We’ve got a problem brewing here in idyllic Morris, Minnesota: one of our faculty, Dan Demetriou, has made racist comments that became widely known among everyone here, and are now getting aired on Inside Higher Ed.
In what seems like the latest installment of the academe edition of the post-Trump culture wars, students and faculty members at the University of Minnesota at Morris are planning a teach-in Monday, following a professor’s harsh criticism of immigrants and refugees on social media. The professor says he wrote about an issue of concern on a private Facebook page and is being punished for being out of step with the politics of his colleagues.
“Illegal immigrants lower the confidence in the rule of law and add people and workers and students we don’t need,” Dan Demetriou, associate professor of philosophy, recently wrote on Facebook, according to screenshots that have been made public. “They on average have IQs lower than natives and low skills. They are harmful to an economy about to automate, especially when it is a welfare state.”
Refugees, meanwhile, are “way worse,” Demetriou wrote, “as most adhere to a religious-political cult with repulsive values at war with the West from its inception. No country who has taken the current crop of refugees has made it work.”
He isn’t being “punished” in any way, as far as I can tell. He is being criticized in a far more civil way than he criticized a significant fraction of our student body. He’s currently on sabbatical in Sweden (!), which sounds like a pretty sweet ‘punishment’ to me, especially since next year was supposed to be my sabbatical year, and I’ve been asked to delay it.
He is no claiming that he is being persecuted by left-wing “feelings”.
Maybe you can imagine being me, hearing most of my colleagues advocate for policies that, as far as I can tell, are failing spectacularly overseas and in many communities at home. No one much cares for how their expressions may discourage, alienate, frustrate or sadden someone who, like me, sincerely believes that his children — our children — will be put in grave risk by leftist immigration policies. Nor should they care, because my feelings don’t determine facts. That someone is upset by a claim is wholly irrelevant to its truth.
Facts matter. What he doesn’t seem to appreciate is how badly out of alignment with the truth his original comments are. He’s being criticized, not because of his political alignment, but because he is wrong.
We teach young people who are immigrants, or children of immigrants, and several of our faculty are immigrants. They are just as intelligent as our white students whose families have been here for several generations. It’s also jarring to see a faculty member from a campus with a significant enrollment of Indian students to use the term “natives” — I don’t think he’s comparing our Somali students to our Lakota students. He’s got a peculiarly privileged understanding of “native”.
IQ is particularly problematic in this context. IQ scores were invented as a rationale for immigration quotas — they are inherently biased. To accuse someone who speaks a couple of languages, who had the ambition and strength to escaped an oppressive situation, and who is now working hard to establish themselves as citizens of a new country, of being unintelligent is simply absurd. People who can rise up out of such difficult circumstances should be welcomed and recognized for the contributions they can make. It’s easy to have the leisure to study and be comfortable in the conventions of the culture you’ve been brought up in, to do well on an IQ test; it’s remarkable when you’ve been on the run from tyrants who want to kill you, or from a rain of American-made bombs, that you can then adapt and thrive to new opportunities.
Of course, that’s what humans do.
I’d like to know where Dan thinks the cutoff for percentage of refugees enrolled makes for a bad school. Is UMM such a school? We tend to praise our university for its diversity relative to other Minnesota colleges (while also regretting that it isn’t higher). Does he think our “foreign” students degrade the quality of the education offered here?
As for failing to make absorption of refugees work in all countries…he’s in Sweden. Sweden is in the news because of similarly ignorant comments made by our president. There’s a lot of information available on immigrants to Sweden. It wrecks his claims.
In the past decade, there’s been a spike in immigration to Sweden. In 1990, 9.2 percent of Sweden’s population was foreign-born. That figure was 11.3 percent in 2000, and 15.4 percent in 2012.
Immigrant rates have grown even further in recent years, owing in large part to the global refugee crisis. In 2014, Sweden admitted more asylum seekers, per capita, than any other country on Earth. Many Swedish immigrants today hail from war-torn Muslim-majority countries like Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Some people assumed this would produce a major uptick in the rates of violent crime in Sweden. Historically, immigrants to Sweden do commit crimes at higher rates than the native-born, though children of immigrants commit crimes at basically the same rate as children of native-born Swedes (controlling for income).
However, there’s no evidence of a massive crime wave. Here is an official Swedish government tally of the rates of six different types of crime directed at persons — fraud, assault, threats, harassment, sexual violence, and mugging. (Homicide is excluded because the rate is tiny; in 2014, there were 87 murders in the entire country of roughly 10 million.)
As you can see, there is no significant uptick in any of the crime categories alongside the rise in immigration. The most recent official report available in English, covering 2015, is not incorporated into that chart — but it concludes that the rates of these crimes are at “approximately the same level as in 2005.” That’s a slight increase over the 2014 rate, but hardly evidence of a crime wave — let alone one committed by migrants or refugees.
Demetriou is a professor of philosophy. He doesn’t seem to know much at all about sociology or history or biology, but he’s quick to declare himself the victim of a political witch-hunt by people who don’t care for his ‘truth’. He’s the son of Greek immigrants, so maybe it’s a problem with his IQ?
I’m in agreement with our chancellor’s statement on this incident.
Colleagues,
It has recently come to my attention that messages have been circulating that include comments perceived of as disrespectful, disparaging, and directed at other community members. While democracy should and does rightfully tolerate expression of differences of opinion, some members of our community have found these communications both personally and professionally distressing.
I want to strongly reaffirm our mission and values as a University community and in particular, Morris’ campus vision that we celebrate and support the multicultural and international inclusiveness of our community. Differences are our strength, and our community values and respects diversity of all kinds.
We no doubt will continue to have differences of opinion and perspective. At the same time it is imperative that we all make every effort to express these differences in a respectful way.
As a model for civil discourse, I offer the University of Minnesota Board of Regents Guiding Principles which provide timely and sage advice whether members of our University community are acting as individuals or representatives of UMM:
“In all of its activities, the University strives to sustain an open exchange of ideas in an environment that:
• embodies the values of academic freedom, responsibility, integrity, and cooperation;
• provides an atmosphere of mutual respect, free from racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice and intolerance;
• assists individuals, institutions, and communities in responding to a continuously changing world;
• is conscious of and responsive to the needs of the many communities it is committed to serving;
• creates and supports partnerships within the University, with other educational systems and institutions, and with communities to achieve common goals; and
• inspires, sets high expectations for, and empowers the individuals within its community.”I look forward to working with you all as we productively and constructively address the issues of the day on our campus.
Michelle
Michelle Behr, Ph.D.
Now, though, is the time for Demetriou to strike back. I’m sure he’s going to be popular with reporters from Breitbart, InfoWars, and the Daily Mail. I wish him luck with his new celebrity.
I get angry reading these posts because I think about how much a refugee has lost when they’ve fled a war zone and how this thought just never seems to occur to the foaming, screaming reactionaries dehumanizing refugees.
Then the media sensationalizes a crime perpetrated by a refugee–even if the crime is commonplace and practically an every day occurrence–and suddenly it’s all “protect our women!”
You know, after they try to torpedo the feminist rally for criminal justice reform.
smdh
“What an insult … to suggest … that a [refugee] would be as good an American as your kid.”
IKR? The refugee, coming to this place for salvation, is far more likely to appreciate it than the average kid born here, who’ll just take it for granted. To suggest that the refugees would only be as good, that’s insulting.
And once again some racist claiming free speech for himself is criticizing others for exercising theirs… Nothing new under the sun.
I love the bit about low IQs. Like Andy Grove and Sergey Brin, who put Intel and Google on the map, respectively. I bet Demetriou hopes his kids are smart enough to get jobs at these companies brought to their current prominence by “low IQ” refugees.
BTW, I agree with everything you say about IQ tests. They were “berry, berry good to me,” helping me get scholarships, etc., but I’m here to tell you they’ve got as much validity as those puzzles you used to see on diner placemats.
Same actually for the whole notion of “IQ.” Can you think of a single measure of “athleticism” big enough to encompass champion weightlifters, sprinters, gymnasts, golfers, soccer players…? Do you think our mental abilities are even more various than our physical ones? Then how can one number possibly be a valid measure of them all?
There is pretty clearly an uptick in one of those types of crimes, starting just with the recent increase in immigration: harassment. Any bets on who is getting harassed and who is doing the harassing?
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that, when they started the immigrant IQ tests, and noted that the more recent the immigrant the lower their score tended to be, the conclusion reached was that the brighter immigrants must have left first!!
Perfectly logical!!!
Who would think that IQ tests could be in any way influenced by the cultural assumptions of those who write them?
Demetriou wrote “…policies that, as far as I can tell, are failing spectacularly overseas…”
Well I don’t know about “overseas” but if he ever gets back to Morris you might suggest he go for a drive. Winnipeg is only about 500km and he can see how spectacularly things are failing there.
If he has trouble finding the way, suggest he follow all those Somali looking people heading north.
I had always thought that philosophers tended to be logical and careful about their statements. Obviously, there are exceptions.
To be fair (though this is a bit off-topic) psychologists are trying to make IQ tests less culturally biased, and measure multiple different dimensions of intelligence.
Of course it still says nothing about immigrants.
Maybe I’m jaded about police(how could I not be?), but based on crime stats in the USA the higher rates of crime have to do more with who the police are looking to catch than who is actually doing the crime.
One of my great-grandmothers was an immigrant to the States, and she was like Dan, absolutely hated immigrants, called them horrible trash, and so on. The irony is overwhelming.
As I’ve said before, on Affinity, many times, who in the hell would choose to be a refugee? No one, that’s who. Having to leave your home, ripping up your whole life, family, leaving with nothing, risking your life the whole way, only to land in place where you get to face hostility, bigotry, and hate, and start all over? Yeah, not a choice people make for fun.
NB: let’s analyze those graphs the way the deniers analyze AGW data. ie cherry pick data points to create false correlations.
Immigration increased from 2013 to 2014, while crime rates DECREASED, so therefore Immigration REDUCES crime rates.
So what was 45 so upset about ‘immigrant crime wave’ in Sweden? Complaining it wasn’t big enough, or opposite his expectation?
I’m sure he will complaintweet when facts go against him. 45 only believes #alternativefacts as data. Actual facts = falsehoods to 45.
—-
has everyone seen the banner that was hung at the top of the base of Liberty? [REFUGEES WELCOME] hooray activists
Does Demetriou specialize in Heidegger studies?
RE IQ tests : but I’m here to tell you they’ve got as much validity as those puzzles you used to see on diner placemats.
I am always impressed by statements like this which usually show a complete and utter ignorance of IQ tests, their development, proper construction and correct useage. This ignorance extends to other type of psychological tests to the point I sometimes want to weep when I see a political scientist, an economist or some other layman butcher a test without the slightest clue that they probably have just destroyed any usefulness it might have had.
There have been many egregious cases of the misuse of IQ tests but when properly used they can be very useful tools. The trick is knowing how to use which IQ test for which situation or problem.
And BTW, Demetriou seems to have been showing his ignorance as it appears he meant ‘intelligence’ not IQ. One probably should not use a technical term if one does not understand it.
Who would think that IQ tests could be in any way influenced by the cultural assumptions of those who write them?
Let’s see, just about every qualified person who develops and/or uses them? This issue has been common knowledge in the field for, oh let’s say, the last forty-five or fifty years at the very least? Well, probably longer since the papers I reading about those issues back then had been published earlier.
Perhaps he should take his next one in Utica.
1. Ignorant nonsense.
2. At war with “the West” of the 7th century. OK.
Here are his areas of specialty:
He seems to be obsessed with “honor ethics” and agonism, particularly as examined through a…wait for it…Evo Psych perspective.
According to his CV, he’s been funded by Templeton:
Here’s what he lists as his his public posts:
PZ
Do you not follow the news? He is in a hellhole infested with roaming rape mobs and runs the risk of being beheaded by jihadists every time he steps outside. Not to mention the ever present threat of Moose Tramplings. Show some empathy for the unfortunate fellow.
Steve Jobs of Apple was half Syrian.
Obama was…half Kenyan.
This is just Fox NoNews babbling repeated.
Islam, like xianity, has been at war with itself since its inception.
Xianity too fought the West since its inception. They took over the Roman empire and persecuted the European Pagans almost out of existence.
Early on, Islam split into Shia and Sunni, a conflict that continues to this minute.
Muslims are fighting a lot right now. Among themselves.
For a professor of philosophy he is very ignorant. I wouldn’t want to take a class from this guy.
We had a few like this at my university. They weren’t good teachers either.
One guy was a Stalinist. He hated Trotskyites.
Of course there weren’t any Trotskyites left. So he hated the New Left instead.
I was warned that if he thought you were counterculture or New Left, you were going to get graded down and bullied.
(The reality was that he was just a cranky, unhappy old man who had alienated most people in his life.)
#15: Yeah, if you knew him…it’s his primary topic of conversation, this “honor ethics” stuff. He sounds like he’s one mm away from declaring Sharia law to be a good thing.
thanks Raven for pointing out the obvious! I am always amazed when I hear all that islam is evil crap and does all this horrible stuff because so do the christians and have done so as you said from the beginning.
And if you noticed still have very deep disagreements between the different sects to this day and would be at war if they were allowed to. I never know what to say when confronted with any of it. Maybe I can try pointing out what you said next time to see what happens. might be fun :-)
uncle frogy
Sweden’s been getting a lot of publicity recently. A couple of weeks ago, Dagens Nyheter, one of the right-wing newspapers in Sweden ran a well-researched article about where a lot of this fake news that Trump is reading comes from: Macedonia (of all places!). There are young men in depressed areas there who’ve worked out that they can make a decent living at 6¢ a click (decent for Macedonia, at least), if they can get Americans watching Fox News, reading Breitbart or listening to Trump to click on stories on the sites they create called things like Focus News and Conservative News. Here’s the link to the full article:
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/from-this-basement-came-a-piece-of-fake-news-about-who-had-desecrated-a-church-in-sweden/
The Dagens Nyheter article also added another piece to the puzzle about the ‘Muslims stop Christmas Lights in Sweden’ fake story:
“Ivan noticed the trend when he shared a piece saying that ”many towns in Sweden banned the use of Christmas lights on the streets to avoid offending the millions of Muslim migrants that have flooded their country in the last two years.”
“In reality the Swedish Transport Administration had decided not to use their lampposts for Christmas decorations in certain Swedish towns because the poles were not considered strong enough to carry the weight of the lanterns.
“Ivan’s article, saying that Muslims were the reason for the ban in Sweden, became his first big success.
“It went totally crazy”, Ivan says. “I earned a month’s salary in one day. I had never made that much from a single article before.”
“He walks over to a couple of hooks by the door. Proudly he takes down a designer Inter Klas by Safari wool coat. The coat, and a pair of Turkish low-price jeans, are what he bought with the income he got from the article about Christmas decorations being banned “to avoid offending Muslim ‘refugees’.””
It’s in this YouTube clip:
https://youtu.be/Ryjpu-NWYm8
@ 9, HappyNat
While I’m not an expert on Sweden, I definitely think this might be a consideration. Especially considering just how “white” Sweden is as a country.
Similar statistics exist in Finland, as our right-wingers are happy to point out. As far as I’ve seen, there hasn’t even been any consideration about, say, socio-economic status. Because that has never affected committing crimes. They’ve been just straight comparisons between immigrants and native-born. I’m not really even sure what those statistics are trying to tell me.
#9 HappyNat
Sweden doesn’t identify even people convicted of crime at all. They’re always referred to as “a 25 year-old man from Västerås”. We just don’t know who commits crimes like rape, but a Professor of Criminology has done some research into who the police and the public decide to prosecute for rape (which is a crime with a much wider definition in Sweden than in other countries, as Julian Assange found out). He found that there was a slightly greater tendency to take people born abroad to court for the crime of rape than people not born abroad. The difference was a couple of percent.
Slightly off topic by a lot, farmers are having difficulty locating contractors to pick their spring crops. Apparently, quite a few of those who harvest the farmer’s fields are concerned over possible ICE actions.
As for the contemptible subject of this writing, I’d love to ask him a few questions, in particular, his opinion of the Nativist riots in Philadelphia, the Lombard Street riot and the Philadelphia Election Riot, where Quakers of all people rioted.
A direct result of the Nativist Riots was the city of Philadelphia acquiring an artillery battery, a regiment of infantry and a cavalry troop.
Would he blame the Irish immigrants, with their lower IQ? Or just blame St Patrick’s day?
Or is it all really the fault of those highly aggressive Quakers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_nativist_riots
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombard_Street_riot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Election_riot
Hey, the articles do have citations, otherwise I’d not use them.* :)
*I’m one of those evil people who slap “citation needed” all over poorly cited Wikipedia articles.
He is in a hellhole infested with roaming rape mobs and runs the risk of being beheaded by jihadists every time he steps outside
Only too true, I’m cancelling my trip to Copenhagen–Sweden is obnoxiously too dangerous to visit.
One part of the Sweden thing that’s become a repeated talking point for regressives is that they think immigrants and refugees are all horrible rapists who run around assaulting innocent blonde women (I actually saw a right-winger use the phrase ‘blonde women’ to describe the victims). One guy called Ami Horowitz even made a movie about the supposed plague of criminal immigrants terrorizing Sweden. He actually did an interview with Don Lemon about this, and his defense of the idea that refugee men are all rapists was to first say that the rape laws in Sweden are the same as in the US, basically just flat out denying that Sweden has a broader definition of rape. Another thing he repeated over and over again was a claim that the total number of rapes in Sweden had gone up 50% in the past year. None of the data I’ve seen shows any sort of massive spike in rapes over the past couple of years.
Anyway, I’m thinking that I should look at some primary sources to disabuse some notions. Does anyone know how I would go about looking up the definitions for rape in the US and Sweden, and how I would find statistics on sexual assault in Sweden?
emergence @ # 25: At FactCheck, I found a Swedish Crime survey for 2016 (pdf).
jrkrideau wrote:
To be fair, Winnipeg is having some real serious problem with the refugees crossing into Canada from the U.S. No, it’s not a crime wave. It’s the fact that the city was never really prepared to handle this many asylum seekers coming in from the U.S. They’ve even being sent to homeless shelters at this point, which is angering some of the existing residents of those shelters. Then to add injury to injury for these refugees, the law in Canada says we should send them right back into the U.S. since it’s designated a safe country by that law. Usually we get around 60 refugees crossing the border per year. This year, we’re already at 200.
Seriously, Americans: You’ve got to fix your shit. We’ve got people risking their lives travelling through winter fields and losing extremities due to severe frostbite. It’s widely feared that someone will find the dead body of a would-be refugee in a grain field come spring. It’s incredibly heartbreaking.