Charles Murray | |
|---|---|
 Murray in 2013 | |
| Born | Charles Alan Murray (1943-01-08)January 8, 1943 (age 82) Newton, Iowa, U.S. |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 4 |
| Awards | Irving Kristol Award (2009) Kistler Prize (2011) |
| Scholarly background | |
| Education | Harvard University (BA) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MA,PhD) |
| Thesis | Investment and Tithing in Thai Villages: A Behavioral Study of Rural Modernization (1974) |
| Doctoral advisor | Lucian Pye |
| Scholarly work | |
| Discipline | Political science |
| School or tradition | Right-libertarianism |
| Institutions | American Institutes for Research Manhattan Institute for Policy Research American Enterprise Institute |
| Main interests | Race and intelligence Social welfare policy |
| Notable works | Losing Ground (1984) The Bell Curve (1994) Coming Apart (2012) |
Charles Alan Murray (/ˈmɜːri/; born January 8, 1943) is an Americanpolitical scientist. He is the W.H. Brady Scholar at theAmerican Enterprise Institute, aconservativethink tank inWashington, D.C.[1]
Murray's work is highly controversial.[2][3][4][5][6] His bookLosing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (1984) discussed the American welfare system. In the bookThe Bell Curve (1994), he and co-authorRichard Herrnstein argue that in 20th-century American society,intelligence became a better predictor than parentalsocioeconomic status or education level of many individual outcomes, includingincome, job performance,pregnancy out of wedlock, andcrime, and thatsocial welfare programs and education efforts to improve social outcomes for the disadvantaged are largely counterproductive.The Bell Curve also argues that averageintelligence quotient (IQ) differences between racial and ethnic groups are at least partly genetic in origin, a view that is now considered discredited by mainstream science.[7][8][9][10]
OfScotch-Irish ancestry,[11][12] Murray was born on January 8, 1943, inNewton, Iowa,[13] and raised in aRepublican, "Norman Rockwell kind of family" that stressedmoral responsibility. He is the son of Frances B. (née Patrick) and Alan B. Murray, an executive for theMaytag Company.[14] His youth was marked by a rebellious and pranksterish sensibility.[15] As a teen, he played pool at a hangout for juvenile delinquents, developed debating skills, espousedlabor unionism (to his parents' annoyance), and on one occasion helpedburn a cross that he and his friends had erected near a police station.[16]
Murray credits theSAT with helping him get out of Newton and into Harvard. "Back in 1961, the test helped get me into Harvard from a small Iowa town by giving me a way to show that I could compete with applicants fromExeter andAndover," wrote Murray. "Ever since, I have seen the SAT as the friend of the little guy, just asJames Bryant Conant, president of Harvard, said it would be when he urged the SAT upon the nation in the 1940s."[17] However, in a 2012 op-ed published inThe New York Times, Murray argued in favor of removing the SAT's role in college admissions, commenting that the SAT "has become a symbol of new-upper-class privilege, as people assume (albeit wrongly) that high scores are purchased through the resources of private schools and expensive test preparation programs".[18]
Murray earned a BA in history fromHarvard University in 1965 and a PhD inpolitical science from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1974.[1][19]
Murray left for thePeace Corps inThailand in 1965, staying abroad for six years.[20] At the beginning of this period, Murray kindled a romance with hisThai Buddhist language instructor (inHawaii), Suchart Dej-Udom, the daughter of a wealthy Thai businessman, who was "born with one hand and a mind sharp enough to outscore the rest of the country on the college entrance exam". Murray subsequently proposed by mail from Thailand, and their marriage began the following year, a move that Murray now considers youthful rebellion. "I'm getting married to a one-handed Thai Buddhist," he said. "This was not the daughter-in-law that would have normally presented itself to an Iowa couple."[15]
Murray credits his time in the Peace Corps in Thailand with his lifelong interest in Asia. "There are aspects of Asian culture as it is lived that I still prefer to Western culture, 30 years after I last lived in Thailand," says Murray. "Two of my children are half-Asian. Apart from those personal aspects, I have always thought that the Chinese and Japanese civilizations had elements that represented the apex of human accomplishment in certain domains."[21]
His tenure with the Peace Corps ended in 1968, and during the remainder of his time in Thailand he worked on anAmerican Institutes for Research (AIR) covertcounter-insurgency program for theUS military in cooperation with theCIA.[22][23][24]
Recalling his time in Thailand in a 2014 episode ofConversations withBill Kristol, Murray commented that his worldview was fundamentally shaped by his time there, "Essentially, most of what you read in my books I learned in Thai villages." He continued:, "I suddenly was struck first by the enormous discrepancy between whatBangkok thought was important to the villagers and what the villagers wanted out of government. And the second thing I got out of it was that when the government change agent showed up, the village went to hell in terms of its internal governance."[25]
Murray's work in thePeace Corps and subsequent social research in Thailand for research firms associated with the US government led to the subject of his doctoral thesis inpolitical science at MIT, in which he argued against bureaucratic intervention in the lives of Thai villagers.[26][27]
By the 1980s, his marriage to Suchart Dej-Udom had been unhappy for years, but "his childhood lessons on the importance of responsibility brought him slowly to the idea that divorce was an honorable alternative, especially with young children involved."[28]
Murray divorced Dej-Udom after fourteen years of marriage[15] and three years later married Catherine Bly Cox (born 1949,Newton, Iowa),[29] an English literature instructor atRutgers University. Cox was initially dubious when she saw his conservative reading choices, and she spent long hours "trying to reconcile his shocking views with what she saw as his deep decency".[15] In 1989, Murray and Cox co-authored a book on theApollo program,Apollo: Race to the Moon.[30] Murray attends and Cox is a member of aQuaker meeting inVirginia, and they live inFrederick County, Maryland near Washington, D.C.[31]
Murray has four children, two by each wife.[32] While his second wife, Catherine Bly Cox, had converted toQuakerism as of 2014[update], Murray still considered himself anagnostic.[33] Murray describes himself as a "wannabe Christian" who takes faith seriously but has yet to acquire deep faith.[34]
Murray continued research work at AIR, one of the largest of the private social science research organizations, upon his return to the US. From 1974 to 1981, Murray worked for the AIR eventually becoming chief political scientist. While at AIR, Murray supervised evaluations in the fields of urban education, welfare services, daycare, adolescent pregnancy, services for the elderly, and criminal justice.[35]
From 1981 to 1990, he was a fellow with the conservativeManhattan Institute where he wroteLosing Ground, which heavily influenced the welfare reform debate in 1996, andIn Pursuit.[36] He has been a fellow of the conservativeAmerican Enterprise Institute since 1990 and was a frequent contributor toThe Public Interest, a journal of conservative politics and culture. In March 2009, he received AEI's highest honor, theIrving Kristol Award. He has also received a doctoratehonoris causa fromUniversidad Francisco Marroquín.[37] Murray has received grants from the conservativeBradley Foundation to support his scholarship, including the writing ofThe Bell Curve.
Murray argues in his bookLosing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (1984) that social welfare programs actually hurt society as a whole, as well as the very people those programs are trying to help, and concludes that these programs should therefore be eliminated.[38] Murray proposes three "laws" of social programs to defend this policy prescription:
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 Booknotes interview with Murray onThe Bell Curve, December 4, 1994,C-SPAN |
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994) is a controversial bestseller that Charles Murray wrote with Harvard professorRichard J. Herrnstein. The book's title comes from the bell-shapednormal distribution of IQ scores. Its central thesis is that in American society in the 20th century intelligence had become a better predictor of many factors including income, job performance, unwed pregnancy, and crime than one's parents'socio-economic status or education level. The book also argued that those with high intelligence (the "cognitive elite") were becoming separated from those with average and below-average intelligence, and that this constituted a dangerous social trend. He also warned of a merger of the "cognitive elite" with the "wealth elite", which would become increasingly isolated and could result in an authoritarian "custodial state". After its publication, academics criticized the book over his assertions on race and IQ.[40][41] Some said it supported long-discredited "scientific racism"[42][43][44][45] and a number of books were written to rebutThe Bell Curve. Those works included a 1996 edition of evolutionary biologistStephen Jay Gould'sThe Mismeasure of Man; a collection of essays,The Bell Curve Wars (1995), reacting to Murray and Herrnstein's commentary; andThe Bell Curve Debate (1995), whose essays similarly respond to issues raised inThe Bell Curve.Arthur S. Goldberger andCharles F. Manski critiqued the empirical methods supporting the book's hypotheses.[46]
The book's most controversial argument hinged on a hypothesized relationship betweenrace and intelligence, specifically the hypothesis that differences in average IQ test performance between racial groups are at least partially genetic in origin. Subsequent developments in genetics research have led to a scholarly consensus that this hypothesis is false. The idea that there are genetically determined differences in intelligence between racial groups is now considered discredited by mainstream science.[7][8][47]
Much of the work referenced byThe Bell Curve was funded by thePioneer Fund, which aims to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences, and which has been accused of promotingwhite supremacist views, particularlyscientific racism.[48][49][50][51] Murray criticized the characterization of the Pioneer Fund as a racist organization, arguing that it has as much relationship to its founder as "Henry Ford and today'sFord Foundation".[52]
In his bestsellerComing Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 (2012), Murray describes diverging trends between poor and upper middle-class white Americans in the half-century after the death ofJohn F. Kennedy. He focuses on white Americans in order to argue that economic decline in that period was not experienced solely by minorities, whom he brings into his argument in the last few chapters of the book. He argues that class strain has cleaved white Americans into two distinct, highly segregated strata: "an upper class, defined by educational attainment, and a new lower class, characterized by the lack of it. Murray also posits that the new [white] 'lower class' is less industrious, less likely to marry and raise children in a two-parent household, and more politically and socially disengaged."[53]
Critics have suggested that hecherry-picked the data and time period under analysis, withNell Irvin Painter, for example, writing that "behaviors that seem to have begun in the 1960s belong to a much longer and more complex history than ideologically driven writers like Mr. Murray would have us believe."[54]
Murray has writtenopinion pieces forThe New Republic,Commentary,The Public Interest,The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal,National Review, andThe Washington Post. He has been a witness before United States House and Senate committees and a consultant to seniorRepublican government officials in the United States and other conservative officials in theUnited Kingdom,Eastern Europe, and theOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.[55]
In the April 2007 issue ofCommentary magazine, Murray wrote on the disproportionate representation of Jews in the ranks of outstanding achievers and says that one of the reasons is that they "have been found to have an unusually high mean intelligence as measured by IQ tests since the first Jewish samples were tested". His article concludes with an assertion: "At this point, I take sanctuary in my remaining hypothesis, uniquely parsimonious and happily irrefutable. The Jews are God's chosen people."[56]
In the July/August 2007 issue ofThe American, a magazine published by theAmerican Enterprise Institute, Murray says he has changed his mind about SAT tests and says they should be scrapped: "Perhaps the SAT had made an important independent contribution to predicting college performance in earlier years, but by the time research was conducted in the last half of the 1990s, the test had already been ruined by political correctness." Murray advocates replacing the traditional SAT with the College Board's subject achievement tests: "The surprising empirical reality is that the SAT is redundant if students are required to take achievement tests."[17]
On March 2, 2017, Murray was scheduled to speak atMiddlebury College inMiddlebury,Vermont, aboutComing Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. Murray was invited to attend the college by Middlebury'sAmerican Enterprise Institute Club, who received co-sponsorship of the event from a professor in the political science department. Before Murray was able to speak, students within the hall rose to their feet and recited in unison a speech about theeugenicist implications of Murray's work. Students proceeded to chant and dance in the hall in an effort to stop Murray from speaking. Bill Burger, Middlebury College's Vice President of Communications, announced that the speech would be moved to another location. A closed circuit broadcast showed Murray being interviewed by political science professorAllison Stanger—chanting from protesters could be heard throughout the broadcast. After the interview, there was a violent confrontation between protesters—both from the college and the surrounding community—and Murray, Vice President for Communications Bill Burger, and Stanger (who was hospitalized with a neck injury and concussion) as they left the McCullough Student Center. Middlebury students said that Middlebury Public Safety officers instigated and escalated violence against nonviolent protesters and that administrator Bill Burger assaulted protesters with a car.[57] Middlebury PresidentLaurie L. Patton responded after the event, saying the school would respond to "the clear violations of Middlebury College policy that occurred inside and outside Wilson Hall".[58][59][60][61] The school took disciplinary action against 74 students for their involvement in the incident.[62][63]
Murray identifies as alibertarian.[64] He has also been described asconservative,[65][66][67][68] andfar-right.[69][70][41][71]
Murray has been critical of theNo Child Left Behind law, arguing that it "set a goal that was devoid of any contact with reality.... The United States Congress, acting with large bipartisan majorities, at the urging of the President, enacted as the law of the land that all children are to be above average." He sees the law as an example of "Educational romanticism [which] asks too much from students at the bottom of the intellectual pile, asks the wrong things from those in the middle, and asks too little from those at the top."[72]
Challenging "educational romanticism", he wroteReal Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality, making the argument for "four simple truths", namely: ability varies, half of all children are below average, too many people are going to college, and that America's future depends on how we educate the academically gifted.[73]
In 2014, a speech that Murray was scheduled to give atAzusa Pacific University was "postponed" due to Murray's research on human group differences.[74] Murray responded to the institution by claiming that it was a disservice to the students and faculty to dismiss his research because of its controversial nature rather than the evidence. Murray also urged the university to consider his works as they are and reach conclusions for themselves, rather than relying on sources that "specialize in libeling people".[74][75]
Murray has indicated that he believes that the government is over regulated and has expressed support for disobeying regulations he considers to be unjust.[76]
Murray supports having simpler tax codes and decreasing government benefits which could incentivize childbearing.[3] In June 2016, Murray wrote that replacing welfare with auniversal basic income (UBI) was the best way to adapt to "a radically changing U.S. jobs market"[77] and defended that, as of 2014, the annual cost of a UBI in the US would have been about $200 billion cheaper than the current system.[78][79]
During an appearance at CPAC, Murray said of abortions: "It's a murder—it's a homicide—but sometimes homicide is justified".[80] He has said that he believes that it is acceptable in certain situations including when a woman's life is at risk and when there is severe damage to the brain of the child.[81][80] Murray has also indicated that he thinks that conservatives should put social issues like abortion on the back burner and has said they should seek a "moral suasion" rather than criminalization of issues like abortion andsame-sex marriage.[81]
In Murray'sThe Bell Curve in chapters 13 and 14 the authors wrote about the enduring differences inrace and intelligence and discuss implications of that difference. They write in the introduction to chapter 13 that "The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved,"[82] and that "It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences."[83] This stands in contrast to the contemporary and subsequent consensus of mainstream researchers, who do not find that racial disparities in educational attainment or measured intelligence are explained by between-group genetic differences.[84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92]
Citing assertions made by Murray inThe Bell Curve, TheSouthern Poverty Law Center charged that his ideas were rooted ineugenics.[41] Murray disputed this.[93]Francis Wheen summarized Murray's arguments as "Black people are more stupid than white people: always have been, always will be. This is why they have less economic and social success. Since the fault lies in their genes, they are doomed to be at the bottom of the heap now and forever."[94] Other intellectuals have defended Murray against allegations of racism, includingSam Harris,[95]Glenn Loury,[95]Andrew Sullivan,[96]James Flynn,[97] andKyle Smith.[98]
In addition to these books, Murray has published articles inCommentary magazine,The New Criterion,The Weekly Standard,The Washington Post,The Wall Street Journal, andThe New York Times.[1]
Historical measurements of skull volume and brain weight were done to advance claims of the racial superiority of white people. More recently, the (genuine but closing) gap between the average IQ scores of groups of black and white people in the United States has been falsely attributed to genetic differences between the races.
Recent articles claim that the folk categories of race are genetically meaningful divisions, and that evolved genetic differences among races and nations are important for explaining immutable differences in cognitive ability, educational attainment, crime, sexual behavior, and wealth; all claims that are opposed by a strong scientific consensus to the contrary. ... Despite the veneer of modern science, RHR [racial hereditarian research] psychologists' recent efforts merely repeat discredited racist ideas of a century ago. The issue is truly one of scientific standards; if psychology embraced the scientific practices of evolutionary biology and genetics, current forms of RHR would not be publishable in reputable scholarly journals.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)Herrnstein and Murray were swiftly and widely denounced as 'attempting to revive scientific racism'
