SOURCE: "Apocalypse Now?," in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XLI, No. 19, November 17, 1994, pp. 7-11.

[Ryan is an educator, political scientist, and critic. In the following review of The Bell Curve, he contends that Herrnstein and Murray are using IQ research to support a political agenda that includes a racist meritocracy and the dismantling of the social welfare system.]

The Bell Curve is the product of an obsession, or, more exactly, of two different obsessions. Richard Herrnstein—who died on September 24 of this year—was obsessed with the heritability of intelligence, the view that much the largest factor in our intellectual abilities comes in our genes. He was also convinced that there had been a liberal conspiracy to obscure the significance of genetically based differences in the intelligence of different races, social classes, and ethnic groups, and that all manner of educational and economic follies were being...