To the Editor:
Your call for responses to M. Dzhali Maier’s ’17 Oct. 5 column “The white privilege of cows,” and your own editorial comment, have — rightly — focused on the issues of racism and free speech. First, I would like to say that Maier’s essay was “clear,” contrary to your opinion, and certainly doesn’t warrant rejection on that basis. Maier basically offers a theory of early development based on the domestication of animals. Examining the conjecture, Maier sees a relationship between the geographical location of domestication and phenotypical characteristics of homo sapiens. Connecting such characteristics to the notion of “race” has been a fruitless endeavor. To be sure, over the centuries attempts have been made to do so, but how these characteristics arose, as Maier points out, depended on the “luck” of adaptation during migration and isolation. We have no evidence that race (however badly defined) is a causal factor in explaining cultural and social variation. To the contrary, comparative data offer examples such as the hypothesis that domestication of animals was independently invented in Africa that void racist interpretations.
Second, I wish to applaud the Oct. 15 op-ed from Professors Ross Cheit, David Josephson, Glenn Loury, Kenneth Miller ’70 P’02 and Luther Spoehr. Their comparison of difference between the administrations of Brown and Wesleyan University, however, does not mention the appalling similarity between the administration’s response and that of other universities. To give just one example, at Northwestern University, Professor Alice Dreger resigned her position in protest to the administration’s attempt to censor an essay that was to be published in a scientific journal. If the universities in this country don’t step up to their role as proponents of free speech and critical thought, who will?
Finally, I hope the Faculty Executive Committee, which I once chaired, will voice its condemnation of the way President Christina Paxson P’19 and other administrators responded to this issue.
Philip Leis, professor emeritus of anthropology
