Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told a packed Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington this week that social science has become redundant. It was a striking assertion, not least because Murray is a social scientist, one of the finest of our time.

He made his remarks at the Encounter Books annual gala where he accepted the Jeane Kirkpatrick Prize for Academic Freedom. Goodness knows, he has demonstrated the merits of academic freedom over many decades of a career speaking frankly and incisively, but also with charity, about the thorniest of issues of race, sex, and genetics.