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Prof Pilloried for race theory By Jeffrey Ulbright in Toronto Professor Philippe Rushton has been confined to lecturing into a video camera at Western Ontario University, where his theories on race and intelligence have made him a discomforting presence. Since the academic year began, students taking Dr Rushton's undergraduate course - Theories of Personality - have been obliged to pick up his 90-minute taped lectures, view each one alone and in seclusion, and telephone the psychology professor with any questions. Dr Rushton gained notoriety throughout North America by announcing that his research showed whites were more intelligent than blacks, Orientals were more intelligent than whites and the reasons were genetic and evolutionary. University officials say the special treatment of Dr Rushton's lectures is necessary to avoid disturbances, even violence, by some elements on the campus at London, Ontario. Dr Rushton responded in an interview: "In my view, it's an infringement of my academic freedom because I cannot discuss my views with the students and the students are not allowed to challenge me. The whole normal student-teacher relationship is gone." His performance evaluation also has been dropped from a consistent "very good" or "excellent" to "unsatisfactory." That could have been the first step in an administration attempt to sack him, but the university senate grievance committee has overturned the psychology department evaluation. "That means I get a pay increase," Dr Rushton said, "and most importantly, it removes any possibility of the university initiating dismissal proceedings against me on those grounds." Administration officials deny the university is trying to muzzle or harass Dr Rushton or interfere with his academic freedom. "No one involved thinks videotaping lectures is the best solution to the problem, but it's the only one we could come up with that we think is viable," said Dr Tom Collins, vice-president for academics. "A lot of people are critical of that situation." Dr Rushton, aged 46, has been at Western Ontario for 13 years and, until January 1989, laboured in relative obscurity. He was known in academia as co-author of the best-selling textbook Introduction to Psychology and won a Guggenheim research fellowship in 1988, but burst into public view only with a 20-minute speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Many scientists stormed out of the hall in San Fransisco when Dr Rushton set out his thoughts on genetic and evolutionary differences between the races. "My conclusions are totally unpopular," he admitted. "I conclude that, on 50 or 60 different measures, Orientals and blacks are at opposite ends of a continuum with whites, or caucasoids, falling consistently somewhere in the middle. These measures include intelligence, sexual behaviour, brain size, law abidingness, social organization skills, personality and speed of physical maturation." Dr Rushton also teaches a graduate course called Human Life History, covering the evolutionary basis of personality. Only two students are enrolled and he teaches it "more or less normally", he said. "We meet once a week in a location that is kept secret from everybody but me and the two students." For the twelve undergraduates in his theories of Personality course, he goes to a different classroom each week to tape a lecture. "Normally there would be up to 60 students in this class," he said. The students are allowed to telephone him during one hour a week to ask him questions or make appointments. An appeal of the ruling that he must teach by videotape is still before the university senate. "This is consuming an enormous amount of my time," Dr Rushton complained. Dr Collins, the university vice-president, said when asked whether the university was embarrassed by the professor: "In the university in general, some people are embarrassed by his work. The official stance is he has academic freedom and will be judged by his peers." Dr Rushton says racial difference is a fascinating question on which he has worked since 1981 and published since 1984, "even getting ratings of excellent from the university for my race work. It was when it began to be public that the axe began to come down on my head." Race was a taboo, he said, but that "only goes back to the Second World War as a result of Hitler's so-called racial policy." In the aftermath of the war, there had been a virtual self-imposed taboo on the scientific study of race differences from a genetic perspective. No known environmental cause explained the differences between races, said Dr Rushton. "Things like white racism and poverty just don't do it." "If I had said either that the differences do not exist and it's all due to white racism, then I would not have run into trouble. But once you suggest genetics or evolution in the context of race, you're in for trouble, and I knew I would be." Dr Rushton says he does not like being unpopular and that he wants to make a contribution to science and be rewarded with approval for doing so. "I do not like to have my views totally unpopular as they are," he said, "but I do believe I'm right. I feel that this is something that is going to be recognized." Typed in by Mark Norman, for The Pinnacle Club BBS Library.