Intimidation

SCAPEGOATING works. It really isn't difficult to silence men and to remove their ideas and theories from public consideration. It's much easier to do this by attributing false motives to individuals, by inventing thoughts that supposedly pass through their minds, by putting words in their mouths, and then by persecuting them for these imagined wrongs. We don't have to look over very great distances or long periods of time to see how effectively this can be done--some of the brightest men in a generation of China-watchers and scholars were forced into silence for twenty years because of their wrong" beliefs.

Some of the many critics of Professor Richard Herrnstein's article on I.Q." in the September Atlantic Monthly seems to be trying not only to discredit his theories on the heritability of intelligence, but also to silence the man himself--through these kinds of tactics, and through personal intimidation.

When a group of students occupied the Eliot House JCR where Professor Herrnstein was to speak two weeks ago, a representative of the group, refusing to move, simply stated that he did not want to speak with Herrnstein--and Herrnstein was forced to speak in another room. Reports of a plan by the University Action Group of Princeton to bar Herrnstein from leaving a room where he was to speak on "The Visual World of the Pigeon"--unless he agreed to answer questions on his I.Q. article--caused Herrnstein to cancel the lecture.

The clearest example of what seems to be intimidation came last Monday, when a group of members of SDS and the University Action Group burst in on Herrnstein at the end of a lecture, pursued him with questions to William James Hall, and followed him to the sixth floor. The incident was so tense that one SDS member and Herrnstein scuffled briefly.

Pursuing a man along the street en masse is not a very good way to get him to answer questions about the implications of his psychological and social theories, but it seems an effective means of frightening a man who has in recent weeks already been subjected to intimidation in less overt ways. And such incidents will naturally shift concern from the issues of Professor Herrnstein's ideas to his personal well-being.

WE CONTINUE to question the reasoning behind Professor Herrnstein's article on I.Q. and to question his discretion in publishing the article as he did when the extension and misapplication of his theories is of such crucial importance. We continue to commend the members of SDS and the University Action Group and all others who have helped to raise the issues which are irrevocably bound up with the acceptance or the rejection of Professor Herrnstein's theories. We continue to urge critical appraisal of Professor Herrnstein's article, as well as the public challenging of ideas which may lead to the furthering of an unjust social structure. And just as strongly, we condemn those people who will cruelly extend their opposition to a man's ideas into intimidation of the man himself.