Public Policy (Ann Speaking)
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• Is Devin correct? Are some races or ethnic groups more intelligent than others?
• Does Devin have a right, based on his contract or the university policy on academic freedom, to teach racism?
• Does Devin's teaching harm his students in addition to offending them and does that harm justify restrictions on what he says?

I want to suggest something else. I think that the most important question is this:

• What view of the intelligence of different races should form the basis of public policy?

When writers like Charles Murray make claims about the intelligence of blacks and whites, they do so in part to criticize specific policies. For example, some affirmative action programs at our universities are based on the assumption that blacks ought to be proportionately represented in the student body. But if blacks, on the average, are less intelligent that whites, then this policy is based on a mistake. We would not expect as many blacks as whites to get into Harvard.

My view is that public policy ought to assume intellectual equality among races unless there is an overwhelming consensus among scholars that the facts are otherwise. There is no such consensus.

In any case, this is a new question and as a nation we ought to discuss it.

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