(I hesitate to call Martin Peretz's New Republic "liberal" but I guess
his take on Murray was enough to smear all liberals at the time.)
The magazine’s myopia on racial issues was never more apparent than in
Peretz’s and editor Andrew Sullivan’s decision in 1994 to excerpt The
Bell Curve, a foray into scientific racism in which the authors, Charles
Murray and Richard Herrnstein, asserted that differences in IQ among
blacks and whites were largely genetic and almost impossible to
significantly change. The book had not been peer-reviewed, nor were
galleys sent to the relevant scientific journals. As The Wall Street
Journal reported, The Bell Curve was “swept forward by a strategy that
provided book galleys to likely supporters while withholding them from
likely critics.”
Staff members at The New Republic vehemently opposed running the
excerpt, but Sullivan and Peretz had the final word. A compromise was
reached: The excerpt would run along with critiques written by The New
Republic contributors, such as Mickey Kaus and John Judis. While the
critiques made good points, only one was written by a scientist with the
background needed to evaluate the book’s claims. “I’m not a scientist,”
literary editor Leon Wieseltier wrote in his contribution. “I know
nothing about psychometrics.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/120884/new-republics-legacy-race
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