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My book defending free speech has been pulled

By James Flynn - posted Monday, 30 September 2019


Finally, I criticize the failure of universities to provide their students with the critical intelligence they need to be autonomous human beings and good citizens, despite the fact that they all state this as their chief objective.

Is this book worth reading?

Well, it will not be read unless it is published. To discuss a point made in Emerald's letter, every reference to a person is documented by citations of published material or material in the public domain. At present, I can only cite the testimony of distinguished scholars. Some of the following were referees who sent their opinions to Emerald and some read it to give me an informal assessment.

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This book is an education in itself…It is a brilliant and courageous book.
-Thomas Bouchard

That's shocking [the rejection] even by the standards of contemporary restrictions on free speech, and especially ironic given the subject of your book.
-
Steven Pinker

It is ironic that a book critical of restrictions on free speech should itself be rejected by a publisher who is worried about the book falling afoul of UK laws on incitement to racial hatred. In fact this is doubly ironic, given that the book is by Jim Flynn, after whom the "Flynn effect" is named, because the Flynn effect is all about the difference that culture and environment - rather than genes - makes to IQ scores. The draft I have seen has the potential to be an important and controversial work that will be very widely discussed.
-
Peter Singer

I must admit I was shocked. Well, anyway, they have given you material for another chapter!
-
John C. Loehlin

This is in-[expletive]-credible…Your book should not be considered even close to the fringes of politically correct discourse. If publishers are scared of your book, the censorship problem is a few orders of magnitude worse than I realized.
-
Charles Murray

Homily

Discussing why free speech should extend to questions of race and gender necessarily involves presenting views (such as those of Jensen, Murray, and Lynn), if only for purposes of rebuttal, which upset those who believe that racial and sexual equality is self-evident. If upsetting students or staff or the public is a reason for banning speech, all such discussion is at an end. I end the book by quoting from George Orwell's original preface to Animal Farm, which was itself rejected by Faber and Faber for being too critical of Stalin: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

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This article was first published in Quillette.



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About the Author

James R Flynn is an intelligence researcher who gave his name to the Flynn Effect. He is Emeritus Professor of Political Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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