After someone has been hounded to suicide for saying something unpopular, only crackpots will bother supporting them.

And Nagel's criticism was probably valid. Locals usually lend credit too readily to their friends, and outsiders can be more businesslike. Look at native Europeans vs ethnically Jewish bankers, or native Malaysians vs ethnically Chinese bankers. There's a book on it: http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Outsiders-Transformation-Pub...

Nagel's argument wasn't anything to do with race, it just said that blacks, like whites and asians, lend too much to their friends.

I'd like to hear what the PC Police have to say about Nagel. Probably nothing - they probably know they fucked up, but by their standards it is better to say nothing than to say something which is bad for the cause.

An aside, his Handbook of Global Social Policy looks quite good (though I only saw the google reader preview). I can see why it annoys people, though - he focuses on finding compromise solutions.

Maybe Weissberg is lying about the fact that Nagel was taken to Federal court over a trumped-up charge of racism, but you'd think that people would actually deny it if that were the case.