Even before it hit bookstores this week, The Bell Curve was controversial.

In early August, the Boston Globe was already predicting an "intellectual firefight" over the book, by late Harvard professor Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles A. Murray '65, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

The newspaper wasn't far wrong about the book, which links race and IQ and asserts that it does not matter whether differences in IQ stem from genetic or environmental factors.

The debate begun by Herrnstein and Murray is now on the cover of Newsweek. The New Republic filled its October 31 issue, released more than a week ago, with arguments for and against it.

This week alone, there have been more than 100 articles in newspapers and magazines across the country questioning whether the Bell Curve is solid scientific research or racist propaganda.

As the book says in Chapter 13, "Nothing seems more fearsome to many commentators than the possibility that ethnic and race differences have any genetic component at all. This belief is a fundamental error."

The dispute reaches all the way up to President Bill Clinton, who said last Friday the idea that "there are inherent racially based differences" in IQ "goes against our entire history and our whole tradition."

At Harvard, which exploded with protests over Herrnstein's 1971 article linking IQ to success in society, professors have come down on both sides of the issue. Most professors say they have not yet read the book but know its arguments.

Some, like DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates, have been vocal in their opposition. Gates wrote strongly against the study in The New Republic.

Others defended their former colleague's right to free academic expression but declined to state their views.

But even those who disagreed with his conclusions remember the late professor of psychology as a thoughtful, considerate man who stood up for what he believed in.

The Issues

The book, subtitled "Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life," uses history, demographic surveys and behavioral studies to back the thesis that American society is dividing into a self-selected "cognitive elite" and a less educated, less intelligent lower class.

Using IQ as a measure, the book suggests a correlation between social problems and low intelligence. More controversially, it implies a tie between race and intelligence.

Most professors interviewed disagreed with the book's implications about race and IQ.

"It's certainly not accepted," said Professor of Sociology Mary C. Waters of the proposition that IQs differ according to race. Last year, Waters taught Sociology 60, "Race and Ethnic Relations."