Bloody stupid SU…
According to radio5 this morning, Leeds university SU are attempting to get a lecturer sacked as he has repeatedly stated his view that view that black people have a lower average IQ than white people and has refused to withdraw the statement.
I listened to this guy on radio5 and he sounded pretty convinced that the research that he has studied supports his view. I also listened to several people who phoned in to argue against him - people who just seemed to want to insist that he was a racist and should therefore be sacked. They refused to discuss his research with anyone and just insisted that he was wrong. He repeatedly stated that he has never, and would never, consider treating any student differently depending on colour or race. Leeds uni themselves have issued a statement saying much the same thing.
He claims to have years of research to support his views. Now, I don’t know if what he claims is true or not (and to be honest, I don’t care) but calling for him to be sacked is something that I find much much more offensive. Sure, I can see how his views upset some people but he was at pains to stress how he wasn’t calling non white people thick or stupid. He was also happy to discuss this and his research (not that most of the callers were willing to discuss anything with him - most just seemed to want to shout). How can a student union demand that an academic is sacked due to a view that the person has expressed?? Surely a more effective approach would be to counter his arguements with other evidence - argue the point. discuss it. Hell, if he is wrong then *prove* it. You never know, they might even learn something. This seems to be PC brigade gone mad. How many great academics of the past would have been sacked when they suggested something controversial? The earth isn’t flat?? Sack him!
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:22 pm
[...] I noticed this afternoon that Leeds University have suspended Dr Frank Ellis. I blogged about my opinions on this before and can’t help but wonder if the same would have happened if he had claimed that black students *on average* returned *higher* IQ results. Maybe there is more to this story than is public at the moment - Leeds do currently stress that …the suspension was not itself a penalty but said it had been deemed appropriate given “the seriousness of the issues” [...]