Yes. I have a problem with that article. It is horribly biased. Argue that it is biased in the "correct" (left) direction.... but it's still biased. It's telling us that it's up to some elite public institutions to decide on our behalf what we should be exposed to because most of us aren't the objective paragons of pure logic that they are. Poppycock.
The article holds up Murray's claims about IQ as an example of opinions the public should be sheltered from. But in the "debunking" article they link, we find this:
We believe there is a fairly wide consensus among behavioral scientists in favor of our views, but there is undeniably a range of opinions in the scientific community. Some well-informed scientists hold views closer to Murray’s than to ours. And there are others who challenge views that we accept about the utility of the general concepts of intelligence and heritability.
So. To get this straight. This is free speech about a controversial scientific concept about which there is no consensus, with many facts that they concede in the article about which he is 100% correct, but maybe not quite exactly describing it the same way they would and making some undue inferences ... and those inferences themselves are in dispute... not resolved. YET, "we" know that what this guy is saying is wrong (according to us) and he should be fired and never allowed to talk at a university again? My fucking head hurts.
Note: I don't care if he's right or wrong at this point. Just the flimsy example being shown here as clear-cut settled and clearly justifying censure which is ... anything but, and revolves around a real scientific debate which we supposedly need to silence. Hurting again....
I'm sorry, I remain a free speech absolutist. The point is that not everyone in the public eye is a rational actor being 100% objective. The point is that in the long run it allows rational, critical, unpopular voices to speak to truth in spite of popular opinion or "settled fact". It should exist exactly because intellectual elites are often completely and utterly WRONG. Has history taught us absolutely nothing?
"Yeah but, Boogie, crazies end up on TV!" Yes, they do, because nothing is perfect. I probably prefer distributed self-correcting imperfection to imposed tyrannical imperfection.
"Monkey killing monkey killing monkey over pieces of the ground, Silly monkeys, give them thumbs, they make a club and beat their brother down. How they survive, so misguided, is a mystery. Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here" - Tool