Civilisation has been built on the exploration of cancellable ideas

Do women have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions to men? Did indigenous peoples frequently engage in war and genocide?

- STEVEN PINKER

Does racial diversity benefit neighbourhoods, academic departments and companies? Are there two sexes in animals, including humans? Do men have an innate motive to rape? Do riots reduce support for liberal political candidates? Would a rapid reduction in fossil fuel consumption do more harm than good? Is average intelligence declining because duller people have more children than smarter people? Is sudden-onset gender dysphoria in adolescent girls an effect of social contagion? Are polar bears thriving? Are female scientists with female mentors less successful than those with male mentors? Would people be likelier to stay out of poverty if they adopted bourgeois norms like completing high school and not having children out of wedlock? If people have the right to change their gender, should they have the right to change their race?

Perhaps you felt your blood pressure rise as you read those questions. Perhaps you are appalled that people are so much as allowed to ask them. Perhaps you are not reading this sentence because you threw the newspaper across the room. But these questions were not raised by cranks or shock jocks, nor by militants for some malevolent cause. They were raised by scholars, scientists and writers, most of whom were unprepared for what hit them. They were not just criticised, as advocates of any strong position ought to be, but censored, punished, fired, threatened, harassed, demonised, libelled, and in some cases physically assaulted.