Given such a shoddy excuse for scholarship, it is understandable that this incompetent amateur shrinks from publication in professional journals and refuses "ever again" to discuss his theory in public. Herrnstein has repeatedly denied social policy implications drawn from his description of a "less endowed" lower class. He reasserts in Commentary that any criticism is a misrepresentation: "Not many of my critics seemed to have read it ['IQ']. Perhaps not many people at all read it; it was, after all, rather long and tough going in spots. There seemed, in fact, to be a pattern: Those who gave clear signs of having read it rarely got excited, while those who got excited usually had not read it." Herrnstein denied several points about "IQ": that his emphasis on genetics had any racial implications; that his "meritocracy" referred to present society or his "lower class" to today's poor.

In Commentary he is more straightforward. On race: "We do not know why blacks bunch toward the lower end of the social scale, or, for that matter, why Jews bunch toward the top." But even acknowledging the complications of "nongenetic" factors, Herrnstein "calls attention" to the "genetic spine running through the social class continuum, giving it a rigidity that few social theorists, let alone ordinary laymen, recognize."

He describes not an abstract society of the future, but conditions here and now. He claims it is "a well-established fact that the upper and lower classes differ in psychological makeup, for example in their measured intelligence," and that "technology...may be...wiping out those intellectually simple jobs that used to occupy the less-endowed portion of the population." This says that unemployment can be explained by the innate inability of the poor to master new jobs!

In Commentary, he openly advocates policy: "Many of the means and ends of contemporary social policy fail to take into account these biological constraints, and they may consequently misfire. Equalizing educational opportunity may have the unexpected and unwelcome effect of emphasizing the inborn intellectual differences among people. It may instead be better to diversify education, providing multiple pathways instead of just one."

Although Herrnstein's scientific justification and syllogism have been seriously questioned, he gives no new evidence nor does he refute his critics. Instead, he slanders them: "I suspected that many liberal social scientists, wedded to environmantalism, were not keen for open exchange in any event..." Quite arrogant, since he has refused public debate on the question and has yet to respond to criticism of his data.

The SDS action last year was distortion and threat, says Herrnstein. This is not true. The assertion that critics did not read "IQ" is false. SDS sold over 2000 copies on campus and encouraged people to read it. He claims that SDS created an atmosphere of intimidation in Soc Sci 15. Herrnstein's refusal after the first lecture to allow any questions except those of clarification in fact prevented open discussion. Finally, Herrnstein says the campaign was the effort of ten or twelve who succeeded in convicing others of their distortion. Hundreds across the country signed statements deploring his racism or his tactics, and large groups at Harvard condemned his conclusions in The Crimson.

Herrnstein's advocacy of social policy based on the false assumption of genetically determined social classes comes at a time of severe government cutbacks in education, medical care, welfare and housing. Cuts are justified on the racist grounds that those receiving aid are culturally or genetically unable to benefit. One Boston school committee member, for example, pointed to low reading scores of black children to justify oppostion to busing, and the terrible school conditions.

There are striking parallels in history to this combination of oppressive policy and "science" to back it up. Several of Herrnstein's sources, Francis Galton and Lewis Terman, were in the 1920s eugenics movement, which led to 30 states passing laws against interracial marriage and for sterilization of 10,000 of the "defective" in 24 states. Herrnstein is aware of the inadequacy of his data and of the seriousness of the social policy he advocates. By publishing again in a popular news magazine, providing no new evidence to prove his case, and by calling for social policy whose application could only be racist, Herrnstein is acting as a political organizer, not a scholar. SDS feels he should be responded to as such.

Beth Kilbreth is a member of SDS and lives in Cambridge.