On the Right

New York, March 25—As Mr. Joseph Alsop has observed, “the unspeakable has been spoken.” The study of Arthur Jensen, professor of educational psychology at Berkeley, published in the Harvard Educational Review, is massive, apparently authoritative. Mr. Alsop put it thus gloomily: “It seems unlikely” that “Dr. Jensen’s data” can be “successfully challenged.” Those data are to the effect that the average Negro is less “intelligent” than the average white; bluntly put.

If I may say so, liberal ideologues have really made a mess of this situation. As recently as in 1964, for instance, Mr. Melvin Tumin, a Princeton sociologist, presided over a report, distributed by the Anti-Defamation League under the title “Race and Intelligence: A Scientific Evaluation,” in which he absolutely certified that all differences in achievement among students were the result of environment, unrelated to genetic factors. Mr. Tumin and others by their dogmatic insistence on “equality” at every level succeeded in persuading typical Americans to put far too great an emphasis on “intelligence”— with the result that the researches of Dr. Jensen can bring such as Mr. Alsop to believe that the end of the world is finally here.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

New York, March 25—As Mr. Joseph Alsop has observed, “the unspeakable has been spoken.” The study of Arthur Jensen, professor of educational psychology at Berkeley, published in the Harvard Educational Review, is massive, apparently authoritative. Mr. Alsop put it thus gloomily: “It seems unlikely” that “Dr. Jensen’s data” can be “successfully challenged.” Those data are to the effect that the average Negro is less “intelligent” than the average white; bluntly put.

If I may say so, liberal ideologues have really made a mess of this situation. As recently as in 1964, for instance, Mr. Melvin Tumin, a Princeton sociologist, presided over a report, distributed by the Anti-Defamation League under the title “Race and Intelligence: A Scientific Evaluation,” in which he absolutely certified that all differences in achievement among students were the result of environment, unrelated to genetic factors. Mr. Tumin and others by their dogmatic insistence on “equality” at every level succeeded in persuading typical Americans to put far too great an emphasis on “intelligence”— with the result that the researches of Dr. Jensen can bring such as Mr. Alsop to believe that the end of the world is finally here.