It’s days like today that I despair for the Academy, for the extreme nurturists hold such sway and the race, gender & culture warriors brook no mention of the verbotten that the life of the academic has been circumscribed to offering forth the equivalent of intellectual pablum for fear of offending the sensitive flowers amongst us.
Today we learn that economist Hans Hermann-Hoppe is in hot water for observing that homosexuals, as a group, have discernable differences in their economic behavior, when compared to married couples with children.
The subject of the lecture was economic planning for the future. Hoppe said he gave several examples to the class of about 30 upper-level undergraduate students on groups who tend to plan for the future and groups who do not.
Very young and very old people, for example, tend not to plan for the future, he said. Couples with children tend to plan more than couples without.
As in all social sciences, he said, he was speaking in generalities.
Another example he gave the class was that homosexuals tend to plan less for the future than heterosexuals.
Reasons for the phenomenon include the fact that homosexuals tend not to have children, he said. They also tend to live riskier lifestyles than heterosexuals, Hoppe said.
He said there is a belief among some economists that one of the 20th century’s most influential economists, John Maynard Keynes, was influenced in his beliefs by his homosexuality. Keynes espoused a “spend it now” philosophy to keep an economy strong, much as President Bush did after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Hoppe said the portion of the lecture on homosexuals lasted perhaps 90 seconds, while the entire lecture took up his 75-minute class.
There were no questions or any discussion from the students about the homosexual comments, he said.
“I have given lectures like this for 18 years,” said Hoppe, a native of Germany who joined UNLV’s faculty in 1986. “I have given this lecture all over the world and never had any complaints about it.”
But within days of the lecture, he was notified by school officials that a student had lodged an informal complaint. The student said Hoppe’s comments offended him.
A series of formal hearings ensued.
Hoppe said that, at the request of university officials, he clarified in his next class that he was speaking in generalities only and did not mean to offend anyone.
As an example of what he meant, he offered this: Italians tend to eat more spaghetti than Germans, and Germans tend to eat more sauerkraut than Italians. It is not universally true, he said, but it is generally true.
The student then filed a formal complaint, Hoppe said, alleging that Hoppe did not take the complaint seriously.
He said university officials first said they would issue him a letter of reprimand and dock him a week’s pay.
That option was rejected by Hoppe’s dean and by the university provost, Hoppe said.
More hearings ensued, he said. In the end, the university gave him until Friday to accept its latest offer of punishment: It would issue him a letter of reprimand and he would give up his next pay increase.
Hoppe, a tenured full professor, contacted the ACLU on the recommendation of an attorney friend of his. Hoppe is now their client.
“I felt like I was the victim,” he said, “not the student.”
I thought we celebrated diversity in university life? Surely, homosexuality is part of the spectrum of lifestyle diversity so why wouldn’t it be part of the economic diversity that follows from different life choices and the circumstances that surround such choices? If homosexuality has biological roots why then shouldn’t the biology affect behavior?
Human behavioral genetics can be broadly defined as the attempt to characterize and define the genetic or hereditary basis for human behavior. Examination of the history of these scientific enterprises reveals episodes of controversy, and an apparent distinction between scientific and social acceptance of the genetic nature of such complex behaviors. This essay will review the history and methodology of behavioral genetics research, including a more detailed look at case histories involving behavioral genetic research for aggressive behavior and alcoholism. It includes a discussion of the scientific versus social qualities of the acceptance of behavioral genetics research, as well as the development of a general model for scientific acceptance involving the researchers, the scientific literature, the scientific peer group, the mainstream media, and the public at large. From this model follows a discussion of the means and complications by which behavioral genetics research may be accepted by society, and an analysis of how future studies might be conducted.
One only need look at the new field of behavioral finance/economics to see efforts underway to study the biological roots of economic decisionmaking. Here is one of our posts on behavioral economics.
Similarly, behavioral economics is dedicated to investigating the limitations of homo economicus. Experiments have so far revealed a general trend: humans use heuristics to figure out sub-optimal solutions rather than running a full optimization calculation in their head. Such solutions might have been good in prehistoric environments, but can often be disastrously bad in the modern world. In other words, human economic behavior is limited by human biology.
The failure to incorporate biological and evolutionary thinking is, in my mind, a much more systematic and widespread failure in economics than the failure to use mathematics. The guys who can’t do math are rightfully mocked; but the guys (especially in micro) who refuse to do laboratory experiments with experimental subjects should get a share of derision as well. One cannot hope to understand the behavior of millions of humans in a non-laboratory setting if one cannot even predict their response to idealized scenarios in a laboratory setting.
Or this post on the behaviors associated with gender which investigated whether women and men have different attitudes to competing.
What this all boils down to is to what extent biology affects behavior. The wilting flowers would have us believe that homosexuality is determined by biology but that behavior is immune to biological influence. While there are commenters who dispute the value of propositional logic it’s hard to explain away that conclusion that biology can influence your sexual preferences and not influence how you live your life, how you value the present compared to the future, and the economic trade-offs one is willing to entertain to maximize utility.
The extreme nurturist position holds such sway that even internal logical contradictions like above can be glossed over in order to maintain the primacy of the principles of identity validation and the blank slate. Biological explanations are not to be offered for they are too unsettlling. One need only look at the debate that greeted the publication of Richard Posner’s Sex and Reason.
An even more troubling aspect to the Hoppe affair is the severe response of the administration to Hoppe’s 90 second reference. One could almost excuse the young student who made the complaint for with youth comes ideological fervor and a desire to cast off traditional forms in favor of reform. If such a student starts with a Blank Slate orientation, and how could they not after being indoctrinated in such for their whole lives, then of course, the assumption of b
iological causation of behavior would be an attack on their world view, and not being fully inculcated in the values of open discourse, they would of course seek to suppress such ideas for what they see as the greater good. But what excuse can be offered by the administration who should, and most likely do, know better. Sheer cowardice and hypocrisy are my immediate conclusions.
Addendum: David Beito is asking for your help in protesting the attack on Hoppe.
Is it really a surprise that students who are subjected to a pedagogy of 1 + 1 = feelings and being immersed in an environment of social promotion for fear of harming their self-esteem will protest when confronted with ideas they find unsettling. We need only look to Dr. Nancy Hopkins near fainting spell to see what the future holds for academia if this philosophy of education triumphs.
Posted by TangoMan at 01:34 PM