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UCLA professor: Harvard not unlike the Soviet Union
On Friday, I said that even if you find that Harvard Law student's email misguided and offensive, it's possible to find Harvard's response troublesome.
However. Eugene Volokh's post, mawkishly titled "On a Bus in Kiev," really has to be read to be believed. In it, the UCLA professor compares the official criticism and censure of Stephanie Grace to crackdowns on dissent in the old Soviet Union, where Volokh was born. He explicitly compares the private expression of curiosity about a putative racial IQ gap, in 2010 America, to private assertions, in Soviet Union in the 1970s, that Stalin and Lenin were dictators.
Volokh, like Posner at times, comes across as a sort of hyperlogical alien who was beamed down to Earth ten minutes ago. "On my planet," he all but says, "there would be nothing controversial about comparing the IQ's of members of different races."
However. Eugene Volokh's post, mawkishly titled "On a Bus in Kiev," really has to be read to be believed. In it, the UCLA professor compares the official criticism and censure of Stephanie Grace to crackdowns on dissent in the old Soviet Union, where Volokh was born. He explicitly compares the private expression of curiosity about a putative racial IQ gap, in 2010 America, to private assertions, in Soviet Union in the 1970s, that Stalin and Lenin were dictators.
Volokh, like Posner at times, comes across as a sort of hyperlogical alien who was beamed down to Earth ten minutes ago. "On my planet," he all but says, "there would be nothing controversial about comparing the IQ's of members of different races."
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Joshua Rothman is a graduate student and Teaching Fellow in the Harvard English department, and an Instructor in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He teaches novels and political writing.
