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"I don't apologize for any of my writing," says Jason Richwine, whose 2009 Harvard University Ph.D. dissertation has received much scrutiny over the last 10 days. The dissertation argues that there will be a long-term gap in the IQs of Latino immigrants and their offspring, and critics at Harvard and elsewhere said that he lacked evidence to back his theory, and was providing intellectual support for racist ideas. Richwine was the author of a Heritage Foundation report on immigration, and critics of the report pointed to the dissertation to raise questions about why anyone was listening to Richwine and whether he deserved a Harvard Ph.D. On Monday, National Review published an essay by Richwine reflecting on the controversy. He said he regretted that the controversy over the dissertation took attention away from the Heritage report.
As for the dissertation, he defends it. "I realize that IQ selection rubs some people the wrong way, but it can hardly be called 'extremist.' Canada and Australia intentionally favor highly educated immigrants. My proposal is based on the same principle they use (pick skilled immigrants), but it offers a much better chance for disadvantaged people to be selected. If the dissertation were taken seriously, its real contribution would be to open a forthright debate about the assimilation challenge posed by the post-1965 immigration wave. Because regardless of what one believes IQ scores really measure, or what determines them, they are undeniably predictive of a wide variety of socioeconomic outcomes that people care about."
Numerous letters and petition are circulating that are critical of Richwine. One -- called Scholars Against Scientific Racism -- says: "We are a group of 1000 scholars (and counting) opposed to scientific racism -- the use of science or social science to argue that a racialized group is inferior. Jason Richwine’s dissertation is an example of scientific racism and this work has no place in twenty-first century academia."
