Uncle Fetzer Supports Anti-Semitic Professor

Here's a long story about an anti-Semitic professor at Long Beach State.

From an office inside the bunker-like, six-story Psych building, a tall, thin, bespectacled MacDonald pumps out pages and pages of material on how Jews are genetically driven to destroy Western societies. According to MacDonald, who considers himself an evolutionary psychologist, Jews, who have typically been in the minority in countries around the world, are compelled by an evolutionary strategy that makes them push for liberal policies, like immigration and diversity, with the intent of weakening the power of the majority that rules them.

And who do we find supporting MacDonald? None other than Uncle Fetzer!

At around the same time, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), of which MacDonald was then a board member, began an investigation into his work. A forum, to be held at the group's annual meeting, was organized by Dan Kriegman, founder of the Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Institute of New England and a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, that featured two other specialists in evolutionary psychology, one of them Pinker. Although the panel was critical of MacDonald's work, James Fetzer, a professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, at one point defended MacDonald with a call for academic free speech.

Academic free speech is one thing, but surely the other professors were engaging in academic free speech by organizing their panel?

Hat Tip: Commenter Edmund Standing

Let me be clear here. I don't think Jim Fetzer is an anti-Semite or a Holocaust Denier. To a certain extent, by protecting the other kooks he is protecting himself. And to be fair, he quite likely does believe strongly in academic freedom.

But I do find it interesting how much overlap there is here.