Henry Harpending | |
|---|---|
| Born | Henry Cosad Harpending January 13, 1944 (1944-01-13) |
| Died | April 3, 2016(2016-04-03) (aged 72) |
| Education | Hamilton College Harvard University |
| Known for | The 10,000 Year Explosion Theory of Ashkenazi Jewish Intelligence |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Anthropology Population genetics |
| Institutions | University of Utah Pennsylvania State University University of New Mexico |
| Thesis | !Kung hunter-gatherer population structure. (1971) |
| Doctoral advisor | William W. Howells |
Henry Cosad Harpending (January 13, 1944 – April 3, 2016) was an Americananthropologist anddistinguished professor at theUniversity of Utah,[1] best known for his 2009 bookThe 10,000 Year Explosion, co-authored withGregory Cochran.[2] Educated atHamilton College andHarvard University, his career included faculty positions atPenn State and theUniversity of New Mexico.[3][4] He was a member of theNational Academy of Sciences.[5]
Harpending worked primarily inbiological anthropology andpopulation genetics, but also conductedethnographic fieldwork with the!Kung andHerero peoples of Southern Africa. His work in population genetics pioneered the study of the relationship between genetics and geography. InThe 10,000 Year Explosion, Harpending and Cochrane argued thathuman evolution has accelerated since thedevelopment of agriculture around 10,000 years ago and drove much of human history, including their controversial theory thatAshkenazi Jews became more intelligent than other people due tonatural selection in the Middle Ages. This and other aspects of the book were criticised for its reliance ondiscredited theories of biological race and a lack of evidence for many of their claims.
Outside of his scientific publications, Harpending made numerousracist comments concerninginnate negative characteristics ofblack people, thegenetic superiority of Europeans and East Asians, and advocated foreugenics.[2] He was associated withfar-right organisations and theSouthern Poverty Law Center described him as awhite nationalist.[2][6]
Harpending was married twice and had three children. He died in 2016.[4]
Harpending was born inDundee, New York, in 1944. He graduated from Dundee Central High School in 1961, received his A.B. degree fromHamilton College in 1964, and earned his Ph.D. fromHarvard University in 1972.[3] After graduating from Harvard, he worked atYale (1972–1973), theUniversity of New Mexico (1973–85),Penn State (1985–1997), and theUniversity of Utah (1997–2016).[4]
Over the course of his academic career, Harpending contributed to over 120 publications.[4] He was elected a member of theNational Academy of Sciences in 1996.[5]
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According to a biography byAlan R. Rogers, in the 1970s Harpending pioneered the study of the relationship between genetics and geography, developing methods that are still in use. He also overturned the prevailing understanding ofgroup selection, by showing that group selection is most likely to operate when there is strong gene flow between groups, rather than when they are isolated from one another.[7] Harpending also developed the approach of analyzing populations usingR-matrix methods, and together with Trefor Jonkin, wrote the most highly cited chapter in the 1973 handbookMethods and Theory of Anthropological Genetics.[8]
Harpending did fieldwork inSouthern Africa (Botswana,Namibia) and spoke the!Kung language.[5][9]: 24 In 1981, while with theUniversity of New Mexico, Harpending studied the group during theSouth African Border War. Harpending described the !Kung society as "likeRorschachs" because anthropologists could draw contradictory conclusions.[10] His fieldwork was the basis of the 1993 monographThe Structure of an African Pastoralist Community, with Pennington.[11][4]
Harpending also did extensive fieldwork on theHerero people, a cattle-herding group in the Botswana area. Herero are locally known for "their traditionalism, their wealth in cattle and their dominating older women". Harpending's previous experience with the !Kung people was useful because many Herero are bilingual in !Kung. Harpending had previous contact with Herero from earlier research trips.[9]: xxii
In 1973, Harpending helped start theKalahari People's Fund. The KPF was an outgrowth of the multidisciplinary Harvard Kalahari Research Group led by Richard Lee and Irven DeVore.Newsweek described the KPF as one of the first people's advocacy organizations in the US with professional anthropological expertise behind it.[12]
In the 2005 paper "Natural History Of Ashkenazi Intelligence",Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, and Harpending suggest that the high averageIQ ofAshkenazi Jews may be attributed to natural selection for intelligence during the Middle Ages and a low rate of genetic inflow. They hypothesize that the occupational profile of the Jewish community in medieval Europe had resulted in selection pressure for mutations that increase intelligence, but can also result in hereditary neurological disorders.[13][14][15]
Harpending's hypothesis about Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence has attracted both praise and criticism, with some scientists regarding the theory as highly implausible, while others regard it as worth considering.[16] According to cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, this theory "meets the standards of a good scientific theory, though it is tentative and could turn out to be mistaken."[17] On the other hand, geneticistDavid Reich has argued that the hypothesis is contradicted by evidence that the higher rate of genetic diseases among Ashkenazi Jews is in fact due togenetic drift.[18]
InThe 10,000 Year Explosion, which he co-authored withGregory Cochran, Harpending suggests a common belief that human genetic adaptation stopped 40,000 years ago is incorrect and that humans evolved increasingly rapidly in response to the new challenges presented by agriculture and civilization. The result was accelerating evolution which has varied according to new niches or environments that particular populations inhabit.
The final chapter ofThe 10,000 Year Explosion expands on their paper from theJournal of Biosocial Science[19] on the issue of Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence. Harpending and Cochran argue the cause of the claim of Ashkenazim having higher mean verbal and mathematical intelligence than other ethnic groups (as well as having a relatively high number of genetic diseases, such asTay–Sachs disease,Canavan disease,Niemann–Pick disease,Gaucher's disease,familial dysautonomia,Bloom syndrome,Fanconi anemia,cystic fibrosis andmucolipidosis IV) is due to the historically isolated population of Jews in Europe.[20]
TheSouthern Poverty Law Center has documented Harpending's works and statements on race, noting his association withwhite supremacist groups and referring to his work as an attempt to perpetuatescientific racism. The SPLC notes he attributedstereotypes of different human populations to genetic differences, often saying thatSub-Saharan Black Africans,Papua New Guineans, and "Baltimore Blacks" possess the same genetic temperamental predispositions which he said are characterized by "violence, laziness, and a preference for 'mating instead of parenting'",[21] whileEuropeans andEast Asians "have evolved higher intelligence and 'tend to be more disciplined than people who take life for granted'";[21] that he favored mass deportation of illegal immigrants from the United States using FEMA camps as part of the process and did not believe that more money and government resources should be spent on education in the United States because he thought therace-based disparities are based on genetics rather than disparities in government funding; that he gave conferences at what the SPLC designates as white supremacist groups; and that he supportedeugenics, crediting it in the form of thedeath penalty for the "genetic pacification" of the Western European population.[22]
Harpending once stated that people of Sub-Saharan Black African ancestry do not have the same genetic propensity for "hard work" as Europeans and East Asians do. According to geneticistDavid Reich, "there is simply no scientific evidence to support this statement."[23]
Harpending himself denied being a racist,[6] though he acknowledged that his views would be called "racist" by others.[24] In 2011, he delivered a lecture on race and intelligence at the H. L. Mencken Club, awhite nationalist conference founded byPaul Gottfried andRichard Spencer,[25][26][27] described by theAnti-Defamation League as a "racist gathering".[24] In a 2012 blog post, he claimed thatinstitutional racism andwhite privilege do not exist, describing them as a continuation of traditional African beliefs aboutwitchcraft – a belief in "vague and invisible forces that are oppressing people."[6][28]
Harpending's first wife was Patricia Draper, with whom he had two children. He married his second wife, Renee Pennington, around 1995. They had one son.[4] He died on April 3, 2016, at the age of 72, following a stroke.[29][30]
The Herero research team was headed by Henry Harpending. His American research assistant was Renee Pennington, then a graduate student in anthropology at Penn State University. Harpending spoke !Kung because of his previous fieldwork in the area, and many Herero speak !Kung.
