Opinion on him was divided, as it would be on any animal with the rib-cage of a hippo and the snout of a badger.… Read the rest

Another call for ‘demotic science’ from the Economic and Social Research Council.… Read the rest

‘…no audience is easier to beguile than one that is smugly confident of its own sophistication.’… Read the rest

The Guardian offers a page of Orwell links.… Read the rest

The blank slate became Official Theory, enforced by “accusation, intimidation, name-calling and moralising intellectual questions that are questions of fact”. … Read the rest

What is a lost tribe anyway? From Marie Antoinette to Imelda Marcos, what are the uses of ‘simple people’? Where does the World’s Fair come in?… Read the rest

Surprise, surprise, it’s not always good to talk.… Read the rest

Philip Foner helped himself to students’ work, and many of them fumed but kept quiet about it.… Read the rest

And interesting issues are raised – is objectivity possible? If not, why write history at all? Why not just pledge allegiance to something?… Read the rest

Does enlightenment summon its own enemies into being?… Read the rest

The US Supreme Court narrowly upholds University of Michigan’s use of race in admissions, rejects point system.… Read the rest

Michigan’s law school can continue to consider race; undergraduate programme is unconstitutional.… Read the rest

It’s become hip to regress into childhood.… Read the rest

‘…the outlandish claims that were frequently made for Potter made you wonder whether some of these people had ever read anything else.’… Read the rest

The Dini case, a conspicuous ‘debate’ in Tucson, a new ‘Special Counsel for Religious Discrimination’ in Ashcroft’s Justice Department.… Read the rest

Under God, one man one vote, Muslim child – language does shape our consciousness.… Read the rest

Race is a fiction, therefore everyone must learn to be completely obsessed by it. Eh?… Read the rest

Matt Ridley on the way genes and experience interact.… Read the rest

A mash note to Alan Sokal in the Guardian.… Read the rest

Whether the arts should be judged on aesthetic grounds, or on ethnic representation.… Read the rest