"Chris Brand is unrepentant -- and still espouses the opinions which led to his downfall", said Edinburgh's Evening News on February 9th 1999, in a two-page feature article with photos. For the full text, see McDougall NewsLetter 2 ii '99.
Letter from Brand to the editor of The Scotsman [Edinburgh], 19 xii 1998
Dear Editor,
Your
reporter, Nick Thorpe (The Scotsman, 17
xii 1998, p. 7), claims I said consensual sex between adults and children,
as long as the child was intelligent, was "acceptable." In fact, that
was not what I said -- either in the e-mailed newsletter of October, 1996, for
which Edinburgh University fired me, or later. What I said was that such sex, when
an intelligent youth was over age 12, probably "does no harm." *
Many of those who hold liberal views about
prostitution, cannabis use or abortion would make the same point. They would
not claim these activities to be 'acceptable'; they would not advocate them;
and they would hope not to confront such problems within their own families.
Yet they would allow that no general harm (except perhaps to foetuses) appears
to result from them despite many years in which psychological researchers could
have identified such a result. Thus they would think it hard to use the
criminal law against those who prostitute themselves, use prostitutes, possess
or sell cannabis, or procure abortions. They would deplore as excessive a state
prosecutor threatening a 73-year-old with a 30-year prison sentence for
offences of these types dating back many years and never reported to police at
the time. Such, precisely, was my own criticism of the prosecution of the
American Nobel prizewinner who had famously helped discover the causation of
BSE but found himself on trial in Maryland, in 1996, for having 'molested'
(non-violently) one of some forty boys and girls from Papua New Guinea whom he
had adopted and educated.
At least the Maryland court showed some
clemency and only made Carleton Gajdusek serve eight months in prison. By
contrast, Edinburgh University first pursued me for six months from April,
1996, because London journalists had noticed I maintained there were
genetically based racial differences in IQ. When the outcome of that Inquiry
failed to satisfy opponents -- who handed to the Scottish tabloid press e-mails
of October, 1996, which they received from me -- Edinburgh University's
Principal proceeded against me to the very limit of his power and dismissed me
for stating what all academic researchers of paedophilia had known for thirty
years.** I do not find paedophilia "acceptable"; but I can be said to
find paedohysteria unacceptable, as also ignoracism, and I will
continue to challenge what I find Edinburgh University's illiberalism in firing
me without warning, after twenty-six years service, for one page of e-mail.
I am yours etc., Chris Brand.
* My full text of October, 1996, is available on the Internet at http://www.cycad.com/cgi-bin/Brand/paedo.html; and the latest meta-analytic review of child sex abuse, published in the Journal of Sex Research, 1997 (summarized at Wiley and Edinburgh University versus Chris Brand), confirms my suggestion.
** The full official reports of E. U.'s Tribunal and Appeal in my case can be read at http://www.crispian.demon.co.uk/McDNLArch3b.htm.
A slightly shortened version of the above letter (omitting asterisked material and the references to Carleton Gajdusek) was published as the lead letter in The Scotsman on 22nd December, 1998 (p. 14, 'What researchers had known for years'). The shortened version appears in The McDougall NewsLetter for 22nd December, 1998.
For the article in The Scotsman to which the letter replies, see http://www.crispian.demon.co.uk/McDNLArch6.htm.
For a brief, introductory account of Brand's
battles, see
Wiley &
Edinburgh University versus Brand. This history has appended to it: the explanation of how academic
freedom came to be effectively abolished in the United Kingdom in 1988;
references to 1996-8 press coverage when Brand was run to ground
for his views on IQ, race, education, eugenics, sex, 'feminazism' and
paedophilia; and references to new articles which counsel against ignoracism
and paedohysteria.
Last modified: 28 ii 1999