Assault on Psychology: Research on Race Differences Anathematized

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) has been called the Father of Modern Science. So it is fitting that he was, perhaps, the first scientist to be censured and silenced by political forces represented in his day by the Catholic Church. The issue then was evidence Galileo presented supporting the Copernican heliocentric model of the solar system that contradicted the Aristotelian geocentric theory espoused by the establishment.

Elites have often used science to support the dominate ideology while suppressing evidence incompatible with their beliefs. One notable case was the rise of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union during the reign of Joseph Stalin. Trofim Lysenko (1898–1976), a Ukrainian biologist, rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of the inheritance of environmentally acquired characteristics. This theory won favor because it fit well with the creation of the New Soviet Man: human nature was not innate, but as malleable and adaptable as were the characteristics of spring wheat.

The ideological orthodoxy of today is egalitarian multiculturalism, sometimes described as social or cultural Marxism. According to this doctrine the perceived differences between racial groups are superficial physical traits or cultural characteristics determined externally by history and the social environment.  All ethnic groups have equal potential for social development. A multicultural society is the most desirable and progressive social arrangement. There are no legitimate group interests that would preclude social harmony in a diverse and inclusive society.

Over the past half century, as social Marxism has tightened its ideological grip on the main stream media (MSM), education, corporations and the government, very few public persons have challenged its canon. But a handful of social scientists, mainly psychologists, have, along with Galileo, gone where the evidence led them. Because psychology deals with intelligence and behavior, the field is especially important for egalitarians to control. This essay will take a brief look at five psychologists who have contested established dogmas, and paid a price for doing so.

Five Dissidents

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) received a PhD from Columbia and after two years of post-doctoral research in Britain returned to teach at Berkeley where he had earned his undergraduate degree. Prof. Jensen’s conventional career ended in 1969 with the publication of an article in the Harvard Educational Review.[1]  In this and a subsequent HER article Jensen claimed that efforts to raise IQ and academic achievement of low-IQ children had little long-term success.  Individual differences in IQ are largely inherited. He cited data indicating that both genetics and environment need to be considered in educational assessment, and instructional strategies involving rote learning and memorization are most effective when teaching low-IQ children.

Reaction to Jensen’s articles was vehement and protracted. His classes were disrupted, his office and vehicle vandalized. Leftist groups demanded his firing. From Minneapolis to Melbourne his lectures produced riotous demonstrations. Despite the tremendous strain put upon him and his family, Jensen refused to retract his findings or switch to less controversial topics of research. Over his long career Jensen continued to study the nature and causes of racial disparities in academic achievement.

In the face of incessant criticism, his research has stood the test of time. Today some of his recommendations, such as early childhood (pre-K) intervention, have been implemented by educational reformers, without, of course, attribution to Jensen.  Experimental charter schools that have developed highly structured lesson plans incorporating rote learning have had some success in raising scores of minority students on standardized achievement tests. Overall, however, the educational establishment has rejected Jensen’s conclusions and remains tenaciously egalitarian.

The refusal of the educational establishment to accept Jensen’s findings led to the search for other remedies to close the racial achievement gap. The most destructive and costly solution implemented was massive forced busing to achieve racially balanced schools. This failed policy cost billions, destroyed communities, and disrupted the lives of millions of Americans.

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One scholar who found Jensen’s research convincing and thus realized that busing would be counterproductive was Ralph Scott, an educational psychologist at the University of Northern Iowa.

In the early 1970s Prof. Scott was involved in designing Home Start, a birth-to-kindergarten enrichment program for poor families in Waterloo, Iowa. Such early intervention was one of Jensen’s recommendations. Although Scott’s program was well received, the problems began when he advocated early intervention as an alternative to forced busing. In 1976 he organized a series of symposia entitled, “Constructive Alternatives to Forced Busing.”  That is really all it took. To support Jensen’s findings and oppose massive busing could only mean one was a hateful bigot. The news media in several cities where the symposia were held alleged Scott had racist affiliations. Reporters, including Grace Lichtenstein of the New York Times, called administrators at Scott’s university to complain about his activities. This led to an investigation to see if there were grounds for dismissal.

Fortunately, Prof Scott’s tenure prevented termination.

While the university could not rid itself of Scott, leftist students and “colleagues” could make his life unpleasant. He and his family received threating messages including death threats.  Follow professors denigrated Scott to their students, resulting in decreased enrollment in his classes. The university reduced his teaching assignments.  The harassment and opprobrium lasted for decades until Scott’s retirement in 2014.

In 1988 Scott’s teaching and research came under scrutiny of the baleful eye of leftist academic activist Berry Mehler. Mehler, who received his undergraduate degree from Yeshiva University, is the Jewish director of the so-called Institute for the Study of Academic Racism (ISAR) at Ferris State University in Michigan. As part of his investigation Mehler had an assistant use a pseudonym to make calls to Scott posing as a reporter seeking an interview for the Baltimore Sun.

Characters such as Mehler bring up an interesting aspect of scientific censorship in America. Due to our liberal tradition and First Amendment rights, the establishment must employ surrogates to enforce ideological conformity. For anti-White NGOs such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and the ISAR, however, the separation between private and governmental action is blurred. For example, the SPLC and ADL conduct training courses for law enforcement to help officers identify “right-wing extremists.” SPLC propaganda posing as educational materials is distributed in public schools.

The fact that a disreputable organization such as the Jewish-funded SPLC has any credibility is due, in large part, to the support it receives from the MSM. We see in the controversies covered by this essay how the media works in tandem with the so-called “watchdog” groups to attack dissident scholars. Over the last several decades, the bias in the MSM has led to widespread distrust of these news outlets among Americans.  Despite this backlash and the rise of internet news, the MSM is still able to frame the dominate narrative, thus exercising tremendous influence on public opinion and policy.

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Another distinguished psychologist to run afoul of the self-appointed thought police was Raymond Cattell (1905–1998).  The author or co-author of 500 research papers and over 50 books, the British-born Cattell was, without question, one of the leading psychologists of the twentieth century. After receiving a PhD from King’s College London in 1929, Cattell eventually moved to the US and taught for many years at the University of Illinois. Upon retiring he continued his research and writing.

In 1997 the American Psychological Association (APA) nominated the 92-year-old professor for its highest honor, the Gold Metal Lifetime Achievement Award to be presented in Chicago during their annual conference. In the weeks prior to the event leftwing academics “waged an intense media blitz of distortions, rumor, and innuendo. These axe-grinding ideological adversaries worked vigorously behind the scenes to undermine the APA’s presentation of the Gold Metal Award. They accused Cattell of [among other sins] ‘racism and anti-Semitism’”[2]  (see the SPLC for particulars). Two leftists leading the charge were above-mentioned Berry Mehler, and William H. Tucker, a psychology professor at Rutgers University –Camden, who has made a career of attacking fellow psychologists who have gone off the reservation.

Much of the material that disturbed the PC enforcers was contained in two philosophical works that Cattell wrote later in life: A New Morality from Science: Beyondism (1972), and Beyondism:  Religion from Science (1987). Cattell advocated for a new religion and was critical of the “Judaic-Catholic-Christian complex.” Cattell had relatively little to say about race, but was, no doubt, a race realist. The real heresy came from his lifelong interest in the potential for eugenics. He also had a very evolutionary view of human culture believing that societies and nations should develop largely as autonomous units, the antithesis of globalism.

One of the techniques used to discredit Cattell was the tried-and-true tactic of guilt by association. While the left is still wailing about McCarthyism sixty years after their assault on Tail Gunner Joe, they have perfected the art of linking their opponents to other individuals they find objectionable and attributing the ideas of one to the other. Cattell’s “unsavory affiliations” included Roger Pearson, Wilmot Robertson, Revilo Oliver and Carlton Putnam, the dissident right intellectuals of his day.

As a result of the intense lobbying effort by the left, the APA postponed the presentation of Cattell’s award pending an investigation. The old professor defended his research and writing, but in the end decided to withdraw his name from consideration. He died a few months later in February, 1998.

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1. Phillippe Rushton (1943-2012) was another British-born psychologist who departed from the politically correct consensus and paid a price. Rushton settled in Canada and spent twenty-five years as a teaching and research professor at University of Western Ontario.

The author of six books and over 250 articles, Rushton began his career studying altruism, eventually developing the Genetic Similarity Theory as an explanatory framework for why people behavior altruistically. He found that close genetic relationships, including outside the family group, promote altruistic behavior. This phenomenon operates on both an individual and collective level, and could help explain ethnic conflict.

Rushton believed that observable racial differences in IQ and behavior were attributable, at least in part, to genetic inheritance. In his best-known book, Race, Evolution, and Behavior, Rushton applied Life History Theory to explain racial differences. Life histories run on an r/K continuum from fast r, to slow K. “A life history is a genetically organized suite of characteristics . . . [that] allocate energy to survival, growth and reproduction.”[3] For example, the r strategy for reproduction includes a high quantity of offspring with little parental care, while the K strategy produces fewer offspring with higher levels of parental investment. Rushton suggested that Blacks tended towards an r strategy while Europeans and East Asians pursued more of a K strategy.

The reaction from the establishment to Rushton’s research findings was intense outrage. The Ontario premier, David Peterson, demanded Rushton be terminated from his position at the university. When that could not be done, the premier instituted a six-month investigation for possible criminal violations under Canada’s hate speech laws. Unfortunately Canada does not have the same constitutional protections as the US. But fortunately the investigation found that, while Rushton’s pronouncements were deplorable, they were not criminal.

As we have seen there are extrajudicial methods for punishing heretics. “Because of his scientific and political convictions, Rushton endured decades of social ostracism, professional discrimination, grotesque smears, mentally unhinged stalkers, attempts to have him fired from his job, and physical assaults at the hands of Canada’s egalitarian peace-and-love mongers.”[4]

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Wisconsin-born evolutionary psychologist Kevin MacDonald is another social scientist condemned by the ADL, SPLC, and ISAR. After receiving a PhD in 1981 MacDonald taught for many years at the California State University – Long Beach. His early research and writing were noncontroversial, focusing on child development and European monogamy from an evolutionary perspective. In the 1990s, however, he began a study of Judaism as an evolutionary group strategy. Going where the research led him, MacDonald found that Jews have been extremely effective in promoting their ethnic interests at the expense of Europeans and European-American majorities. His scholarship produced a trilogy on Jewish social history.[5]

As a result of his studies MacDonald developed a strong ethnic identity and became an articulate advocate for the interests of White Americans. This obviously did not sit well with those anti-White groups seeking to define the scope of acceptable academic activities.

Starting in 2006 the SPLC mounted an all-out offensive to discredit Prof MacDonald’s work, and have him fired from his position at CSULB. The campaign began with emails to the Cal State Long Beach psychology faculty linking to highly critical comments on the SPLC website. Next, SPLC heavyweight Heidi Beirich visited the campus to gin up opposition to MacDonald among the university’s faculty and administration. Unrelenting, Beirich made another campus visit in April, 2008 in conjunction with charges from the ADL that the professor was promoting hate and anti-Semitism. This combined attack led to censure of MacDonald by various academic departments. In 2010 leftist students invaded MacDonald’s classroom to disrupt his teaching. In 2012 Mark Potok, SPLC’s “senior fellow,” wrote a defamatory article complete with misquotes and prevarications to make the case that, despite tenure, MacDonald violated the terms of his employment and should be terminated. The good professor was a real thorn in the SPLC’s side! The campaign against Prof. MacDonald did not end until his retirement from the university in 2014.[6]

It should be noted that the five men featured here are not the only psychologists who have challenged the prevailing orthodoxy and been demonized for doing so. Glayde Whitney (1939-2001), Richard Lynn, Linda Gottfredson, and others could make the list.

Conclusions

So what larger lessons can be learned from the above stories? One of the most obvious is that the forces tasked with policing the social sciences and suppressing dissent, the anti-White NGOs, the MSM, and the leftist street punks, are well-organized and well-funded. It is truly shameful that in their time of troubles these men stood largely alone to face the left’s harassment and abuse.  There was no supporting counter force to push back. Thankfully they had the courage of their convictions. They could have easily taken the careerist path and enjoyed the benefits of academic life undisturbed.

The above five were academic psychologists. Today the academy is, to an extent, a closed guild. Especially in the liberal arts and social sciences, graduate study is essentially proscribed to those on the right. To pursue a graduate degree, a student needs a faculty mentor to supervise his thesis or dissertation. That is just the first step. Then a young scholar needs to be hired and achieve tenure from a system completely dominated by the left. Of our five, four were tenured and one was retired before they ran afoul of the PC police. Except for Cattell who graduated in 1929, none could have started their career as dissidents.

Incredibly, despite the vituperative attacks from the left and the lack of institutional support from academia, the right is, in large measure, winning the scientific debate on racial differences and the costs of multicultural societies, especially for formerly dominant groups. But winning arguments and exercising power are two very different things. As we have seen with educational policy, the establishment is generally impervious to data incompatible with its ideology. Thus a second lesson is that scientific findings in and of themselves will not bring about needed change.

A third takeaway; the present system may be strong, but it is very brittle. It cannot bend, modify its policies, or compromise in response to the critique from the right. If it did so, its paradigm would shatter. The establishment’s only choice is to double down and unleash its curs, the twenty-first-century America’s equivalent of the Red Guard. The system perceives the White right as the only truly revolutionary ideology existent in the West today. No wonder elites hate and fear it.

This fear and hatred cannot be signs of confidence. The elites are not confident of validity of their dogmas and shibboleths, so their reaction is to attempt to eradicate free speech. They are worried their multicultural concoction could prove to be a volatile brew—all the more reason to maintain strict limits on acceptable thought. And as noted, the establishment finds it literally impossible to concede any point to the White identitarian right. While no one has a crystal ball, the election of Donald Trump, the rise of the Alt Right, and the increased frenzy on the left, point to an acceleration of the long-term trend of social and political polarization. It is going to get ugly and messy, but let’s be optimistic. The present censorship of science and distortion of culture cannot stand. The combination of scientific rationalism and passionate idealism that makes the West great will prevail.

[1] Arthur R .Jensen, “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement,” Harvard Educational Review (Spring 1969) 39.1, 1-123.

[2] Kevin Lamb, “Malicious Smearing of a Psychological Pioneer,” The Occidental Observer, January 19, 2010.

www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2010/01/19/the-malicious-smearing-of-a-psychological-pioneer/

[3] J. Phillippe Rushton, Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995) 199.

[4] Greg Johnson, “Remembering J. Phillippe Rushton; December 3, 1943 – October 2, 2012,” North American New Right, October 5, 2012.

www.counter-currents.com/2012/10/remembering-r-phillippe-rushton/

[5] Kevin B. MacDonald, A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism As a Group Evolutionary Strategy With Diaspora Peoples (Praeger 1994).

Kevin B. MacDonald, Separation and its Discontents: Toward as Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (Praeger 1998).

Kevin B. MacDonald, The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth Century Social and Political Movements (Praeger 1998).

[6] MacDonald recounts his eight-year ordeal at: Kevin MacDonald, “Campaign Against Me by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”  www.kevinmacdonald.net/Beirich.htm