One Should Only Be So Lucky
If you’re lucky, while you’re at university, you might come across one professor who will change your life. James Flynn, who passed away a few months ago, was that person for me.
I recently found out about his death. I had been trying to think about leads for new stories, thinking of people to interview. I remembered how influential his ideas had once been on my own thinking and yet how, in some way, they seemed like they were beginning to unravel. I wondered what he thought about that, so I decided to get in touch with him. Then when I googled his name, I saw the news of his passing.
My first crack at university was, by all accounts, a failure. I was studying physics at the University of Queensland, but it took me 3 years to realise that I didn’t actually like physics, so I quit. I then travelled and worked for a few years. Stumbled around in ski towns. Fell in and out of love. Accumulated credit card debt.
I eventually decided to start a new degree, this time in New Zealand, at the University of Otago. Otago is in Dunedin, a city at the bottom of the south island of New Zealand. Look at it on a map. It’s the literal end of the world.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study when I began my degree, but I knew it was something in the humanities. I liked language and was interested in politics, so initially I thought about Linguistics and Political Studies. One of the first-semester courses offered in Politics was an Introduction to Political Philosophy. A course taught by James Flynn.
I sat at the back of the lecture hall, as usual, acting cool and drawing as little attention to myself as possible.
Normally, on the first day of a first-year introductory course, you’d expect the instructor to go over some housekeeping at the beginning—procedures, assessment, textbooks, contact hours. I don’t remember Flynn doing much of that. Maybe a perfunctory glimpse of a faded OHP slide and a short handout.
What I do remember is him jumping off into a discussion of Plato’s Republic, a book none of us had read or even bought yet, within the first few minutes. He barely even gave any background information to the book. He may have just started with, “In the Republic, Plato begins by telling us…”
Most students look confused. “Did I walk into the right room? Is this a 3rd-year class in the middle of their course?” Some people walked out after a few minutes of that first lecture. I think almost half of the class didn’t return for a second.
But Jim Flynn continued, unperturbed, pacing the floor calmly, no notes. I was transfixed. I could barely follow what he was saying, but I admired how he wasn’t scared to challenge us—to make us feel a little out of our depth at first.
He was tall and thin, with unruly grey hair and a deep sonorous voice that reminded me of Pete Seeger’s. He was obviously from the US, so I often wondered how he ended up in New Zealand, at Otago, at the end of the world.
From reading this article from the New York Times, I see the comparison to Seeger was apt in more ways than one. Flynn was a socialist and realised that his academic opportunities in the US would be limited during the Cold War, so he settled down in a place that accepted him. He was a community organiser, he campaigned for justice and civil rights and even ran for Parliament in New Zealand. His quest for justice and the belief in the power of political action was clear in all his teachings, as was his trust in the power of argument.
He is best known for the Flynn Effect, the finding that people’s IQ scores on the average had increased throughout most of the 20th Century, about 3-5 IQ points per decade in some countries. He stumbled across these findings even though he was not a psychologist, but their significance ended up pitting him against the likes of Arthur Jensen and Charles Murray in the “race science” debates. Flynn didn’t shy away from the issue, and he always approached his opponents’ arguments logically and with rigour, never trying to impugn their motives.
Recent research has complicated the legacy of the Flynn Effect, as some studies have shown that IQ scores have either plateaued or even gone backwards.
Nevertheless, the main thing I took away from studying with James Flynn, and the thing that impressed me the most when I first saw him more than 15 years ago, was the way he constantly strove to challenge his own beliefs and make sure they stood on solid foundations. To create an individual philosophical model that was internally consistent—going up from the very basics of metaphysics, up through epistemology, ethics, and finally to politics. With each of those flowing logically from the one before. It’s a tall order, maybe a futile one, but the challenge is its own reward.
I don’t think I ever thanked him for his teaching at the time. I was self-conscious, underslept, and probably a little stoned when I attended most of his lectures. But I never missed one of them.
Years later, when I was applying for a Master’s program and needed a couple of academic references, I wasn’t sure who I could ask. I decided to email Flynn. I told him that he might not remember me, but that I had really enjoyed his classes, learned a lot from him, and was wondering if he wouldn’t mind writing me a reference.
He replied the next day: “I do remember you and happy to comply.”
RIP, Jim Flynn.