Michelle Goldberg on the controversy over White House science czar John Holdren’s past writings:
There’s a conservative campaign against White House science czar John Holdren, and it seems to be ratcheting up. At the heart of it is a textbook book that Holdren co-wrote in 1977 with the famous neo-Malthusians Paul and Anne Ehrlich. Quotations from the book about coercive population control have been floating around the Internet for a while, but it’s only in the last week or so that they’ve really broken through.
They are indeed shocking, treading a fine line between describing and condoning outrageous proposals to curtail reproductive autonomy. They’re a reminder of an ignominious chapter in American intellectual history. But they tell us very little about where Holdren stands today.