Was the renowned Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson wrongly convicted of racism and promoting race science in the court of public opinion? Yes, says his long-time collaborator and world-class scientist Bert Hölldobler.
Correspondence exchanged between the late Harvard evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson and the Canadian psychologist John Philippe Rushton in the 1980s was recently revealed in papers Wilson had donated to the Library of Congress.
Selected portions of these letters were quoted in essays written by Stacy Farina and Mathew Gibbons…. Both essays, although different in perspective and tone, highlight the support Wilson offered to Rushton when he was under attack by academic opponents of Rushton who did not agree with his claims concerning innate cognitive and behavioral differences between “races” in the US American population (along with some of Rushton’s far-reaching idiosyncratic conclusions).
Rushton was under investigation by his university for serious misconduct charges that may have threatened his position and asked Ed (among many others), who he knew was once also attacked for his writings, to help him.
Given Wilson’s numerous articles, books, lectures and public statements, which contain nothing even remotely supportive of racism, it seems unfair to zero in on this limited correspondence with a single colleague to be waved like a red flag to tarnish a scholar’s reputation…. Such self-righteous vigilantism is highly unjust and distortive.
