Will Noah Carl get a fair hearing?

A letter appeared in the Times this morning defending Dr Noah Carl, the young Cambridge scholar who was branded a ‘racist pseudoscientist’ and accused of making ‘errors’ in an ‘open letter’ signed by over 200 academics in fields like ‘critical race studies’ and ‘media and communications’. The letter in the Times today is signed by three postgraduate students from Nuffield College, Oxford, where Dr Carl, who describes himself as a ‘conservative’, did his PhD. They argue that ‘popularity should not be allowed to take the place of intellectual debate’ and urge the Cambridge authorities not to be swayed by ‘popular opinion’.

I blogged about this episode in The Spectator last week, pointing out that the authors of the open letter had failed to cite any of Dr Carl’s research papers or quote from his work to back up their allegations. In addition, Quillette, where I’m an associate editor, published an editorial defending Dr Carl, and launched a counter-petition