What do you get when you cross Pat Buchanan with a radical left-wing environmentalist?
No, not a long-haired, Birkenstock-wearing hippie who fires semi-automatic weapons at women and children who attempt to cross over the Mexican-American border, but a petite, soft-spoken woman named Virginia Abernethy, Professor of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
At first sight it is hard to imagine that this Harvard-educated anthropologist with an M.B.A. who now teaches psychiatry and is editor of the journal "Population and Environment" causes liberals and conservatives alike to cringe at her outrageous and oftentimes unsubstantiated claims that we must end U.S. population growth and close our borders to immigration in order to save our environment and protect American workers. Only on rare occasions does one hear someone such as Professor Abernethy shout all in the same breath, "Close our borders to all immigrants and save the spotted owl!"
But in this day and age when the academic job market has become saturated with mainstream scholars in every field imaginable, it is not surprising that so many professors are now turning to the practice of preaching outlandish ideas in areas outside their fields of expertise in order to make a name for themselves and make a few extra bucks by being invited to lecture on popular topics at Ivy League schools.
I recently had the opportunity to attend a lecture given by Professor Abernethy entitled, "Does the U.S. Have a Population Policy? Do We Need One?" In the audience sat several Dartmouth professors, a few Dartmouth students, and some local environmental sycophants who are usually at these evening lectures -- all for a whopping total 15 people.
Beginning with the outlandish assertion that the United States has a "strong pro-growth, pro-natalist population policy" because of a $500 tax credit given to couples for each child, Ms. Abernethy argued that we must do away with these federal tax credits that she believes encourage couples to have more babies. Besides her lack of empirical data, she failed to explore the idea that these tax credits may in fact be awarded so that parents can invest this money in their children's education and well-being.
She then quickly switched topics and argued that "no environmental problems in the U.S. are better today than in 1970." Besides the fact that this statement was blatantly false, Abernethy later contradicted (or should I say corrected) herself by assuring us that the Clean Air Act has significantly reduced sulfur dioxide emissions in the U.S. Although she casually threw around statements such as "we're paving over America," "rapidly losing wetlands," and "eliminating species," Abernethy presented little or no empirical data to substantiate these sweeping claims.
For the next 30 minutes she ranted about how immigrants are driving down wages and adversely impacting the environment. No less than five or six times did she toss around a statistic about how 70 percent of Hispanics in the United States believe that we need less immigration. Obviously Abernethy has never visited South Florida and witnessed the remarkable progress made by the Cuban-exile community which has transformed Miami into a booming international trade center and gateway to the Americas. Does she truly believe that 70 percent of the Cubans in South Florida wish to deny passage to their loved ones still suffering under Castro's communist regime so that we can minimize our impact on the Florida Everglades?
Her biggest contradiction of the evening came when she spoke of how affluent nations are able to effectively deal with environmental problems through the development of new technologies. While she was indeed correct in asserting that affluence leads to a cleaner environment, she failed to realize that all of the things she previously proposed we must limit in order to protect the environment -- immigration, free trade, private property rights, and individual liberties -- are essential to a nation's economic growth.
Fortunately the audience was on its toes and prepared to fire out the tough questions. Picture a typical program on the Nature Channel in which a fragile, young deer is seriously injured by a single wolf attack and then within seconds the remainder of the pack comes in for the slaughter. I was surprised to see Abernethy exit the room still breathing.
The most disturbing aspect of her lecture was not the fact that she preached such outlandish ideas and contradicted herself numerous times, but that the Environmental Studies Program and East Wheelock Cluster actually spent money to bring Abernethy to Dartmouth. Perhaps in the future it would be worthwhile for these organizations to consider sponsoring speakers who are experts in the field they tend to lecture on and not just singers of a popular tune that ignorant people wish to hear.
