An academic in the UK has said anti-IQ “slurs” such as “nerd”, “geek” and “smarty-pants” should be classed as a “hate crime.”
Psychology lecturer and psychotherapist Dr Sonja Falck spent eight years researching the impact of discrimination against high IQ individuals and concluded that intelligent people should be protected by the same hate crime laws as ethnic, religious and sexual minority groups.
“The N-word was common parlance in the UK until at least the 1960s,” Dr Falack said at her book launch, according to The Telegraph.
“Society at the time turned a blind eye to their impact by passing them off as harmless banter.
“It is only with the benefit of hindsight and academic research that we realise how wrong we were.
“The same can be said about anti-IQ words like ‘nerd’, ‘brainbox’, ‘geek’, ‘egg-head’, ‘dweeb’, and ‘smarty-pants’,” the University of East London lecturer and Harley Street psychotherapist added.
“Slurs such as these will continue to be used unabated at the expense of the brightest members of society unless and until legislative action is taken.”
Dr Falck appeared on Good Morning Britain last week where she said, “Very high IQ people are a minority group in society that are very much ignored and they’re not understood and are largely neglected.
“So, it is the case that individuals with very high IQ very often are bullied at school, for example. They are a target for being bullied, often quite viciously and I found that in my own research…”
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