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Re: what's admissable discussion?
Daniel P. Tompkins (pericles@ASTRO.OCIS.TEMPLE.EDU)
Wed, 23 Nov 1994 22:09:43 -0500
Folks might want to check out Stephen J. Gould's attack on *Bell Curve*
in this weeks's New Yorker.
It's perhaps worth remembering that Boas labored alone during much of his
fight against Nazi eugenics: the AAA seemed be believe it should not
make public statements (this was ca. 1937) because the US was not then at
odds with Germany. Sad story, perhaps one that justifies Leif's
posting--as if it needed it.
Only a few other major anthropologists would
work with Boas, but he was assisted, I'm glad to say, by a classicist. All
this is detailed in a book Anthro-folkks probably know, Elazar Barkan's
Decline of Scientific Racism (Cambridge UP). The classicist is
identified as M.I. Finkelstein, later to become a faculty member at
Rutgers, then let go for refusing to "name names" etc. in the '50s and
surface and then be knighted in England,f where he numbered Owen
Lattimore among his friends. But his name by then was M. I. Finley.
Dan Tompkins
Dept. of Greek, Hebrew and Roman Classics
Temple Univ.
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