Ushered in with hosannahs of critical praise (“If you plan to read only one book this year, this is probably the one you should choose”—New York Times), B. F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity has made the bestseller lists for six months. Now that “the growing international storm” (Newsweek) over the book has subsided, a second look is in order. What, precisely, did he say? How persuasive is the behaviorism he trumpets? How does his argument stand up scientifically and philosophically?

Skinner proposes to take us “beyond” freedom and dignity because, in his view, people have no freedom, and human dignity is an illusion. These ideals always were mythic, despite their honored place in the literature of our civilization. The “literature of freedom and dignity,” as Skinner describes it with barely concealed contempt, fosters a wholly false doctrine of the nature of man and nurtures our fear of the developing “science and technology of human behavior” because it reduces our opportunities for self-praise and self-esteem. These opportunities shrink as it becomes increasingly implausible to appeal to mysterious powers of the mind in order to explain heroic, clever or original conduct.

For two and a half years I have been haunted by a story that I pieced together from scattered reports. The story was disputed and denied when I first published it in 1975. But I now have overwhelming evidence from the secret files of the State Department, Justice Department, and Central Intelligence Agency. This is the most important human rights story of the decade. It is a stark, cruel story of mass slaughter in Cambodia under the Communist dictator Pol Pot.

I want you to remember that name, Pol Pot. It belongs in the hall of infamy alongside the names of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. The Communists took over Cambodia in April of 1975. Pol Pot wanted to build a new Communist society.

Men and women receiving their bachelor's degrees now have for the most part been those who entered college near the end of what has been the greatest boom period in American academic history. With accelerating momentum during the last four years, it can at least be suggested that the academic analogue of the Great Crash of 1929 has occurred. Universities are even more diversified than the securities listed on the stock exchanges; they are not so closely interlinked; hence, what is a depression in some institutions is a mild recession or a plateau in others, and perhaps a pause that refreshes in still others. There are surely some institutions (until recently, the University of Texas was one) so richly supported that they could use the slack market for faculty as a time for academic bargain-hunting.

On April 7, 1976, a New York Times editorial expressed an evidently startled reaction to recent rioting in Peking, for “China had seemed to be so orderly, so completely controlled in recent years….” The same day's mail brought to our address the February, 1976, issue of Letters from Asia, published in Hong Kong. The “letter” on China noted widespread strikes and disorders in 1974 and disruptive “factionalism” at all Party levels. The key line was: “…1975 was a highly agitated year in Chinese politics.”

Having been broken in the traces of contemporary sinology, we are now accustomed to such moments of schizophrenia. Indeed, in our preceding two articles we have ourselves begun to render, in seeming schizoid fashion, a darkly shaded image of China in opposition to the prevailing evenly sunlit one.

In the Soviet Union there are strict laws against prostitution. Nevertheless, if a man is interested in picking up a girl for sexual purposes, he knows where to go find one. Take Canton. Do men know where to find such a girl? I've had no personal experience, but 1 did learn something about this from others in 1971. It happened that I was sent on an errand by the large brigade. I had to get some wire cable, but there was none to be had in Canton, so my job was to procure it through the speculators' organizations.

As a result of nuclear proliferation, new weapons systems, and new strategic doctrines, the danger of nuclear war is increasing. The very modest "arms control" agreements negotiated or in prospect under SALT are totally inadequate to contain this danger. According to Herbert Scoville, "Arms control negotiations have become a mechanism for promoting the arms race rather than controlling it." Even by a less skeptical evaluation the negotiations can at best slow Soviet and American acquisition of new weapons systems. Disarmament in the realm of strategic nuclear arms is nowhere in sight. Other countries, which have long demanded some degree of Soviet-American nuclear disarmament as the price of an effective nonproliferation agreement, can plainly see that their price will not be met.