I. In Cody’s Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley I stand in front of a table piled with oversized copies of E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975). The price is steep, but it’s on the reading list for George Barlow’s seminar on sociobiology. They copy I buy is already from the second printing.
II. George Barlow, with his bushy eyebrows and thick spectacles, is a wonderfully warm and engaging professor. His specialty is cichlid fishes and their amazingly weird life histories and reproductive strategies. The seminar confirms my determination to study animal behavior and evolution.
III. In an auditorium at Harvard (or somewhere in Cambridge) I listen to Richard Lewontin. The talk is sponsored by an outfit called Root and Branch. Lewontin sits onstage in an armchair and holds forth to an adoring audience. He disparages Wilson whom he refers to as his “so-called colleague.” He is arch and smug—a thoroughly miserable prick.
IV. As a first year psychology graduate student at Penn, I sign up for an annual AAAS student membership ($21) and then register for the annual meeting in Washington, D.C. ($12).
V. February 14 – 15, 1978 at the Sheraton Park Hotel on Woodley Road, I attend the AAAS symposium Sociobiology: Beyond Nature-Nurture, organized by Barlow and James Silverberg.
VI. The speakers are heavyweights in animal behavior and evolution: Mary-Jane West-Eberhard, Stephen Emlen, Elizabeth Adkins, G.C. Williams, Richard Dawkins, Paul Sherman, Judy Stamps, and David Barash among others.
VII. Wednesday the 15th: in the lobby outside the conference hall before the final panel, I observe a Science for the People table full of leaflets. A black guy is pretending to be outraged as the table people tell him sociobiology holds that blacks are genetically inferior. I’ve seen enough of the S.F. Mime Troupe and protests and riots at Berkeley to know badly performed agit prop when I see it.
VIII. The sociobiology panel takes the stage. Wilson’s foot is in a cast—he walks with crutches. As the panel starts a group of Science for the People protesters takes the stage. One of the cowards grabs a pitcher of water from the dais and dumps it on Wilson, yelling “Wilson, you’re all wet!”
IX. Under the accommodationist rules of the AAAS, the chair allows one of the protesters to take the microphone to read a statement. The audience isn’t having it—we shout her down (the noise is deafening) and she leaves the stage. When it’s Wilson’s turn to speak he receives a standing ovation.
X. Later, in response to a question about kin selection, a speaker notes that W.D. Hamilton might be willing to answer it, as he’s in the audience. An odd-looking guy with pens in a pocket protector stands up a few rows behind me. It’s Hamilton. He gets a prolonged standing ovation.
XI. On the Amtrak train back to Philly that night I meet a woman and offer to buy her a drink in the bar car. As I reach for the drink it starts bouncing out of the bartender’s hand; his eyes open wide in terror and then the whole car is slammed back and forth as the train derails. I make it back home at four in the morning.
XII. Years later I’m at Harvard for a faculty job interview. E.O. Wilson takes me into the humified vault where he keeps his ant colonies, each species in its own large plastic tub. He takes one down and hovers over it, then looks up me with his one good eye and says “psychologists study individuals; I study entire societies.” I let it slide. He doesn’t know what to make of me or my work on rodent reproductive strategies and behavioral time-sharing.
XIII. The merciless, politically motivated attacks by Lewontin, Stephen J. Gould, and the leftist hive mind leave their mark. Wilson goes on to write banal “what we can learn from Nature” books for the general public. They read like abject hostage notes. Wilson is an early victim of scientific cancel culture. Blank Slate-ism with its denial of genetics and evolution remains the only acceptable dogma in academia.