How Intellectual Inquiry Became Code for Defending Bigotry

When conservatives bemoan the state of education and its supposed hijacking by woke mobs intent on destroying critical thought in the name of political correctness, they insist they are only interested in the search for truth.

The left, they say, seeks to shut down that quest — the animating spirit of education — by canceling professors with right-leaning views, de-platforming speakers, and running roughshod over free speech in the name of dogmatism.

Scholars should be able to ask all the questions and explore all subjects, without fear of censorship or professional banishment, they say. Nothing should be off the table just because it makes certain people uncomfortable.

But they don’t mean it.

…the search for truth is not the priority of these conservative and “classical liberal” critics of the left

And I’m not even talking about how relatively calm they’ve been in the face of multiple states banning classroom discussions of systemic racism in K-12 schools (possibly public colleges as well) under the guise of stopping Critical Race Theory.

Their criticisms of these efforts, when they’ve come at all, have been far less histrionic than their outrage over students shouting down Milo a few years ago or getting an Ann Coulter gig canceled.

But that’s not my focus here.

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that the search for truth is not the priority of these conservative and “classical liberal” critics of the left.

How we know the right doesn’t support an open-ended “search for truth”

There are many questions these folks would never demand that academic institutions take seriously, either at the departmental level or in the sense of a guest lecture.

For instance, would these defenders of open inquiry and the search for truth insist that a geology department hire, or sponsor as a guest lecturer, a Young Earth Creationist, who believes God created the universe between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago? Or a flat Earther?

Would they demand that a physics department bring in someone to explain, using evidence (however convoluted), that the moon landing couldn’t have happened? Or that the World Trade Center had to have been brought down by controlled demolition?

In all these cases, there is evidence marshaled by those who make these claims to “prove” their arguments. But still, it is rejected as well it should be, by the consensus of scholars in the respective and relevant fields.

And everyone, right, left, and center, would agree that in these cases, this is how such decisions should be made — by professionals, trained in the pertinent disciplines.

So too, no one would tell a history department that in the name of intellectual diversity and the search for truth, they are duty-bound to hire a Holocaust denier.

Nor would free speech require that they bring in notorious anti-Semite David Irving to speak about how Hitler didn’t kill as many people as we’ve been led to believe.

Nor would anyone insist that Northwestern University should allow their tenured electrical engineering professor Arthur Butz — who is one of the most well-known deniers of the Holocaust — to teach classes on how the gas chambers couldn’t possibly have existed.

And again, why?

It’s simple.

As with the age of the Earth and the physics of 9/11, experts in the relevant field have ascertained the truth about the Holocaust. It is a settled fact.

Likewise, although many would argue there are real benefits to Eastern medicine, or alternative treatments for various ailments, I can’t imagine anyone accusing medical schools of impeding the “search for truth” when they refuse to create tenure-lines for “crystal healers” or those who believe in hyper-oxygenation as a cancer treatment, alongside traditional oncologists.

…the defenders of open inquiry aren’t for completely open inquiry. They merely seek to defend scholars who wish to rationalize traditional hierarchies and social power arrangements

My point being, everyone draws a line somewhere, which says this is an idea unworthy of equal consideration, even if there might be evidence for it that many laypersons find convincing. And unless we wish to allow every crank theory or argument to find purchase in the classroom, we have to trust scholars in the relevant fields to make those judgments, even if this means that some “open inquiry” won’t be entirely open.

Yes, you have the right to deny the Holocaust or think the Earth is flat. But we are not obligated to treat you respectfully or consider your views in a place of higher education as part of the search for truth.

Conservatives use open inquiry as a cover for bigotry and to defend existing power structures

But there are other questions these folks are all too eager to protect and insist on the right of scholars to ask. Unlike the examples above, where they would trust the judgment of those in the relevant fields to determine what is and is not worthy of being considered, in these cases, they think we should reject those experts and accuse them of censoring heterodox thought.

And what are these questions?

Almost without fail, they are questions that hold out the possibility that something is terribly wrong with less powerful groups in society and that existing social inequalities are natural and valid.

They are questions about the relationship between race and intelligence, gender and ambition, culture and social standing. They are questions that, at their root, seek to determine if perhaps there is something fundamentally inferior about Black and brown folks, women, or the poor.

Those questions are never off the table — never unworthy of being asked.

So, the Holocaust is a settled fact, and questioning it is understandably beyond the pale. Still, the possibility that Black people might be biologically less intelligent than others remains an exciting possibility we should consider.

The age of the Earth is a settled fact, but as for the idea that women are naturally inclined to domesticity and families were healthier under traditional patriarchal arrangements? Oooh, let’s not shut that line of argument down! There might be something to it.

In other words, the defenders of open inquiry aren’t for completely open inquiry. They merely seek to defend scholars who wish to rationalize traditional hierarchies and social power arrangements.

The ideas they seek to protect are always those that have the effect of stigmatizing and denigrating less powerful groups and justifying the higher positions of dominant groups.

And in these cases, they are unwilling to defer to experts in the relevant fields, whose research — actual academic research — clearly debunks racial science, for instance, every bit as much as historical research debunks Holocaust denial.

For example, The Bell Curve, which rehabilitated the notion that race is biologically connected to intelligence and success in the modern world, was rejected by virtually the entirety of scholars in biology, genetics, psychology, and anthropology.

Books shredding its misuse and misinterpretation of data have been numerous — none of them, it should be pointed out, becoming best-sellers like the supposedly “canceled” material in The Bell Curve itself.

So too, articles in actual academic journals debunking the book’s claims — unlike The Bell Curve, which was never subjected to peer review — have gone largely undiscussed and un-read.

Which is the great irony of conservative yelps about the censorious left: The material that the right wants to explore is not being censored.

…even as they seek to find possible biological, genetic, or cultural explanations for specific dysfunctions within communities of color, they never apply that same lens to white people

It sold 500,000 copies in the first six months of publication, and its lead author, Charles Murray, is still a conservative thinker in good standing.

Meanwhile, hardly anyone has read the scholarly dissections of The Bell Curve’s contents, and people like Sam Harris are inviting Murray on his podcast, insisting that no one yet has refuted the science in the book.

Which is the kind of thing you say if you’re a liar, who knows the science has been refuted but prefers pseudoscientific racism to the truth, or a fool who can’t be bothered to do a Google search.

And Harris is no fool, which leaves only the former option.

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They only ask how race connects to pathology when it comes to Black and brown folks

In response, those who insist they’re “just asking questions” about the connection between race and behavior might say they merely wish to examine various theories, even if they don’t personally believe in them.

But notice, even as they seek to find possible biological, genetic, or cultural explanations for specific dysfunctions within communities of color, they never apply that same lens to white people.

So, they don’t say, for instance, that we might want to explore what it is about white culture, white biology, or white genetics that explains the disproportionate whiteness of mass shootings in schools.

Or heavy drinking, which is more prevalent among young whites than people of color.

They don’t call for scholars to explore the possible genetic, biological or white cultural origins of corporate misconduct or corruption and illegality on Wall Street.

Is there a gene linking shady banking activity to whiteness?

Is there a biological connection between a desire for great wealth and psychopathy?

These aren’t questions any scholars are asking. Nor are they questions the Andrew Sullivans of the world seem interested in. But questions about the biological or cultural roots of Black academic failure relative to whites?

Oh sure, we can and should get to the bottom of that.

The problem is, if the only “forbidden” questions you fetishize are those which suggest the possibility of Black inferiority, the naturalness of patriarchy, or the inherent slothfulness of the poor, you aren’t genuinely interested in open inquiry.

You are merely using the cover of free speech and academic exploration to conceal your real agenda, which is to rehabilitate ideas that have been rejected by scholars in the fields relevant to their consideration.

Of course, the right would insist that those fields have been corrupted by leftism. Yet, the only evidence for that corruption is that they lean left in the first place — the ultimate in circular reasoning. Academic scholars have rejected these ideas because they’re corrupted, and we know they’re corrupted because they’ve rejected these ideas.

But the only intellectual corruption here is on the right — a group of people who slam everyone else for buying into the “politics of victimhood” and yet, claim to be the biggest victims on the planet.

Cry me a river Bari Weiss, or an ocean Niall Ferguson — and remember, when you do, the tears will not slide off a flat Earth, which is only ten millennia old.

Because the Earth is still spherical and has been here for billions of years, no matter what fools say.

Just as racial science is not science, women are not natural handmaids, and the wealthy are not more intelligent than everyone else.

Nor should we be giving academic platforms in places of learning to people who think otherwise.

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This post was previously published on Momentum.

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