Dr. Frank Ellis: A man who spoke an unspeakable truth



7th March, 2006

Truth under attack again: "Students and lecturers are calling for a Leeds University don to be sacked after he said he supported a theory that black people were inferior to whites. In a row that has reignited the debate on the limits of freedom of speech, Frank Ellis, a lecturer in Russian and Slavonic studies, sparked anger after stating, in an interview with the university's student newspaper, that he was an 'unrepentant Powellite' who thought that the BNP was 'a bit too socialist' for his liking.

Ellis said he supported right-wing ideas such as the Bell Curve theory, which held that white people were more intelligent than black people. '[It] has demonstrated to me beyond any reasonable doubt there is a persistent gap in average black and white average intelligence.' Repatriation would get his support, he added, if it was done 'humanely'. Now students are preparing to picket his lectures, protest on campus and bombard the vice-chancellor with emails calling for Ellis to be removed from his post."

14th March, 2006

Both Chris Brand and I have recently put up elsewhere comments about the Frank Ellis case -- where Leeds university students in the UK are trying to get one of the teachers there sacked for "racism". See here (Scroll down to March 5 and March 13) and here and here and here.

18 March, 2006

The BBC has just given a reasonably fair account of the controversy over the "racist" views of Frank Ellis, a lecturer at Leeds University. I was amused at this sentence, though: "The Students' Union claim Dr Ellis has breeched requirements for staff to promote equality and want him sacked.. Is the BBC telling us that Dr Ellis has put trousers on certain requirements? I suspect that they meant to write "breached" but did not know how to spell it. One would have thought that the BBC had some fully literate proofreaders on staff, though. The BBC definitely "ain't what it used to be".

2 July

Frank Ellis Bows Out: One of the most hotly debated free speech issues in Britain this year has been the Frank Ellis affair. Ellis is a senior academic at an English university who recently declared publicly his acceptance of the common scientific finding that, on average, blacks have lower IQs than whites. His university suspended him from teaching as a result -- which violated academic freedom as well as free speech generally. But some settlement of the matter has now been reached. Richard Lynn advises by email that:

"The university of Leeds has allowed Frank Ellis to take early retirement with a modest but adequate pension. He asks me to thank you all for support in the press that likely contributed to encouraging the university to settle."

UPDATE:

For convenience I publish an excerpt from one of Chris Brand's posts -- an open letter to the university

Racial IQ research

IN CLEAR violation of the tradition of academic freedom, the vice-chancellor of Leeds University has suspended Dr Frank Ellis and instituted disciplinary proceedings against him for presenting the research, published in peer-reviewed academic journals and scholarly books which demonstrates that blacks have, on average, lower IQ scores and poorer academic achievement than do whites (Profile, last week). Much solid research also makes it more likely than not that there is a genetic contribution to this (and other) group IQ differences. Dr Ellis, then, has done no more than restate what has been said for half century by a number of eminent psychologists and anthropologists at leading universities.

These include the late John Baker (Oxford), Hans Eysenck (London), Philip Vernon (London), Richard Herrnstein (Harvard), and Henry Garrett (Columbia). A number of behavioural scientists, including ourselves, have reached the same conclusion. Others have put much of this on the record. Many more agree but have been reluctant to put this on the record for fear of the kind of intimidation that Dr Ellis is receiving from the University of Leeds.

There is an important and legitimate debate going on on intelligence and genetics, as there is on climate change and foreign policy. It is a sad day when British universities muzzle their academic staff and threaten them with dismissal for taking part in one of these controversies.

Professor Richard Lynn University of Ulster

Professor Philippe Rushton University of Western Ontario Canada

Professor Arthur Jensen University of California

Dr Charles Murray American Enterprise Institute Washington

Christopher Brand University of Edinburgh (1970-97)

Professor Helmuth Nyborg Aarhus University, Denmark

Professor Linda Gottfredson University of Delaware

Professor (Retired) Donald Templer Alliant International University (1978-2005), Fresno, California



2019 notes:

Ellis is a former SAS soldier, a notably no-nonsense group

Leeds university is part of the Russell Group of prestigious British universities

There is an extraordinary number of people with the surname "Ellis" on staff at Leeds university. Is it a local name?




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