Monday, February 23, 2009

Academic Freedom and Political Correctness

Haim Watzman wonders if Nature magazine might have sought out a better advocate for the position that scientists should NOT study questions of race and IQ than Steven Rose, who "as a prominent advocate of an academic boycott against Israel, demonstrated his preference for sacrificing open academic discourse and debate on the altar of his political causes... his record leads me to suspect that he favors political limitations on scientific research that go beyond the specific issue of race and intelligence." Perhaps, though Rose's position is at least in some sense congruent in the two (admittedly very different) cases.
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