Mark Potok, over at Southern Poverty Law Center (where I did research for my diss/first book, thanks again SPLC), has a nice review of the recent kerfuffle on race and IQ, and appropriately enough calls it out under the heading “Academic Racism.”


Other folks around the blogosphere have done a good job of recapping the whole, nasty business. Cobb is strictly on the money when he writes:

It’s a blunder of the first order for Saletan or anyone who wishes to be taken seriously would not have any idea of who Rushton is.

And, Prometheus 6 pretty much says it all with the headline of his post here. It’s easy to pile on to Saletan for misjudgment, and he clearly deserves it, but the point I think is that the reason that his series resonated across a wide readership is that it taps into a deep reservoir of beliefs about racial inequality, including among academics.