Posted on 10/19/2007 1:20:11 AM PDT by KayEyeDoubleDee
Earlier this evening, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Board of Trustees decided to suspend the administrative responsibilities of Chancellor James D. Watson, Ph.D., pending further deliberation by the Board.
This action follows the Board’s public statement yesterday disagreeing with the comments attributed to Dr. Watson in the October 14, 2007 edition of The Sunday Times U.K.
I’m sure if Watson said that all Muslims should be deported he would be fired as well (especially in the UK). Would you be in favor of that too?
You don’t have freedom of speech if your speech is going to cost you your job and career. This is the soft totalitarianism that conservatives live under in the West and you support it?
This was the obvious and expected next course.
Freedom of speech is NOT freedom from consequences.
So you’re if favor of academics getting canned by leftists if they don’t toe the PC line?
Were you in favor of Rush getting canned from his NFL gig over his statements on black quarterbacks?
In favor of what? Deporting all Muslims or firing Watson for saying that? Yes to the first and no to the second. lol
Getting fired for his comments whether you agree with the comments or not.
I feel that this knee-jerk reaction chills free and open inquiry and debate on controversial issues of the day. AND: What if he IS right? What are the implications of denying such a reality?
Larry Summers was fired as president of Harvard because he gave a speech to some women scientists. During the speech he discussed why there are so few women in the fields of math and physics. He listed several possible reasons, including the usual “women are oppressed by sexism” argument. He also mentioned the possibility that men are on average genetically better at spatial reasoning than women.
After the speech, a radical feminist biologist threw a tantrum. She rambled on and on about how she nearly fainted upon hearing his shocking remarks, how she felt physically ill, etcetera.
In no time the leftist faculty and student body was screaming for his head. The media joined in, denouncing Summers for his “insensitive” remarks. Even though there is substantial scientific evidence that men do indeed have a genetic predisposition to perform at higher levels on average in fields requiring spatial reasoning, Summers was forced to grovel and apologize, and of course was ordered by his critics to approve another affirmative action program for women in science.
Then, they fired him.
A couple of weeks ago, he was scheduled to speak at a school in the University of California system. Even though he wasn’t going to address any “controversial” topic, his speech was cancelled after feminist professors threw a hissy fit.
If what Watson said is scientifically indefensible, then let’s see the evidence to the contrary and have a debate. Don’t hold your breath waiting for it, though. An open debate on IQ is the last thing the egalitarians want. All they need to do is beat their chests in self-righteous outrage, gang up on the offending individual and demand an apology, and then fire him.
Thank you.
See post 30.
The Dixie Chicks had the constitutional right to state to a crowd of foreigners that they were embarrassed that George W. Bush was a Texan.
But they shouldn't have been surprised that people would boycott their concerts and destroy CDs of their music.
They should have expected it.
Personally have the constitutional right to express a slew of anti-racist views.
And expect to get a lot of flak for it.
At least in California, you have the right of way to cross the street against traffic as vehicles are whizzing by so long as you use the crosswalk.
But you shouldn't be surprised if you get run over if you try it.
Actions have consequences, even when those actions are legal.
Well what if some lefty decided to fire you because of your support for George Bush? Would you be in favor of that too?
Another machine I like are the Bobcats. They are called ‘powered wheelbarrows’.
I have also noticed utility repair guys now using really small backhoes to dig up a pipe.
Anyways, what I am getting at is even at the local, small company level people are using machines, not their backs.
I worked in a golf ball factory. The trend, year after year, was significantly less workers, higher production and higher costs. Basically the less a person touched anything, the better.
So, we are moving into an age where back strength is decreasing. An age that is only now beginning, just, baby steps to understand what cheap computers will do. It is an brain powered age. You can see the wealth this produces in places like lower Manhattan, Boston, Silicon Valley.
So, blacks are in a bad space. A race/culture that isn’t very much into book learning. Further they go to either urban or rural schools that are bad. So, they either don’t learn, learn to hate learning, find out they were lied to and haven’t been learned.
Lastly, the way we learn is a frozen, industrial model that best fit the 1800’s. It hasn’t changed. So we are very stuck with this mental and union monster called public education. I am kind of thinking that some sort of new model will emerge from the home schooling movement, conservative Christians, the Internet and a few honest collages. I have read that MIT is putting its entire curriculum on line for anyone. I have also heard of a university that is going to YouTube all its lectures. It is a matter of time when, with out gooberment planning, by natural unseen hands, this will come together providing the best universities, with the best lectures at near nigh zero cost. Thus expensive, liberal, leftist thieving mind fu*king schooling will go the way of major newspapers.
Should of been, " less workers, higher production and higher quality at lower costs",
I have read a good deal of Arthur R. Jensen’s work, and it is fairly persuasive. I suspect, Dr. Watson has done the same. There is a very small, but very persistent group of scientists who are doing research in areas that are controversial to say the least, and their conclusions are challenging the foundations of modern, democratic egalitarianism.
Provided they are not run out on a rail (or worse), I suspect their research will eventually have to be discussed, and it may directly confront the opinions most people hold dear about race and intelligence. By the way, James Q. Wilson wrote an equally controversial essay on the same subject in Commentary a year ago. Fasten your seatbelts, folks, it’s going to get bumpy.
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