociobiology, E. 0. Wilson, has felt the sting of that lash, as have the Berkeley psychologist, Arthur Jensen, and numerous others. You build power by exercising power. Every time the Left succeeds in shutting up a speaker, or shutting down his research, it wins more adherents. And each time the Left is conceded such a victory, the academy is further implicated in the notion that “political correctness” supersedes truth. It then becomes increasingly difficult to resist the next step.
University of Deleware has handed ideologues a new weapon: though intended to evade charges of college censorship, its action widens censorship’s scope. Scientists and scholars will be made vulnerable to political objections not only to their own work but to other work which the same funding source supports. And therefore foundations will become even more reluctant to fund politically sensitive research, lest their support of others be jeopardized.
Don’t think all this goes unappreciated elsewhere. A prestigious Northeastern college is “reconsidering” whether to withhold Pioneer Funds from one of its professors, and other universities are waiting to see whether the Delaware decision will survive legal challenge. Big Brother ma be coming to your college soon.
