Another reason lefties decided to stomp on Miss Grace is that they are incredibly status conscious, and think they are smarter than conservatives, and especially “racists.”
Life has not been easy for dissidents from blank-slate orthodoxy at Harvard. In 2005, then Harvard President Larry Summers made the mistake of suggesting that biological reasons may explain why women do not excel at science. The faculty gave him a no-confidence vote and he resigned.
Harvard has been closed-minded for decades. In 1971, long before he touched on race, Richard Herrnstein published an article in Atlantic Monthly entitled “IQ,” arguing that the concept was meaningful and intelligence was heritable. Leftists leafleted the campus with flyers that said “Fight Harvard Prof’s Fascist Lies,” and plastered Harvard Square with his picture and the caption, “Wanted for Racism.” He received death threats and had to cancel lectures.
Professor E.O. Wilson faced similar attacks after he published his seminal book, Sociobiology. His colleagues Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin’s “Science for the People” held teach-ins, and radicals crashed his lectures. In 1978, a leftist poured a pitcher of water over him and yelled “Wilson, you’re all wet” when he gave a talk at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Now, the same anti-science, anti-free speech fanatics have a new target: Harvard Law student Stephanie Grace. Miss Grace is the classic overachieving law student. She graduated with honors from Princeton and went straight to Harvard Law, where she made Law Review. When she graduates at the end of this month, she is supposed to clerk for the Chief Justice of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Alex Kozinski, the best kind of job you can get short of a Supreme Court clerkship.
While Professors Wilson and Herrnstein were attacked for published research, Miss Grace’s sins were limited to a one private e-mail. In November 2009, she had a heated conversation with two friends about affirmative action. She apparently didn’t mention racial differences, but later clarified her views by e-mail: