WILLIAMSTOWN — The president of Williams College has ordered the cancellation of a student-organized speaking engagement by an author characterized by many as a white supremacist.
In a letter to the college community on Thursday, Adam Falk said the views espoused in the writings of John Derbyshire have no place in the school’s discourse.
“We have said we wouldn’t cancel speakers or prevent the expression of views except in the most extreme circumstances,” Falk wrote. “In other words: There’s a line somewhere, but in our history of hosting events and speeches of all kinds, we hadn’t yet found it. We’ve found the line.
“Derbyshire, in my opinion, is on the other side of it,” he wrote. “Many of his expressions clearly constitute hate speech, and we will not promote such speech on this campus or in our community.”
Derbyshire is a former columnist for National Review magazine whose writings have been condemned by some as racist.
The move raised protests from the leader of the student group, Uncomfortable Learning, which had arranged for the appearance scheduled for Monday night.
In an interview with The Eagle, Derbyshire said he reacted to the cancellation with “a shrug.”
“The colleges today are dreadful,” he said. “Nothing surprises me anymore. Hence the shrug.”
He characterized Falk’s statement as full of “empty phrases.”
Here is an excerpt of the column that got John Derbyshire fired from National Review in April of 2012:
There is much talk about “the talk.”
“Sean O’Reilly was 16 when his mother gave him the talk that most black parents give their teenage sons,” Denisa R. Superville of the Hackensack (NJ) Record tells us. Meanwhile, down in Atlanta: “Her sons were 12 and 8 when Marlyn Tillman realized it was time for her to have the talk,” Gracie Bonds Staples writes in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Leonard Greene talks about the talk in the New York Post. Someone bylined as KJ Dell’Antonia talks about the talk in The New York Times. Darryl Owens talks about the talk in the Orlando Sentinel.
Yes, talk about the talk is all over.
There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too. My own kids, now 19 and 16, have had it in bits and pieces as subtopics have arisen. If I were to assemble it into a single talk, it would look something like the following.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
(1) Among your fellow citizens are forty million who identify as black, and whom I shall refer to as black. The cumbersome (and MLK-noncompliant) term “African-American” seems to be in decline, thank goodness. “Colored” and “Negro” are archaisms. What you must call “the ‘N’ word” is used freely among blacks but is taboo to nonblacks.
“There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too.”(2) American blacks are descended from West African populations, with some white and aboriginal-American admixture. The overall average of non-African admixture is 20-25 percent. The admixture distribution is nonlinear, though: “It seems that around 10 percent of the African American population is more than half European in ancestry.” (Same link.)
(3) Your own ancestry is mixed north-European and northeast-Asian, but blacks will take you to be white.
(4) The default principle in everyday personal encounters is, that as a fellow citizen, with the same rights and obligations as yourself, any individual black is entitled to the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen. That is basic good manners and good citizenship. In some unusual circumstances, however—e.g., paragraph (10h) below—this default principle should be overridden by considerations of personal safety.
(5) As with any population of such a size, there is great variation among blacks in every human trait (except, obviously, the trait of identifying oneself as black). They come fat, thin, tall, short, dumb, smart, introverted, extroverted, honest, crooked, athletic, sedentary, fastidious, sloppy, amiable, and obnoxious. There are black geniuses and black morons. There are black saints and black psychopaths. In a population of forty million, you will find almost any human type. Only at the far, far extremes of certain traits are there absences. There are, for example, no black Fields Medal winners. While this is civilizationally consequential, it will not likely ever be important to you personally. Most people live and die without ever meeting (or wishing to meet) a Fields Medal winner.
(6) As you go through life, however, you will experience an ever larger number of encounters with black Americans. Assuming your encounters are random—for example, not restricted only to black convicted murderers or to black investment bankers—the Law of Large Numbers will inevitably kick in. You will observe that the means—the averages—of many traits are very different for black and white Americans, as has been confirmed by methodical inquiries in the human sciences.
(7) Of most importance to your personal safety are the very different means for antisocial behavior, which you will see reflected in, for instance, school disciplinary measures, political corruption, and criminal convictions.
(8) These differences are magnified by the hostility many blacks feel toward whites. Thus, while black-on-black behavior is more antisocial in the average than is white-on-white behavior, average black-on-white behavior is a degree more antisocial yet.
(9) A small cohort of blacks—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. A much larger cohort of blacks—around half—will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that whites have it coming.
(10) Thus, while always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals, on the many occasions where you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences, use statistical common sense:
(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.
(10b) Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.
(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).
(10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.
(10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.
(10f) Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.
(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.
(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.
(10i) If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.
(11) The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; forty percent of blacks have IQs that low. Only one black in six is more intelligent than the average white; five whites out of six are more intelligent than the average black. These differences show in every test of general cognitive ability that anyone, of any race or nationality, has yet been able to devise. They are reflected in countless everyday situations. “Life is an IQ test.”
* From the way the VDARE post was written, it sounds like Derb was informed of the cancellation by being sent a link to a public notice by a third party. Did Falk even bother contacting him? I wonder. I suspect not–what a jerk!!
In the old days, they used to let mobs try to intimidate people (viz, John O’Sullivan at Yale). I think they have lost courage in their positions now. Falk is, I believe, a physicist, so should be facile enough with numbers and research to know what’s up. A cancellation is an implicit admission not that Derb has unhinged views that can be easily countered but that anyone like him is potentially going to wake students up to the fact that reality goes against the narrative.
* Hate speech? He’s never called for violence. I’ve never seen him use a slur. This would outrage me if anything outraged me anymore.
* * In the Free Speech era (ca. 1960-1970) colleges invited George Lincoln Rockwell (the head of the American Nazi Party) to give speeches so they could see what all the fuss was about.
It was a more confident and inquiring culture back then.
* Yes, back then they were confident George Lincoln Rockwell would sound foolish to the students, so no harm done. Today’s college administrators are afraid John Derbyshire would make a great deal of sense to their students, and he would. That’s the problem.
